AG Bob Ferguson
Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson is pushing the state legislature to adopt legislation that would set up a commission on “domestic terrorism.” According to a report, this could lead to conservative individuals being criminally charged for expressing their views.
KTTH’s Jason Rantz described this legislation, known as HB 1333, as the “most dangerous” in Washington state’s history in his report Wednesday. He says Washington state is setting up a 1984-style Ministry of Truth.
As Gateway Pundit readers know, the Biden regime attempted to create one at the federal level last year, before backing off three weeks later after vociferous public criticism.
According to the Center Square, HB 1333 would create a so-called Domestic Violent Extremism Commission (DVE) in the Attorney General’s office. The 13 members on the commission are asked to recommend legislative “solutions to combat disinformation and misinformation, address early signs of radicalization, and develop a public health-style response.”
In addition, while the commission in HB1333 is charged with finding avenues to treat DVE as a public health problem, only one member is required to be an expert on public health, according to the Blaze.
The legislation also requests the commission look into “current legal tools, both civil and criminal, and making recommendations for potential new legislation and regulations to address violent domestic extremism.”
HB 1333 came as a result of the Ferguson’s 2022 “Domestic Terrorism” study. That study warned that “effective State intervention to address these threats has the potential to implicate speech or association that may be protected by the First Amendment, or the individual right to bear arms protected by the Second Amendment.”
Among the study’s recommendations was the creation a commission to explore not only data collection, but possibly adding a definition of DVE to state statue.
AG Ferguson includes speech in his description of DVE:
“Various forms of extremist and political violence like threats, coercion, and intimidation, online disinformation, extremist recruitment and government infiltration efforts, and the general spread of extreme white supremacism and anti-government ideologies.“
In a PBS interview back in January, AG Ferguson claimed HB 1333 was needed because the federal definition of terrorism is “too narrow for the great threat that we see with the increase of radicalization, for example.”
The basic idea, he explained, was to utilize “community intervention” to “take preemptive measures to stop actual domestic terrorist acts.” Such extremists could be forced to undergo counseling, for example.
Rantz explains in his report that the commission and the AG’s office are singularly focused on white conservatives and HB 1333 was crafted by far-left groups.
The AG’s office makes it clear that they’re primarily interested in targeting white people. Indeed, his office rejected the term “domestic terrorist” because it was too “triggering” to minority communities. And it came from an AG Office report after it tasked a group of stakeholders to explore violent domestic extremism.
The stakeholder group did not include a single conservative or even moderate political group. Instead, it included the American Civil Liberties Union, the Council on Islamic Relations, and Planned Parenthood Alliance Advocates. Unsurprisingly, the group focused on white conservatives, which they labeled extremists, while arguing systemic bigotry within police departments attracts extremists.
The group’s partisan, left-wing recommendations were used to craft HB 1333.
Groups and individuals opposing critical race theory, mask and vaccine mandates, election fraud, and grooming could be seen by the commission and AG Ferguson as “anti-government” fascism and engendering white supremacy. Indeed, Rantz notes during a recent House Committee presentation on Washington state “extremism,” a woman from the far-left Anti Defamation League claimed without evidence white supremacists have a “common cause” with these groups and individuals. She also absurdly claimed white nationalists use protests around these issues to recruit new members.
While this legislation is blatantly unconstitutional, Ferguson is almost certainly hoping the liberal Washington Supreme Court will uphold HB 1333 anyway. The Supreme Court could be controlled by leftists by the time the bill gets in front of them.
God help us all should this occur.
