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antifascism
What To Do About 3 Authoritarian Trump Admin Memos? Keep Protesting
The admin definitely doesn’t like anyone using constitutionally-protected rights of freedom of speech and assembly to protest in defense of several increasingly oppressed “out groups” and democracy in general. So keep at it.
Oct 04, 2025
President Donald Trump is obviously unhappy with the resistance from a broad and growing protest movement against much of his administration’s agenda. Which goes at least part of the way toward explaining why he and his allies have just passed an executive order, a national security presidential memo, and an attorney general’s order aimed squarely at suppressing the free speech of a very poorly defined host of millions of people in the United States.
First, on September 22, Trump issued the executive order “DESIGNATING ANTIFA AS A DOMESTIC TERRORIST ORGANIZATION.” According to National Public Radio, while federal law does allow the State Department to designate “foreign terrorist organizations,” no “similar list or process exists for domestic groups.”
The fact that “antifa”—short for anti-fascism—is a political stance against the takeover of government by oligarchs and their servants, not a literal organization, clearly matters not at all to Trump given that he tried and failed to do the same thing in 2020 in the wake of the second wave of Black Lives Matter protests. Nor does the fact that there are anti-fascists across the political spectrum, since conservatives can also be anti-fascist … not just liberals and leftists.
Second, on September 25, Trump issued “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence,” the seventh national security presidential memo of his current term.
My suggestion to people using their First Amendment rights? Keep it up! Once again, it’s a “use ‘em or lose ‘em” period in American history.
The difference between an executive order and a national security presidential memo is that while the former are edicts to federal agencies on how to interpret and carry out federal law that also can govern the operation of the executive branch, the latter have heretofore been more narrowly focused on national security and foreign and military policy issues. Problematically, though executive orders have to be published in the Federal Register, national security presidential memos can be classified and kept out of the public eye. Making it especially interesting that Trump published his latest such memo in the light of day.
NSPM-7, as it is commonly known (not to be confused with the NSPM-7 of Trump’s first term) can be looked at in many different ways, but I agree with other critics that call it a direct attack on the First Amendment. The document takes wild swings at anyone with “anti-fascist,” “anti-capitalist,” “anti-Christian,” and “anti-American” beliefs as it attempts to draw lines between Charlie Kirk’s evidently ideologically confused assassin Tyler Robinson, the imaginary antifa-as-organization, and a wide array of individuals and nonprofit groups—then orders “National Joint Terrorism Task Force and its local offices (collectively, ‘JTTFs’),” the Attorney General, the Secretary of the Treasury, and the Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service to go get those supposed evildoers.
Possibly to give Trump’s executive order against “antifa” more legal standing (and probably to forestall any potential blocking action from the Supreme Court), NSPM-7 indicates that “the Attorney General may recommend that any group or entity whose members are engaged in activities meeting the definition of ‘domestic terrorism’ in 18 U.S.C. 2331(5) merits designation as a ‘domestic terrorist organization.’” And then states that the “Attorney General and the Secretary of Homeland Security shall designate domestic terrorism a national priority area and develop appropriate grant programs to allocate funding for law enforcement partners to detect, prevent, and protect against threats arising from this area.”
Third, the icing on this disturbing cake came on September 29, when Attorney General Pam Bondi issued her own memorandum “ENDING POLITICAL VIOLENCE AGAINST ICE”—which once again tries to connect another individual with muddled-to-nonexistent political motivations, in this case Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Dallas shooter Joshua Jahn, with protests against ICE in Chicago, Illinois and Portland, Oregon and tries to style it as some kind of grand “well-organized” and “well-funded” conspiracy. Rather than a bunch of grassroots activists who think it’s undemocratic to send heavily-armed, masked ICE agents into American cities to terrorize both documented and undocumented immigrants (plus a growing number of citizens) and sometimes follow that up with potentially illegal (and unequivocally reactionary) military occupations.
The AG’s memo then directs “the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the United States Marshals Service, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to immediately direct all necessary officers and agents to defend ICE facilities and personnel whenever and wherever they come under attack, including in Portland and Chicago.” And orders them “to suppress all unlawful rioting and arrest every person suspected of threatening or assaulting a federal law enforcement officer or interfering with federal law enforcement operations.”
It goes on with more related orders from there.
The upshot of all these Trump administration edicts is that the federal powers-that-be don’t like being called fascists. And they definitely don’t like anyone using constitutionally-protected rights of freedom of speech and assembly to protest in defense of several increasingly oppressed “out groups” and democracy in general. Any more than they enjoy journalists like my colleagues and I here at the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism using our right to freedom of the press to report and comment on such political developments. As witnessed by the vicious ICE attack on three fellow reporters in New York City this week—demonstrating just how much the feds care about that at present.
