This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, January 26, 2021.

I'm Caleb Brown.

After the attack on the capital that ended in five deaths and a rattled legislative branch.

There is rising fear that the White House and Democratic

majorities in both houses will seek new authorities to

crack down on extremism in ways that would look a lot like

a Patriot Act explicitly for domestic law enforcement.

Cato's Patrick Eddington and Julian Sanchez comment.

On Friday, White House Press Secretary Jen Saaki announced the Biden administration would take some efforts

to combat what they call domestic violent extremism.

The Director of National Intelligence will oversee a comprehensive threat assessment.

The National Security Council will build capability to counter extremism and disrupt extremist networks,

and federal departments will coordinate on what they call

evolving threats. This is all in response to the attack on the capital on January 6th.

So to you, Pat, what does this mean?

Because it sounds to me like one of two things.

One, we're not really going to do all that much, but here's

the language we're going to use to make it sound like we are, or we're taking this very seriously

and hold on to your rights? The latter would probably be the correct response

unfortunately. If we go back to the 1950s in the Cold War era you had a unit within the National Security Council staff that was dedicated to quote domestic security and I think

what I also found disturbing about her statements this afternoon was the involvement of the director of national intelligence in looking at quote this domestic threat

D&I was was created and the intelligence community as a whole exist to deal with foreign threats.

...