Although law enforcement authorities and the establishment media have cultivated the habit of ignoring it, al-Qaeda still exists. The terror organization seized the opportunity of the 22nd anniversary of the 9/11 jihad attacks to issue a new threat to the United States, vowing to carry out an attack that would be far worse than 9/11.

This comes just as Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has once again restated, as Ben Bartee detailed Tuesday, the Biden regime’s oft-repeated false claim that “the threat of the domestic violent extremist is the most prominent terrorism-related threat that we face in the homeland now.” Could al-Qaeda successfully pull off a major attack in the U.S. while Mayorkas’ woke DHS is hunting for “domestic violent extremists”? You bet your life.

The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) reported Tuesday that al-Qaeda’s Al-Sahab Media Foundation has just published a new issue of its glossy, slickly produced magazine, Ummah Wahidah (“One Ummah,” that is, one global Islamic community). The new edition is “dedicated to the 22nd anniversary of the #September_attacks,” and bears on its cover a quotation from the Qur’an: “They thought that their strongholds would protect them from Allah. But Allah reached them from a place they did not expect and cast terror in their hearts so that they ruined their houses with their own hands and the hands of the believers. So learn a lesson, O you who have eyes” (59:2).

This was an exceedingly piquant choice for a quote from Islamic scripture, for it contains the strange assertion that the infidels “ruined their houses with their own hands,” as well as “the hands of the believers.” In Islamic tradition, this verse is generally understood to refer to Muhammad’s siege of the Banu Nadir, a Jewish tribe of Medina who supposedly destroyed their own homes during the siege, after which Muhammad exiled them from the city.

This idea that the infidels would destroy themselves is also found in the Muslim Brotherhood’s plan for the U.S., an internal document that was captured during the FBI’s investigation of the Holy Land Foundation, and Islamic charity, in 2007: “The Ikhwan [Muslim Brotherhood] must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.”

It’s a strange idea that the unbelievers would sabotage their own house. But Mayorkas is doing just that in ignoring the continuing threat from al-Qaeda and other jihad groups and focusing the attention of the DHS on stopping those who are allegedly “spreading disinformation,” as well as “the frequency and gravity of extreme weather events.” That’s right: the Department of Homeland Security, which was created in order to meet the threat of jihad terrorism more effectively, is now protecting us all from “climate change” and what the left regards as the dangers of the freedom of speech.

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Al-Qaeda, meanwhile, asserts that “today everyone sees the signs of the global order’s death throes.” They mean you, Mayorkas, and your wrongheaded, politicized, corrupt department. The jihadis go on to declare that “the coming Islamic blow” must have “effects and reverberations” that “surpass those of the September raids.”

They say that this will accomplish the goals of “snatching away America’s prestige, shaking its domination in our region, limiting its capabilities vis-à-vis the international community, and creating as many deep fissures and vertical cracks in the structure of the global order as possible.” After that, “Allah willing, Al-Qaeda and its heroes will play a great role in redrawing the maps of power in the world.”

The terrorists are aware that they don’t need to be stronger than the United States in order to pull off this devastating blow: “History testifies that it is not difficult for weak nations to make powerful empires fall into lethal traps, then direct smart blows at them and inflict defeat on them.”

Is Alejandro Mayorkas and the entire Biden regime leading our nation into just such a lethal trap by treating the nation’s counterterror apparatus as if it were just another arena in which they can carry out their program of demonizing and ultimately criminalizing legitimate political opposition and not as something they might need in order to deal with an actual threat? Of course. That’s exactly what they’re doing.