My suggestion to people using their First Amendment rights? Keep it up! Once again, it’s a “use ‘em or lose ‘em” period in American history. A situation that Native Americans, immigrants, and Black, Latino/a, Asian, feminist, GLBT, and left-wing Americans have, tragically, all faced before. And have beaten back time and time again through concerted political activism of the type that is so exercising the federal government of today.
Whether you consider Trump and company to be authoritarians or literally fascists, our basic democratic rights are plainly under threat from this administration. If that doesn’t ring true to you, read through the three memos in question; fact check their many unsubstantiated assertions, propagandistic misuse of the English language, and highly questionable reinterpretations of longstanding legal and regulatory practices; and then see how you feel about it.
If you agree with the interpretation of commentators like me, look for individuals and organizations peacefully and nonviolently protesting government overreach and outright abuse of power and join them.
The free press, BINJ included, will continue to cover the ideas, opinions, and actions of the growing popular movement for civil liberties and basic justice until our political establishment arrives at some new and more democratic equilibrium.
This editorial was originally produced for HorizonMass, the independent, student-driven news outlet of the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism, and is syndicated by BINJ’s MassWire news service.
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Underreported Memo Is 'Declaration of War' Against Trump Opponents
"By targeting beliefs and protest activity, the directive positions dissent itself as a potential crime," one news organization said.
Sep 28, 2025
In between his highly publicized designation of Antifa as a domestic terror organization and his indictment of former FBI Director James Comey, US President Donald Trump signed a little-reported national security memorandum that gives law enforcement new tools to target his critics.
Trump signed National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7) on Thursday. The directive, titled "Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence," focuses exclusively on "anti-fascist" or left-wing activities, and mandates 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."
"I don’t want to sound hyperbolic but the plain truth is that NSPM-7 is a declaration of war on anyone who does not support the Trump administration and its agenda," journalist Ken Klippenstein wrote in a piece raising alarm about the directive on Saturday.
Klippenstein argued that the memorandum was worrying on several fronts. For one, its focus on preventing crimes before they are committed opens the door to rights violations.
"In other words, they’re targeting pre-crime, to reference Minority Report," Klippenstein wrote.
For another, the memorandum casts a very wide net, targeting groups, individuals, funders, and "entities" and listing several protected beliefs as "indicia" of extremism.
These include:
- "Anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity;
- Support for the overthrow of the United States Government;
- Extremism on migration, race, and gender; and
- Hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality."
What's more, the memorandum entrusts enforcement to the FBI's over 4,000-strong Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTF), which removes the legal challenges to directing the National Guard or other military forces to quash domestic dissent.
"For the Trump White House, the beauty of using an already existing network is that it bypasses Congressional oversight and scrutiny and even obscures federal activity to governors and legislatures at the state level," Klippenstein wrote.
The types of activities that will be targeted are also quite broad, with the document defining "organized doxing campaigns, swatting, rioting, looting, trespass, assault, destruction of property, threats of violence, and civil disorder" as "domestic terrorist acts."
The memorandum also targets any individual or group who might fund activity the administration deems terrorism and directs the Internal Revenue Service to "take action to ensure that no tax-exempt entities are directly or indirectly financing political violence or domestic terrorism," which could be a means of threatening the status of nonprofits.
Finally, as Drop Site News pointed out, the memo authorizes the attorney general to designate domestic groups as terrorist organizations for the first time in US history.
"By targeting beliefs and protest activity, the directive positions dissent itself as a potential crime," Drop Site wrote.
The Trump administration's focus on violence associated with left-wing beliefs and groups is not supported by the facts. National Institute of Justice data found that right-wing violence had led to 520 deaths since 1990 compared with 78 deaths due to left-wing violence. However, the administration removed that study from the Department of Justice website shortly after Charlie Kirk was killed, The Guardian reported earlier this month.
The administration's efforts, while accelerated, build on processes that began during the US response to the September 11 attacks, as Klippenstein explained:
A “pre-crime” endeavor, preventing attacks before they happen, is core to the post-9/11 concept of counterterrorism itself. No longer satisfied to investigate acts of terrorism after the fact to bring terrorists to justice, the Bush administration adopted preemption. Overseas, that led to aerial assassination by drones and “special operations” kill missions. Domestically, it led to a counter-terrorism campaign whose hallmark was excessive and illegal government surveillance and the use of undercover agents and “confidential human sources” to trap (and entrap) would-be terrorists.
However, the Trump administration is expanding the War-on-Terror mandate with fewer guardrails.
