#nspm7

Are You on Trump’s List of Domestic Terrorists? There’s No Way to Know.

Faefyx Collington (They/Them) at LGBTQ Nation:

A new Justice Department memo from Attorney General Pam Bondi instructs the FBI to create a “cash reward system” to incentivize providing information against domestic terrorists. However, it also makes it clear that the targets of such domestic terrorist investigations will be “Antifa-aligned extremists,” including those promoting “radical gender ideology.”  “The FBI shall establish a cash reward system for information that leads to the successful identification and arrest of individuals in the leadership of domestic terrorist organizations,” the memo reads. The memo, dated December 5, was leaked. Bondi’s memo cites multiple laws that might be used to target domestic terrorism, but also lays out a clear vision for the priorities of the FBI in targeting suspected terrorists. Primary examples given are not the mass shootings and white supremacist actions that have plagued the nation; rather, the document names the “doxing of law enforcement” or the “violent efforts to shut down immigration enforcement.”

While it raises the specter of extreme viewpoints, they are not the ones that previous studies have linked most domestic terrorism to. Bondi’s memo suggests that the perpetrators are “certain Antifa-aligned extremists” and that their “animating principle is adherence to the types of extreme viewpoints on immigration, radical gender ideology, and anti-American sentiment.”

[...] Bondi’s memo does not at any point mention the wealth of far-right domestic terror attacks in the nation, nor does it touch on the issues of white supremacy and antisemitism, which often fuel those events.

Deranged scumbag AG Pam Bondi instructs the FBI to create a cash bounty system for turning in promoters of trans rights and immigrant rights, while downplaying the real problem of far-right and white supremacist terrorism.

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Them: Pam Bondi Directs FBI to Offer Cash Bounty for Promoters of “Radical Gender Ideology”

Ken Klippenstein:

President Trump's budget request to Congress contains the largest counterterrorism spending increase in years — and buried inside it is a new FBI-led center dedicated to “proactively” hunting Americans the government classifies as so-called domestic terrorists. The new center and funding boost represent the implementation of Trump’s National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7), the sweeping federal order I’ve been covering since it was signed last September. Though public opposition to ICE succeeded at forcing the administration to back down in Minnesota — even firing both Kristi Noem and Gregory Bovino — the FBI is doubling down its domestic terrorism obsession. Now, Trump’s budget request reveals, the FBI runs a dedicated “NSPM-7 Joint Mission Center”; with personnel from 10 federal agencies, it is busy “proactively” identifying domestic terrorists motivated by any of the following beliefs:

“anti-Americanism,”

“anti-capitalism,”

“anti-Christianity,”

“support for the overthrow of the U.S. Government,”

“extremism on migration,”

extremism on “race,”

extremism on “gender,”

“Hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family,”

Hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on “religion,” and

Hostility towards those who hold traditional views on “morality.”

In other words, if your political views are practically anything other than MAGA, you’re on notice, courtesy of the FBI. The new center combats these supposed threats “by integrating intelligence, operational support, and financial analysis,” the budget request says. Its creation appears to be inspired by the murder of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk — an event that reportedly precipitated the formulation of NSPM-7 in the first place — according to the budget request, which alludes to “heinous assassinations” having “dramatically increased.”

Brad Reed at Common Dreams:

A Wednesday CBS News report claimed that the FBI and Internal Revenue Service are “forming a new initiative to investigate nonprofit organizations over suspected possible links to domestic terrorism.” According to CBS News, the new initiative is the agencies’ response to a December memo written by Attorney General Pam Bondi requiring the US Department of Justice (DOJ) to compile a list of potential “domestic terrorism” organizations that espouse “extreme viewpoints on immigration, radical gender ideology, and anti-American sentiment.” A government official told CBS News that the FBI-IRS initiative would focus on “exploring potential funding streams at nonprofits that support domestic terrorism or political violence.”

But Tom Brzozowski, former domestic terrorism counsel at the DOJ’s National Security Division, told CBS News he was concerned by the broad scope of investigatory activities outlined in Bondi’s memo, and he questioned whether the DOJ had established the proper predication to justify amassing a list of nonprofit groups to be targeted in a criminal probe. “If you’re going to pull down information and retain it in a government data set, you have to have predication to do that,” Brzozowski emphasized, “especially if you’re looking at it through an investigative lens.” Bondi’s December memo was written in response to National Security Presidential Memorandum-7 (NSPM-7), a directive signed by President Donald Trump in September that demanded a “national strategy to investigate and disrupt networks, entities, and organizations that foment political violence so that law enforcement can intervene in criminal conspiracies before they result in violent political acts.” Rights groups have for months been sounding the alarm about the implications of NSPM-7, which they said could be used to initiative a widespread crackdown against the Trump administration’s critics.

