The Presidential Memorandum (NSPM-7) on Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence released last week pushed the United States one step closer to a country where the right of freedom of speech and peaceful protest no longer exists.
The Memorandum screams out loud in print about the “common threads” underlying what the White House sees as a network of domestic terrorism: “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity… extremism on migration, race and gender and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.” The national security agencies will seek to investigate, prosecute and disrupt organizations and individuals and funders that promote “organized violence.”
While I am not a domestic terrorist nor promote organized violence, I probably do subscribe to several of those views; not only that, I’m joined by a sizable majority of people in this country.
The Memorandum calls on the IRS and Department of Justice to investigate and prosecute nonprofit organizations that the National Joint Terrorism Taskforce may deem instigators of political violence. It is a pretext to silence those who may not agree with Trump’s policies. Churches, temples, mosques, community groups, activists, funders, and environmental law advocates like us may be in their sights.
Breaking a longstanding protocol of noninterference, President Trump personally directed the Department of Justice to investigate Open Society Foundations and their founder, George Soros. OSF and Soros have long been attacked by the right for their courageous work in support of human rights, democracy, and civil liberties. (Our Center was proud to receive their support back in 2010.) George Soros has the means to defend himself in a court of law, but the accusations against the foundation represent grave threats the organizations supported by OSF — those defending immigrant rights, the trans community, criminal justice, pro-Palestinian views, and many others.
It is public knowledge — at least it was before the DOJ removed its own study from its website two weeks ago — that far-right extremists are more likely to commit mass killings than far-left extremists. These figures show 227 events taking 520 lives by far-right ideologues, compared to 24 attacks costing 78 lives by the far left.
These actions — Memorandum NSPM-7, the Open Society Foundations investigation, a domestic terrorist designation of Antifa — have nothing to do with “combating terrorism.” They are an orchestrated campaign by Trump and his lieutenants to intimidate and prosecute political opposition and more broadly suppress independent centers of thought and opinion. Trump has been vindictive in his punishment of law firms, universities, media companies, and U.S. cities. While some of these entities have fought back, many others capitulated to their detriment as this regime cannot be appeased.
Political targeting of civil society actors with a broad terrorism brush is next. Nonprofits are a large and diverse group: food banks, membership organizations like AARP, cause organizations like ACLU, and research and advocacy institutions like our own. Public disparagement, threats against their funding, revoking tax status (which can be done without redress), intimidation, and investigation will be the Trump playbook. It is not an exaggeration to say that freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and other constitutional guarantees are literally up for grabs.
Nonprofits may well be different than other entities Trump has bullied. The progressive nonprofit sector is distinguished by its community engagement and service, and there is a decades-long history of working together and mutual support that will be difficult to undo. Nonprofits operate as a pack, and they may not be so easily picked off. Already, the movement successfully pushed back in April against a rumored attempt by the Trump Administration to strip environmental groups of their nonprofit tax status.
The national security memorandum follows a pattern of unprecedented abuses of power by this administration on other issues. First, there is the declaration of a national emergency based on a fictitious or wildly exaggerated event or series of events. Fentanyl crossing the U.S. border from Canada (negligible) or even from Mexico (more significant) was serious but hardly a national economic emergency worthy of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. Then, Trump drew on those emergency powers to dictate actions of far-reaching consequences — without the consent of Congress and in violation of constitutional checks and balances. For example, the fentanyl “emergency” became the pretext to impose major new tariffs on 62 countries. And finally, as defenders of democracy sued Trump for those actions and won injunctions in lower courts, the Supreme Court has used its shadow docket to uphold — at least temporarily and with very few exceptions — the unchecked expansion of presidential power in its march toward authoritarianism.
This was the pattern when Trump declared that immigrants were launching an invasion, thus drawing on the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 and its language of “declared war” to justify mass deportations of hundreds of thousands of people, including U.S. citizens. That the ICE raids targeted law-abiding, tax-paying, and hardworking immigrants, and not those charged with violent crimes as originally claimed, no longer mattered.
That the U.S. now produces more energy than ever did not forestall Trump from declaring a national energy emergency, allowing the administration to fast track permitting of oil and gas projects, open up new public lands for exploration and drilling, resuscitate antiquated coal plants, and clamp down on solar and wind developments.
The abuses of power based on so-called “national emergencies” have extended to other contexts: the militarization of U.S. cities justified by lies about urban crime rates; the identification of Brazil as a national security threat for prosecuting a Trump ally for treason; and sanctions on the International Criminal Court for its indictment of Israeli prime minister Netanyahu.
Now, nonprofits, protest groups, churches, charities, and those of us who want a society where we care for, rather than persecute, other people are targets of the next vendetta and the subject of the next fabricated national emergency.
However, we will not be silent. We will not be afraid. We will stand together. We will defend our rights.