"Now, with Donald Trump’s directive retooling the counter-terror apparatus to go after Americans at home, this means monitoring political activity, or speech, as an investigative method to discover 'radicalism,'" Klippenstein said, noting that the NSPM-7 breaks with post-Watergate national security documents by failing to mention the First Amendment rights to protest and organize.
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller is already eager to make use of the document.
"We are witnessing domestic terrorist sedition against the federal government," he wrote on social media on Friday. "The JTTF has been dispatched by the Attorney General, pursuant to NSPM-7. All necessary resources will be utilized."
In an interview with Greg Sargent for the New Republic, Trump ally Steve Bannon confirmed that Miller and others in the administration were preparing to go after left-liberal groups and media whose criticism of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) could be interpreted as "goading" on violence against the agency.
Referring to Miller's comments that calling ICE authoritarian incited violence and terrorism, Bannon responded, “Stephen Miller is correct—more importantly he’s in charge.”
The threats of investigations put liberal and left-leaning organizations in a tough place. On the one hand, they want to prepare as best they can. On the other, they do not want to obey in advance.
"Officials at these groups tell me they must strike a balance between being clear-eyed about how bad this could get while not letting it discourage political activity," Sargent wrote. "That latter form of surrender is exactly what Trump and Miller want. And under no circumstances should anybody willingly hand it over to them."
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Trump's Designation of Antifa as Domestic Terror Is Legal Nonsense
Trump and his minions do not have the constitutional or statutory authority to create a terrorist designation pertaining to an amorphous political belief. Period.
Sep 25, 2025
On Monday the Trump regime signed yet another executive order that plainly states what many of us have known for a while now—that the cabal currently in power are unabashed fascists. US President Donald Trump declared that those opposed to fascism, those who are anti-fascist in this county—a country that has fought wars against fascism—are now labeled as “domestic terrorists” by this current government—in essence, enemies of the state.
Trump and his minions do not have the constitutional or statutory authority to create a terrorist designation pertaining to an amorphous political belief. Period. The First Amendment continues to protect freedom of speech and association, and would thus prevent any congressional attempt to enact a law that would allow the US government to designate US groups as terrorist organizations based simply upon their political activities. But, as we know with this regime, there is the law as it has existed for over 100 years, and then there is their attack on the law.
This EO targets “Antifa” which is obviously short for “anti-fascist.” Anti-fascists are opposed to fascists. Fascism rejects democracy. Fascists sign executive orders (no democratic process involved) that seek to malign or punish their political opponents, because that is the only way they can take more control from the people in a democratic country. Fascists attempt to undermine democratic elections, erase actual history, and manipulate words to falsely justify their propaganda. This EO is another example of Trump’s war of words—an attempt to recreate reality in order to solidify a fascist dictatorship.
Antifa is not an organization or an “enterprise.” There are no “members.” It is a social movement opposed to fascism, similar to feminism or anti-racism—not a single group or entity. One of our trial experts explained fascism thusly:
Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy, but effective collaboration with traditional beliefs, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal constraints, goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.
The majority of Americans hold anti-fascist political beliefs. Those beliefs, opinions, and associations are the foundations of US First Amendment constitutional safeguards. Anti-fascist beliefs are also closely intertwined with anti-racist beliefs. During the 1930’s Spanish Civil War, many Americans went to fight fascists (including my great-uncle). As the Smithsonian explains in “A Brief History of Anti-Fascism,” about one of these American antifascists:
Eluard Luchell McDaniels traveled across the Atlantic in 1937 to fight fascists in the Spanish Civil War, where he became known as "El Fantastico" for his prowess with a grenade. As a platoon sergeant with the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion of the International Brigades, the 25-year-old African American from Mississippi commanded white troops and led them into battle against the forces of General Franco, men who saw him as less than human. It might seem strange for a Black man to go to such lengths for the chance to fight in a white man’s war so far from home—wasn’t there enough racism to fight in the United States?—but McDaniels was convinced that anti-fascism and anti-racism were one and the same. ‘"I saw the invaders of Spain [were] the same people I’ve been fighting all my life," Historian Peter Carroll quotes McDaniels as saying. "I’ve seen lynching and starvation, and I know my people’s enemies." McDaniels was not alone in seeing anti-fascism and anti-racism as intrinsically connected; the anti-fascists of today are heirs to almost a century of struggle against racism.
When Hitler’s fascist regime and the Axis powers seized control of Germany, other global countries, including the US, France, UK, USSR, and many others, became the Allies, who ultimately won that war and stuffed fascism back down into the dark evil place where it has mostly slumbered. It may take similar global action to stop the US from spiraling into full-blown fascism, and it could take generations to restore democracy if it is lost.
