In a letter addressed to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas), Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) and Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) called for the committee to convene "an emergency hearing" on "the wave of domestic terrorism gripping our nation."

The big picture: Lee, Nadler and Cohen wrote that the committee is charged with "confronting the causes of racial and religious violence, assessing the adequacy of federal hate crime statutes, and protecting the civil liberties of all Americans." They noted that they had made a similar request to Goodlatte in the aftermath of the Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville last year, but that he never responded.