The Trump Regime’s FBI and IRS team up to probe US nonprofit groups for “domestic terrorism” links in order to wage war on left-leaning groups opposed to the Trump Regime’s agenda.

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Ken Klippenstein:

The “No Kings” protest on Saturday is the first major test of Trump’s national security directive NSPM-7, with an enhanced federal presence searching for Antifa “terrorists” and an entire intelligence apparatus looking for so-called indicators of future terrorist acts. Those indicators include “anti-Christianity,” “anti-Americanism,” and “anti-capitalism” — speech that is commonplace. Alarming as that may sound, the major media have largely downplayed NSPM-7 as impossible to implement because it violates norms and even “the law.” What they don’t realize is that NPSM-7 has already resulted in several arrests at protests just like No Kings.

Take the case of Elias Cepeda, an English professor who was arrested on September 26 while participating in a protest outside of an ICE facility in Broadview, Illinois and detained for what appears to just be speech considered pro-Antifa. “A journalist and teacher at the University of Illinois,” the Department of Homeland Security press release blared, “Elias Cepeda has suspected ties to the domestic terrorist organization ANTIFA and has a history of glorifying violence against … our brave law enforcement.”

The DHS press release then lists half a dozen of Cepeda’s social media posts (recall NSPM-7’s focus on speech “indicators” of future terror attacks). The first couple posts are harmless, references to “Antifa” being the only part that stands out. One post expresses support for arming teachers to protect students from ICE raids, but none seem to be “glorifying violence.”

The DHS press release also said that Cepeda was carrying a firearm with several magazines when arrested. But the press release does not allege any crime (Cepeda apparently has a concealed carry permit for the firearm); and more than two weeks since the incident, he still has not been charged with any. Authorities haven’t provided any indication that they’re pursuing charges. This calls into question the purpose of the arrest, let alone the public smearing of Cepeda.

Despite the apparent lack of evidence, after the arrest Cepeda was held for about 12 hours in federal custody (without access to an attorney, he says) before being transferred to Illinois state custody, from which he was almost immediately released.

I can hear skeptics saying, sure, maybe in the end he wasn’t charged with a crime, who knows what else the feds know etc., but think about it: an American seemingly doing nothing more than protesting and calling ICE names (one of his posts in the DHS press release calls them “Nazis,” a comparison doubtless millions of ordinary people have made as well) is detained and held in custody for half a day. His name now appears alongside the word “domestic terrorism” in an official federal government press release that is the fourth hit when you Google “Elias Cepeda,” which I’m sure employers love. Don’t think there’s a real threat to American liberty here? In a nearly identical case the same month, two other people, Ray Collins and Jocelyn Robledo, an engaged couple from Chicago, were arrested while protesting outside the same ICE facility in Broadview, near Chicago.

When agents attempted to expand the security perimeter around the facility in the face of a growing crowd, Robledo allegedly pushed back against agents after being shoved, leading to a struggle during which officers noticed a pistol in her waistband. Collins, witnessing the altercation involving his fiancée, reportedly charged toward the agents, yelling for them to get away from her. (Collins was also said to have been carrying a firearm.)

Ken Klippenstein:

The Trump administration is drawing up “secret lists of terrorist groups inside the United States,” Senator Elissa Slotkin said on the floor of Congress yesterday — the first such reference to the effects of National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7). The directive, as I’ve reported, lays out Donald Trump’s policies with regard to equating “anti-Christian” and “anti-capitalist” sentiment with domestic terrorism. As a result of the directive, the FBI’s domestic terrorism watchlist is expected to double in the coming months, sources told me. The Senator from Michigan would know. She is a former CIA analyst and Assistant Secretary of Defense, and now serves on the Senate Armed Services and Homeland Security Committees. She defends the national security state as “good, corn-fed people who just want to help their country” and has said “I’m as hawkish as anyone” on Iran. In other words, Slotkin is no hater when it comes to the national security system — which makes her warning especially chilling. Slotkin in her Senate speech warned that with NSPM-7, the Trump administration had directed law enforcement agencies to “make secret lists of terrorist groups inside the United States and send the full force of the U.S. government against those terrorist organizations.”

