House Democrats Probe Use of Trump's NSPM-7 to Target 'Left-Leaning Political Groups'

Dozens of Democrats in the US House of Representatives this week announced a congressional inquiry into the use of a widely decried memo from President Donald Trump to persecute "political dissent" and target "left-leaning political groups."

Democratic Reps. Jim McGovern (Mass.), Ayanna Pressley (Mass.), and Delia Ramirez (Ill.) revealed Tuesday that they, along with over 20 others, wrote to Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent earlier this month to demand answers about the recent "Ministerial on the Resurgence of Political Terrorism" and directives under National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7).

"Specifically, we are alarmed by the Department of State's new ideologically driven visa restriction policy and the Department of Treasury's pledged financial enforcement mechanisms directed against civil society," they wrote. "These policies dramatically escalate the administration's deliberate and targeted attempts to silence any person, organization, or institution critical of its policies and abuses of power on a global scale."

"We are deeply troubled by public commitments to deploy the full force of the State and Treasury departments against loosely defined 'far-left networks' and their alleged 'enablers' and urge you to immediately reverse course," the lawmakers continued. "Rather than relying on law enforcement data—which consistently identifies right-wing violent extremists and white supremacist organizations as the predominant domestic terrorism threat—this administration has instead taken actions that manufacture an ideological enemy."

The visa policy "bars foreign nationals from entry who 'finance, recruit, incite, or otherwise enable terrorist, violent, and criminal far-left terrorist networks' and defines 'far-left terrorist networks' as those with explicit aims to 'undermine the political foundations of free and self-governing societies,'" the letter details. "This rhetoric and policy embody the core characteristics of fascist statecraft—using the security apparatus of the state to repress and criminalize political opponents and dissenters rather than specific violent acts."

The letter notes the impacts of the administration's policies beyond the United States, warning that "seeking to export an ideological mandate to more than 65 countries creates a dangerous precedent that authoritarian governments will eagerly exploit to delegitimize and criminalize political dissent and justify their own crackdowns on peaceful opposition."

"Foreign nationals fleeing political persecution abroad—including persecution by governments that label peaceful dissidents 'leftist terrorists' to discredit them—may find themselves barred from the United States under the very same vague and subjective standard," the lawmakers wrote. "Expanding transnational intelligence-sharing under this ill-defined and hyper-politicized definition of violent extremism opens the door to transnational repression—including cross-border monitoring and harassment—of international activists, researchers, and political dissidents, as well as potentially any individual within their networks."

"We also risk fracturing critical alliances with governments whose own laws strictly protect political speech, civil liberties, and human rights—protections that these very policies are undermining here at home," the Democrats stressed.

The letter also calls out White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller's description of leftists as "the enemies of civilization" and a "cancer" that can "destroy a society," as well as Bessent's comparison of leftists to the Islamic State and al-Qaeda—when he said that "the unified front between international Marxism and the radical Islamic movement need not share the same ultimate vision to share the same immediate enemy of free and self-governing societies."

Rubio has similarly called leftists "the enemies of civilization" and recently faced criticism for a "McCarthyite" State Department report claiming that the Cuban government has, for decades, "infiltrated the highest reaches of the US government, recruited and cultivated generations of American activists, backed an unprecedented wave of left-wing terrorism on American soil, and carried out one of the most durable and damaging foreign intelligence penetrations in American history." The document is seen as a signal that Trump may deliver on his threat to try to take over the island nation by force.