In the aftermath of a pair of attacks that left dozens dead or wounded in Texas and Ohio over the weekend, a roster of former high-ranking counterterrorism officials issued a statement Sunday saying that domestic terrorism should be treated “as high a priority as countering international terrorism has become since 9/11.”

Many experts say that the mobilization in the wake of the attacks on New York and Washington was effective and that the number of Americans killed by Islamist militants would be considerably higher were it not for the far-reaching measures adopted after 9/11 — a catastrophic al-Qaeda strike that killed nearly 3,000 people and whose impact still dwarfs any single episode of violence that has followed in the United States…

The prospects for a change in course, however, appear limited — complicated by legal constraints, toxic American political currents and the amorphous nature of an adversary that has no dis­cern­ible structure or Osama bin Laden-like leader and has burrowed into corners of the Internet the way al-Qaeda once hid in the mountain redoubts of Afghanistan…

“This both makes the mobilization more necessary and interferes with that mobilization,” said Dan Byman, a terrorism expert at Georgetown University and a former staff member of the 9/11 Commission. Trump’s words and actions, he said, amplify the danger by emboldening those with radical, racist views, while his signals of tolerance toward such groups — including his comments after violence in Charlottesville — undermine his subordinates’ ability to agree upon and organize around the threat.