The Senate homeland security committee’s chair has asked researchers to turn over troves of documents related to the January 6 attack, vaccines, and more, according to a letter reviewed by WIRED.

A powerful United States Senate committee has requested that multiple academic research centers focused on political extremism hand over years worth of documentation on federal watchlisting programs, the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol, vaccine mandates, the 2020 election, and Trump supporters, according to information obtained by WIRED.

The queries appear to be connected to an ongoing investigation by the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs’s chair, Senator Rand Paul, into the “weaponization of the Quiet Skies Program,” which was the subject of a September 30 hearing on Capitol Hill. While Paul’s inquiry was lauded by Muslim-American organizations as a long-overdue examination of abusive federal surveillance, it appears the inquiry is a broader attempt to target academic researchers on extremism, which could chill inquiries into far-right radicalization.