Domestic Violent Extremists | California Lesson on Just How Weird Electricity Is | Al Qaeda’s 9/11 Memoir, and more

He is to serve that 93-year sentence consecutively, which should ensure he dies in prison. Brown, an accused ISIS sympathizer, fatally shot 30-year-old Leroy Henderson along a stretch of a road in Skyway, a community south of Seattle, in April 2014 “as a test” to see if he could kill for the cause of avenging U.S. policy in the Middle East, Senior Deputy Prosecutor John Castleton said. Five weeks later, Brown allegedly killed another two men, 27-year-old Ahmed Said and 23-year-old Dwone Anderson-Young, after allegedly targeting them because they were gay, The Seattle Times reported. He met them on the gay dating site Grindr and spent time with the two friends at a since-closed gay club in Seattle before killing them later that night.

Married Couple Who Plotted to Kill Americans for ISIS Plead Guilty  (Shawna Chen, Axios)
An Alabama woman and New York City man have pleaded guilty to trying to fight for the ISIS terrorist group. Driving the news: Arwa Muthana, 30, and her husband, James Bradley, 21, attempted to travel to the Middle East to join ISIS, prosecutors say. Bradley had also allegedly expressed a desire to support ISIS by committing a terror attack in the U.S. Details: In 2020, Bradley told an undercover law enforcement officer about the possibility of attacking the U.S. military academy in West Point, according to the Justice Department. He allegedly said that if he couldn’t leave the U.S., he’d do “something” in the U.S. instead. The two also “accessed, posted and distributed extremist online content,” the DOJ said. After much planning, Bradley and Muthana set out to travel to the Middle East via a cargo ship departing from New Jersey on March 31, 2021, prosecutors say. They were arrested as they were boarding. Later, Muthana allegedly said during an interview that she was “willing to fight and kill Americans if it was for Allah.” Worth noting: Muthana is the older sister of Hoda Muthana, who joined ISIS after traveling to Syria in 2014, AL.com notes. The younger Muthana has since expressed interest in returning to the U.S. while being detained in a Kurdish refugee camp with her young son. A judge ruled in 2019 that the U.S. is not obligated to help her return, and the Supreme Court declined to hear her appeal this year.

Al Qaeda Releases Book Detailing 9/11 Planning on Anniversary of Terror Attacks: Report  (Cami Mondeaux, Washington Examiner)
Al Qaeda leaders reportedly released a book over the weekend detailing the timeline leading up to the 9/11 terror attacks, coinciding with the 21st anniversary of the attacks that left almost 3,000 people dead in three locations. The book was written by one of the group’s senior leaders, Abu Muhammad al Masri, who was killed in Iran in 2020, according to the News Agency of Nigeria. The book details the timeline of the attack, noting that al Qaeda began planning attacks on the United States in 1996 with the intention to drag the U.S. military into a long-term war, the outlet reported. An Egyptian pilot initially suggested flying a civilian plane into “an important and symbolic American building” while carrying thousands of gallons of flammable materials, according to the book. Group members were then chosen in 1998 to enlist in further combat training and enroll in aviation schools, the outlet reported. On Sept. 11, 2001, terrorists hijacked three U.S. planes and crashed two into the Twin Towers in New York City and another into the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. A fourth plane was also hijacked, but passengers were able to overcome the pilots and crash the plane in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. It’s believed the plane was either headed toward the Capitol or the White House.

Domestic Terrorism Poses Greater Threat 21 Years After September 11 Attacks, Expert Says  (Kay Cesinger, ABC News)
“I believe that today, the greatest threat in the United States is domestic terrorism. What I consider to be homegrown extremism or homegrown terrorism,” Tom Brady, the associate dean of the public services division and director of the Homeland Security Training Institute at the College of DuPage, said. “We have so many mass shootings. In 2022, we’ve had a total of 508 mass shootings. And mass shooting is defined as when four or more persons are shot in one incident.”

A Very California Lesson on Just How Weird Electricity Is  (Robinson Meyer, The Atlantic)
The state’s record-smashing heat wave is a window into the future … and it’s okay.

Here’s How Climate Change Is Hurting the U.S.  (Daniel Cusick, Scientific American)
A new U.S. government website keeps a running tally of climate-juiced hazards and the number of residents facing these threats.

The World May Have Already Crossed 5 Climate Tipping Points  (Blanca Begert, Grist)
A new study finds that 1.5 degrees of warming would cause irreversible changes.