New Jersey lawmaker proposes public database of extremist groups

Measure would catalog groups’ activities, membership, recruiting tactics, and criminal ties

A New Jersey lawmaker wants the state to create a public database of extremist organizations in response to the rise in violence and political attacks in the country.

But some experts worry that the measure could hand the government broad power to label groups based on ideology, raising serious First Amendment concerns and potentially sweeping protected political activity into a public registry.

The bill, S-3908, sponsored by first-term Democratic state Sen. Angela McKnight of Hudson County, would require the attorney general to establish a searchable online index detailing extremist groups’ objectives, activities, membership, recruiting tactics, and known criminal ties.

The attorney general’s office declined to comment on the bill.

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McKnight said the legislation was driven by a recent string of targeted violence, including the bombing of a Palm Springs fertility clinic last May, the assassination of Minnesota state lawmaker Melissa Hortman and her husband last June, and the March assault on a Michigan synagogue.

“We’ve seen a rise in domestic extremism and ideology,” McKnight told The Jersey Vindicator. “I want to make sure New Jersey is identifying these extreme organizations. And I want to make it a statute.”

“We are the most densely populated state in the country, we are diverse, we welcome people from every background, and that’s what makes us thrive,” she said. “At this point, we have a large number of people we need to protect, and we need to include that in our system to make sure everyone is safe.”

The proposal lands amid mounting concern over domestic extremism nationwide.

The number of politically motivated domestic terror plots and attacks against government targets has surged in recent years, with the last five years seeing three times as many incidents as the previous two-and-a-half decades combined, according to an analysis by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

In the 2024 report, Riley McCabe of the center’s Warfare, Irregular Threats, and Terrorism Program, cites the same types of attacks that helped inspire McKnight’s bill, including plots against elected officials, political candidates, party officials, and politically connected workers.

The report also found a significant shift in both the ideology and structure of anti-government terrorism.

Between 1994 and 2004, nearly three-quarters of plots and attacks against government targets were “inspired by general opposition to federal authority, spearheaded by the broader American militia movement,” McCabe wrote.

But from 2016 to 2023, that number dropped to less than a third, while incidents driven by partisan political views climbed to nearly 49%.

“Today, terrorists attacking government targets are more likely to be motivated by partisan political beliefs and rarely have material ties to any group,” he wrote.

A separate report from the nonpartisan nonprofit USAFacts documented 231 domestic terrorism incidents between 2010 and 2021, with the number “generally increasing over time.”

Those attacks killed 145 people and injured 370, according to the report. About 35% of those casualties, 94 deaths and 111 injuries, were attributed to racially or ethnically motivated extremists.

“These attacks were often the most lethal of any threat category, such as the racially motivated shootings of police officers in Dallas, Texas, in July 2016, and grocery shoppers in Buffalo, New York, in May 2022,” the report said.

Anti-government extremists accounted for about 32% of total incidents, while animal rights or environmental activists carried out about 6%, and abortion-related attacks made up 4%, the report said.

In New Jersey, the Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness said in a 2026 threat assessment that homegrown violent extremists and white, racially motivated extremists “represent the highest terrorist threats to New Jersey.”

Two years ago, NJ Advance Media documented the rise of far-right extremists and influencers across the state in its award-winning series “Project Extreme.”

“They are engineering outrage, weaponizing cultural issues, and sowing division and distrust, NJ Advance Media has found in a nine-month investigation of the Garden State’s burgeoning ultraconservative movement,” the outlet reported. “These influencers are wielding conspiracy theories and intolerance while mainstreaming extremism by hijacking conventional political issues.”

Critics of the bill say the proposal risks giving state officials dangerous discretion.

“I think it’s a terrible idea,” said Jonathan Hafetz, a Seton Hall University law professor who focuses on constitutional law, national security, and human rights. “However well-intentioned, with bills like this, there’s always a grave risk to protected constitutional activity, particularly freedom of speech.”

“What’s important about the First Amendment is that you get to advocate political, social, and ideological positions, even if they’re extreme or unpopular,” he continued. “And ‘extremist’ is a term without a settled legal meaning. So, would this include groups that advocate radical change, or use inflammatory rhetoric?”

Hafetz said the measure’s vague wording could allow government officials to use the database as a bludgeon against groups or movements they oppose, potentially chilling otherwise protected activity, including movements such as Black Lives Matter or pro-Palestine protests.

“If you protest, do you have to worry that you’ll be labeled?” he asked. “I don’t trust any government official with the broad power to label groups as ‘extremists.’ The First Amendment is stronger than that.”