“They are not telling anyone about this, but asking that the law enforcement [community] come up with that list,” she added. Consistent with her remarks, NSPM-7 says, “The Attorney General shall submit a list of any such [domestic terrorist] groups” to the White House. “The Trump administration define[s] domestic terrorism incredibly broadly,” Slotkin said. “It suggests that any group that talks about anti-Christian values, views they don’t like on migration or race, differing views on the role of the family, religion, or morality could all be grounds for labelling an organization as domestic terrorists.” She also decried the Trump administration’s secret list of designated foreign terrorist groups in its war on cartels, saying: “If this administration is not telling us who’s on their secret designated terrorist list for groups in the Caribbean, they’re definitely not going to tell us who is on their list of domestic terrorist organizations.”

Slotkin also revealed that the Trump administration had refused to provide its list of cartel terrorist groups to Congress, including even the Republican leadership. According to her, the list numbers in the “dozens”; this suggests that the administration is quite comfortable with such lists and is employing them against more than just the high-profile groups like Tren de Aragua. In response to a request for comment for this article, Slotkin’s office directed me to another point she raised in a confirmation hearing this week for Trump’s nominee for general counsel of the Army, Charles Young. During the hearing, Slotkin asked if a list of domestic terrorist organizations would authorize the military to take action within the United States — a possible way that the administration could get around posse comitatus restrictions on the use of the active military to enforce the law.

Ken Klippenstein:

Two right-wing figures — Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes — have been named by the White House as possible domestic terrorists, according to the Trump administration’s top counterterrorism official.

Sebastian Gorka, himself a former right-wing influencer turned National Security Council principal, has been making his rounds on conservative media, explaining the meaning and purpose behind the President’s new National Counterterrorism Strategy (which I reported on previously). Between grandiose monologues about his vision of a crusade to save Western civilization from “anti-American” and “anti-Christian” extremism, Gorka let slip that the administration’s war on “domestic terrorism” isn’t just aimed at the left. It targets anyone who isn’t in line with the broader MAGA agenda. While Trump’s national security directive NSPM-7 explicitly singles out the left with its list of so-called terrorism indicators, many of them could describe people on the right as well. The new Counterterrorism Strategy, Gorka’s brainchild, identifies three groups as priorities for the administration: narco-terrorists, Islamist terrorists, and “Violent Left-Wing Extremists.” Nowhere in the document does it mention right-wing extremists; and while that may have led those on the right to believe they are immune, Gorka’s remarks make clear that they are not.

[...]

I’m an absolutist when it comes to free speech, for the right and the left (and anyone inside or outside that spectrum). Gorka as a government official has no business sticking his nose into whether people define America in the same way he does. And let’s be real: none of this is actually about extremism. It’s about the fact that Carlson, like Fuentes, recently broke with Trump — bitterly — over the Iran War. That's the real offense. So now they’re being cast as extremist threats. But to avoid alarming conservatives, the administration can't just say that — it has to first strip them of their conservative credentials, redefine them as something foreign-affiliated and dangerous, and then go after them.

That’s how the terrorism two-step works: the Trump administration just asserts that a right-winger isn’t really a right winger and then it can say it doesn’t target right-wingers. This is literally the No True Scotsman fallacy (No Scotsman puts sugar in his tea / But Ian from Glasgow does / Well, no true Scotsman does). That, in a nutshell, is how NSPM-7 can be weaponized against the right without calling it that. You don’t have to like Carlson or Fuentes (who says things like “I love Hitler” and is easy not to like) in order to see that. Consider, for a moment, the rhetoric that likely fueled Gorka’s freakout. Carlson has called Trump’s Iran war “the single biggest mistake Trump, or any American president, has made in my lifetime.” He has slammed the strikes as “reprehensible and immoral,” insisting the war “doesn’t serve American interests in any conceivable way” and suggesting it happened “at the behest and then the demand of Israel.”

When Trump ordered strikes on Iran, Fuentes said in a social media post: “NO WAR WITH IRAN. ISRAEL IS DRAGGING US INTO WAR. AMERICA FIRST.” You can imagine why Fuentes feels so strongly about Israel. Taken together, that’s the substance Gorka is trying to launder out of the “conservative movement” by redefining Carlson and Fuentes as something else: in Carlson’s case, a Sharia fan. At this point you might be wondering why none of this has been reported — a question big mouth Gorka answers in an interview with actor-turned-media commentator Dean Cain about the National Counterterrorism Strategy. Gorka beams about how little negative coverage the media have given the Strategy, calling it “delicious.”