Armed with assault rifles and clad in combat gear, two white men methodically gunned down nearly 30 people over the weekend, underscoring fears that "white terrorism" is now the main threat in the United States.
Amid rising grief and a clamor for action after the shootings in
Texas and Ohio, and earlier in several other cities, politicians of both parties called for the federal government to take that threat more seriously, with some
Democrats accusing President
Donald Trump of dangerously fanning racial tensions.
"It is very clear that the loss of
American life in Charleston, in San Diego, in Pittsburgh and by all appearances now in El Paso, too, is symptomatic of the effects of white nationalist terrorism,"
Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg said Sunday, naming the scenes of mass shootings that targeted blacks, Jews and, apparently, Hispanics.