Late last month, well-recognized independent journalist Andy Ngo, a gay son of Vietnamese immigrants, was brutally beaten by a mob of far-left Antifa thugs in Portland, Oregon.

In response to both Ngo’s beating and a spate of other horrifying attacks committed by Antifa extremists, on Thursday GOP Sens. Bill Cassidy and Ted Cruz unveiled a landmark bill that condemns the left-wing group and calls for it to be designated a domestic terrorist group.

“Antifa are terrorists, violent masked bullies who ‘fight fascism’ with actual fascism, protected by Liberal privilege,” Cassidy said in a statement Thursday. “Bullies get their way until someone says no. Elected officials must have courage, not cowardice, to prevent terror.”

“Antifa is a terrorist organization composed of hateful, intolerant radicals who pursue their extreme agenda through aggressive violence,” Cruz added. “Time and time again their actions have demonstrated that their central purpose is to inflict harm on those who oppose their views.”

“Like any terrorist organization they choose to pursue their political ends through violence, fear and intimidation. They must be stopped. I am proud to introduce this resolution with Senator Cassidy to properly identify what Antifa are: domestic terrorists.”

Antifa is a domestic terror organization. This is a group of hateful, intolerant radicals pursuing their extreme agenda through violence. They are masked bigots, attacking others b/c they don’t agree with their ideas. The time to stop Antifa is NOW! https://t.co/trBrXm0GgF — U.S. Senator Bill Cassidy, M.D. (@SenBillCassidy) July 18, 2019

Antifa is a terrorist organization composed of hateful, intolerant radicals who pursue their extreme agenda through aggressive violence. Time and time again their actions have demonstrated that their central purpose is to inflict harm on those who oppose their views. — Senator Ted Cruz (@SenTedCruz) July 18, 2019

Like any terrorist organization they choose to pursue their political ends through violence, fear & intimidation. They must be stopped. I’m proud to introduce this resolution w @SenBillCassidy to properly identify what Antifa are: domestic terrorists. —> https://t.co/3qDDun7Tp3 — Senator Ted Cruz (@SenTedCruz) July 18, 2019

It’s not difficult to understand their logic given the abundance of evidence against Antifa.

Just last weekend an Antifa-affiliated extremist armed with an AR-15 rifle, flares and multiple Molotov cocktails attempted to fire-bomb a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in Tacoma, Washington.

Besides setting a car near the detention facility on fire Saturday, deceased suspect Willem Van Spronsen also reportedly threw “incendiary devices” (Molotov cocktails) at the facility. Had the detention center caught fire, the lives of reportedly up to 1575 illegal aliens would have been put at grave risk.

What’s far more difficult to understand is the media’s lack of interest in covering Antifa’s increasingly terroristic behavior. Take Spronsen. As of Friday morning, CNN.com didn’t contain a single story about Spronsen or Antifa’s involvement in Saturday’s attack. Not one.

Meanwhile, CNN chief media correspondent Brian Stelter’s Thursday evening newsletter did contain a link to a BuzzFeed News hit piece on Ngo, who as a reminder was beaten so severely by Antifa that he reportedly suffered “brain bleed,” i.e., a brain hemorrhage.

“There’s not a lot of news in what Ngo does,” the hit piece reads. “It’s not dog bites man that Antifa is violent or that some hate crimes are made up or that college students say dumb things. But there is a demand, a big one, to showcase leftists and minorities as villains.”

That’s a highly inflammatory statement — one that appears to be wholly detached from the facts. The argument could be made that the real demand is for someone, anyone, to run the stories that the mainstream media routinely ignore or downplay because of their blatant political motivations.

“I think his methods are unsafe, inimical to good journalism, and border on propagandistic,” the piece adds.

But couldn’t the same allegation be made about CNN’s decision to platform a white supremacist just to score some points against President Donald Trump? Or BuzzFeed News’ similarly motivated decision to publish a scurrilous dossier full of lies and rumors about the president?

The allegation could certainly be made about Vox contributor Carlos Maza, a liberal media hero with a history of promoting political violence against his ideological opponents.

Troubling, if true. Should “journalists” be inciting physical violence against those with whom they disagree? Calling for assaults with milkshakes apparently laced with quick-dry cement? Is that consistent with journalistic ethics or responsibility? Or the criminal code? https://t.co/A07icUZYGM — Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) June 30, 2019

Just to be clear, neither BuzzFeed nor CNN have ever ran a report about Maza’s promotion of violence. Nor have they ever ran a report about the vast number of left-wing extremists who’ve been celebrating deceased terrorist Willem Van Spronsen as a “hero” and “martyr,” as notorious race hustler Shaun King has described him. By the way, King is a member of the media himself …

It’s perhaps because of the media’s sometimes tacit and sometimes blatantly outright endorsement of Antifa and its violence that Cassidy and Cruz felt compelled to push for the group to be formally designed a terrorist group.

As of this moment, any relatively low-information America who looks to the mainstream media for information on Antifa may very well get the impression that the group is a force for good. Were the group formally designated as a terrorist organization, however, there would be no hiding its true intentions and behavior — Antifa and its supporters would be exposed for the entire world to see.

The use of violence, or the threat of violence, to quell political dissent is an act of terrorism. It is past time that ANTIFA and those in the MSM who expose citizens to the threat of violence be labeled as domestic terrorists. — Kevin Qualls (@bristoltrucker) July 18, 2019

Time to expose ANTIFA for what they are: TERRORISTS! Their leaders should be arrested, sent to GITMO and those affiliated with them i.e. those politicians who lend support to them tried as traitors to America. — Spider Fear (@Scarpato_Joseph) July 15, 2019

Assaulting people for having a difference of opinion IS fascism. Hypocrisy of #AntifaTerrorist @antifaintl — Tim”of the Ninth World” Guereca (@Natural20Crit) July 11, 2019

Local media calling the #AntifaTerrorist a “self-proclaimed ‘anti-fascist’” is like calling Al Queda “self-proclaimed ‘anti-capitalists.’l — Todd Ξ Herman (@toddeherman) July 16, 2019