Chad’s Morning Brief: New Report Shows Level of Support for ISIS in the United States and Congress Gets Ready to Pass Bills

How much support is there for ISIS in America? The Chad Hasty Show airs 8:30-11am on 790AM KFYO.

Support for ISIS

According to POLITICO, a new report shows unprecedented levels of support for ISIS in the United States.

According to the George Washington University study, “Isis in America: From Retweets to Raqqa,” authorities have spoken to roughly 250 Americans who have at least attempted to travel to Syria or Iraq to join the Islamic State and have a total of 900 active probes against Islamic State supporters in every state.

Since March 2014, the report found, 71 people have been charged with Islamic State-related activity — 56 arrests have come in 2015 alone, the largest number of terrorism-related arrests since 9/11.

“The profiles of individuals involved in ISIS-related activities in the U.S. differ widely in race, age, social class, education, and family background,” the report reads. “Their motivations are equally diverse and deny easy analysis.”

Among those charged, an overwhelming majority are men, the report found, and the average age at the time of charges is 26, though arrests range from an unnamed 15-year-old boy to Tairod Pugh, a former Air Force officer who was 47 when he was charged.

The report highlights that the vast majority of Islamic State sympathizers are U.S. citizens or permanent residents, though 73 percent of those charged weren’t involved in plotting terror attacks on the homeland. And while the Islamic State’s radicalization isn’t limited to social media, the study found that sympathizers were “particularly active on Twitter, where they spasmodically create accounts that often get suspended in a never-ending cat-and-mouse game.”

And these are just the people we know about. It only takes one to kill many. Those who travel to join ISIS should not be allowed back into the United States.

Congressional Action

According to POLITICO, Congress is getting ready to pass a lot of bills when you aren't paying attention to politics.

It's become as certain as cold Thanksgiving leftovers, Christmas lights and cheap holiday parties with bad booze.

The legislative onslaught is about to begin.

As the calendar turns to December, Congress is about to encounter a legislative avalanche, ensuring the next 18 days will be filled with action on issues from education to transportation, from taxes to refugees.

And as if on cue — and seemingly out of nowhere — Capitol Hill is snapping into action. Bipartisan compromises are set to hit the floor. Hopes are flickering that a bottleneck of stalled nominations will finally open. And crises are likely to be averted, at least if Republican leaders in both chambers have their way.

Top lawmakers and aides are bullish about avoiding calamity: A government shutdown looks unlikely, they say, and the debt ceiling is already off the docket thanks to John Boehner.

Some of the bills they plan to take up before gaveling out for 2015 are a reaction to current events. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said his chamber is likely to move to overhaul a program that allows some foreign travelers to remain in the United States for three months without a visa. It’s just one of the legislative responses to the Syrian refugee crisis and terror attacks in Paris.

On top of that, two House chairmen are looking to notch legislative landmarks. The House plans a vote this week on a rewrite of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act — a long-stalled rewrite of the 2001 No Child Left Behind law. House Education Chairman John Kline of Minnesota, who is retiring at the end of this Congress, is pressing to get it done.

A five- or six-year highway bill could also come to a vote as soon as this week, clearing an issue that has long bedeviled Congress. It would be a major victory for House Transportation Chairman Bill Shuster (R-Pa.), Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and McCarthy.

A massive, several hundred-billion-dollar package of business-targeted tax breaks known as “extenders” is also working its way through the back rooms of Capitol Hill, and could come up before Dec. 11, several aides said Monday.

The Senate, meanwhile, also has its work cut out for it. The chamber cleared a new director, Gayle Smith, for the U.S. Agency for International Development Monday evening, and was ready to begin approving nearly two-dozen State Department nominees.

Not to mention, the Senate is poised to vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

All of this activity, of course, is in addition to passing a government-funding bill before Dec. 11. Top Democrats and Republicans worked over Thanksgiving to hash out the details of a yearlong “omnibus,” which would keep the government open until the end of September 2016.

Pay attention to what Congress does this month.