Weak political leaders must also target their political opponents’ funding in order to maintain fake power (think political ads, campaign staff, political signs, etc.). Because anti-fascist beliefs are not an organization or enterprise, and because a belief does not have “members,” it is also obvious that “Antifa” is not funded. It never has been. It doesn’t have a mailbox or bank account or hierarchy. Clearly the Trump fascist regime wants to go after George Soros, a billionaire liberal philanthropist, and is using this as an obvious weapon to actually go after democrat-leaning funding sources, which are in fact the regime’s political opponents. The goal is to target and destroy the funding of the regime’s political opponents; money they will use to oppose fascist authoritarians and their kind within the democratic electoral process. A truly fair election will likely remove the fascist dictator by overwhelming popular vote—so of course this fascist regime is also targeting the electoral system. To date, Soros has not sent a check to “Antifa.”
The Trump regime tried labeling anti-fascists as domestic terrorists in a 2017 EO as well, and that failed. Trump’s own Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) director said that enforcing that EO would be difficult because Antifa is an ideology, not an organization, and it lacks the hierarchical structure that would usually be required to designate it as a federal terror group. Nothing has changed within the US Constitution or our system of laws, or the facts about anti-fascists in the US during this intervening time period.
The protests happening around the country are not Antifa protests. They are the American people standing up to disgusting, cowardly, racist, ignorant executive branch power.
The wording of this EO is what we call in lawyer talk “sloppy.” For instance, the EO references “material support” provided by anyone “claiming to act on behalf of Antifa” to “any and all illegal operations—especially those involving terrorist actions”—without even citing to the federal material support statute, 18 USC § 2339A. The existing legal precedent regarding “material support” comes from prosecutions related to material support of FOREIGN terrorist organizations (and a few states with domestic material support statutes). The US secretary of state is authorized to designate foreign groups as “foreign terrorist organizations” (FTOs). No congressional approval is needed for the secretary to make this designation, but they must inform Congress seven days prior to doing so. Once designated, it is illegal under US law to give money to an FTO—and, significant to the Trump regime, the US could also freeze any assets held by members of the designated group in a US bank, and members could be threatened with sanctions.
TO BE CLEAR, THERE IS NO EQUIVALENT DOMESTIC TERRORISM LAW, which is why this Trump declaration is just bullshit without legal authority. There is no federal statute that would allow him to designate a domestic, US-based group as a terrorist organization. In part, this is because of the serious First Amendment concerns that would obviously result. Constitutional law scholars all agree that this “declaration” has no legal impact.
In the 2010 US Supreme Court case Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, 561 US 1 (2010), a case involving foreign organizations, Justice John Roberts ruled that attempts to criminalize support for designated domestic terrorist groups would not “survive First Amendment scrutiny,” and “Congress could [not] extend the same prohibition on material support at issue [in this case regarding a foreign org] to domestic organizations.” Will Roberts overrule himself? Not likely….
Holder and the First Amendment remain the law of the land, and this executive order is flagrantly unconstitutional. It doesn’t stand a chance of passing legal muster in a legitimate courtroom.
But that doesn’t prevent this EO from causing harm to Americans until the judicial branch of government finds it to be unconstitutional and illegal. The Trump regime will likely use this EO to increase surveillance and criminalization of its adversaries (increasingly similar to Vladimir Putin’s Russia, where political opponents are murdered in prisons). They may attempt to use it to target, threaten, and punish people who openly protest the regime’s policies and actions. When the FBI has carried out previous domestic terrorism investigations against neo-Nazi groups like the Base and Atomwaffen Division, US prosecutors used criminal enterprise laws like Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO). We’ve seen an uptick in the State’s use of RICO to target political expression—e.g. the Atlanta Cop City cases, where a judge recently tossed out the abusive and illegal use of RICO against activists.
The regime may use this designation to place the military in US cities to enforce the will of the dictator, and justify it as “fighting Antifa protests.” To be clear, the protests happening around the country are not Antifa protests. They are the American people standing up to disgusting, cowardly, racist, ignorant executive branch power.
No matter what the new bullshit of the day is, know that Civil Liberties Defense Center will be there to defend you in court if needed. We offer pro-bono legal representation for people who are targeted for their political activism and constitutionally protected activities. We have lots of know your rights and risks legal resources too—even if you think your rights will be trampled upon, you still need to assert them in order to be able to raise them in court. It’s critically important for Americans to continue to fight against fascism and to defend our imperfect democracy.
This piece was originally published on the Civil Liberties Defense Center website.
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