terrorism

Radicals seek the demise of the West through organized criminal mayhem—here’s how to stop them.

Masked criminals attacked several Citibank locations in New York City one night last September. They brandished no guns and demanded no cash. Instead, they squeezed epoxy and cemented stickers on debit-card readers, damaged door locks, and vandalized windows with profanities and threats of future violence. Rather than keep their identities hidden, the marauders filmed their work and posted it to their enterprise’s Instagram page. “Unity of Fields,” the recently rebranded group formerly known as Palestine Action US—the new name comes from a Palestinian Islamic Jihad call for violence across the world—included a lengthy caption in the post, exhorting followers: “These actions are not hard to do. Please escalate for Palestine and humanity. We will not rest until Palestine is liberated from the river to the sea.

It was New Year’s Eve and Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a Houston military veteran whose life was coming apart, climbed into a rented pickup truck and drove east toward New Orleans.

As he made his way across the Gulf Coast swampland, the native-born Jabbar simultaneously recorded a series of videos he would soon post to social media in which he swore his allegiance to Islamic State and declared his intention to commit mass murder.

The city he found at the end of his journey was heaving. Fireworks illuminated the sky over the Mississippi at midnight. On Bourbon Street, where locals joke there is no such thing as “last call,” revelers were packed shoulder-to-shoulder, throwing back hurricanes and daiquiris. The New Year’s Eve party had been supersized by the Sugar Bowl New Orleans was hosting the next day between two of America’s most storied college football teams, Notre Dame and the University of Georgia.

The deadly strikes in New Orleans and Las Vegas suggest ominous possibilities for 2025.

In the early hours of New Year’s Day, Bourbon Street revelry turned to carnage. Fifteen New Orleans partiers were murdered, in a truck attack mounted by Shamsud-Din Jabbar, an American citizen who pledged allegiance to ISIS the night before the massacre.

That same morning, a Tesla Cyber Truck laden with  explosives was blown up outside of a Trump Hotel in Las Vegas, leaving one dead and seven injured. A suspect, Army veteran Matthew Livelsberger, has been identified in the press.

It remains unclear, as of this writing, whether the two incidents are connected. But the FBI says it believes that the New Orleans killer did not work alone, and the Daily Mail has reported that both attackers once served on the same army base—raising questions about possible coordination. Both used the app Turo to rent their vehicles.