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ken klippenstein
White House Budget Details FBI Office Dedicated to Spying on Those Who Oppose Trump's 'Extremist Agenda'
"If your political views are practically anything other than MAGA, you’re on notice, courtesy of the FBI," said journalist Ken Klippenstein.
Apr 07, 2026
Along with cutting environmental, housing, and health programs and proposing an increase of nearly $500 billion in military spending, President Donald Trump's new budget proposal shows how the White House "wants to use taxpayer dollars to spy on those who oppose its extremist agenda," one Democratic congresswoman said Monday evening.
Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon (D-Penn.) was referring to the budget's description of a new FBI center that is already working to root out what the White House broadly defined as "domestic terrorism" in a federal memo last year.
As independent journalist Ken Klippenstein wrote this week, buried in Trump's budget request—which includes $12.5 billion for the FBI to invest in counterterrorism efforts and other spending—is the White House's latest assertion that "domestic terrorists... pose an elevated threat to the Homeland."
"In recent years, heinous assassinations and other acts of political violence in the United States have dramatically increased," reads the budget's section on domestic terrorism. "Commonly, this violent conduct relates to views associated with anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity; support for the overthrow of the US government; extremism on migration, race, and gender; and hostility to those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and mortality."
The views described echo National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7), the memo signed last September that directed federal agencies to develop a national strategy to "investigate and disrupt networks, entities, and organizations that foment political violence" in order to stop violent attacks before they happen.
But despite the administration's singular focus on groups and individuals who hold left-wing, anti-capitalism views and subscribe to belief systems other than Christianity, the National Institute of Justice found that since 1990, 227 attacks motivated by right-wing views killed 520 people, while far-left groups carried out 42 attacks that killed 78 people. The NIJ study was removed from the US Department of Justice website shortly after the assassination of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk—an event that Trump explicitly blamed on left-wing groups without evidence, and which came weeks before the signing of NSPM-7.
The budget proposal explains that as a result of NSPM-7, the FBI recently created the NSPM-7 Joint Mission Center (JMC), which is run by personnel from 10 federal agencies.
"The JMC is working to counter domestic terrorism and organized political violence by integrating intelligence operational support, and financial analysis to proactively identify networks and prosecute domestic terrorist and related criminal actors," reads the proposal.
Scanlon is one of a small number of elected Democrats who have spoken out about NSPM-7 in congressional hearings and media interviews.
"If anyone can be labeled a domestic terrorist for speech opposing this administration, our First Amendment rights are under grave threat," said Scanlon recently.
Klippenstein noted that the budget document describes social media platforms and encrypted communications apps as being used by "domestic terrorists" to "recruit new adherents, plan and rally support for in-person actions, and disseminate materials encouraging radicalization and mobilization to violence.”
FBI Director Kash Patel told Congress that anyone who used the Discord channels used by Tyler Robinson, who was accused of killing Kirk, would be investigated by the agency.
Klippenstein noted that the FBI's domestic terrorism watchlist, which as of last September listed about 5,000 US citizens, reportedly "is growing."
"If your political views are practically anything other than MAGA, you’re on notice, courtesy of the FBI," Klippenstein wrote.
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'She's Lying': Journalist Exposes Secret Watch Lists That Trump Official Says Don't Exist
"If we don’t explore more why all of these secret lists exist," one US intelligence officer said, there could be "even more of an environment of paranoia on the ground and more tragic killings.”
Jan 28, 2026
Despite denials from a senior Trump administration official, secret watchlists of Americans are being used by federal agencies to track and categorize US citizens—especially protesters, activists, and critics of law enforcement—as “domestic terrorists," investigative journalist Ken Klippenstein reported Wednesday.
Klippenstein said that two senior national security officials speaking on condition of anonymity told him that there are over a dozen "secret and obscure" watchlists that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the FBI are using to track anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and pro-Palestine protesters, antifa-affiliated individuals, and "others who are promiscuously labeled 'domestic terrorists.'"
"I can reveal for the first time," he wrote, "that some of the secret lists and applications go by codenames like Bluekey, Grapevine, Hummingbird, Reaper, Sandcastle, Sienna, Slipstream, and Sparta (including the ominous sounding HEL-A and HEL-C reports generated by Sparta)."
"Some of these, like Hummingbird, were created to vet and track immigrants, in this case Afghans seeking to settle in the United States," Klippenstein explained. "Slipstream is a classified social media repository. Others are tools used to link people on the streets together, including collecting on friends and families who have nothing to do with any purported lawbreaking."
"There’s practically nothing available that further describes what these watchlists do, how large they are, or what they entail," he added.
Klippenstein's revelation seemingly flies in the face of DHS Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin's recent denial that the administration has a database containing the names of people accused of domestic terrorism.
"There's just one problem: She's lying," wrote Klippenstein.
🚨 I've obtained a list of secret watchlists the Department of Homeland Security uses to keep tabs on American citizenswww.kenklippenstein.com/p/ices-secre...
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— Ken Klippenstein (@kenklippenstein.bsky.social) January 28, 2026 at 1:07 PM
Many observers already thought as much, especially after a masked federal enforcer taunted an anti-ICE protester in Maine by telling her that "we have a nice little database, and now you’re considered a domestic terrorist."
White House "border czar" Tom Homan—who was recently sent to Minnesota to oversee the anti-immigrant blitz following the departure of Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino amid outrage over the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti—also said this month that "we’re going to create a database where those people that are arrested for interference, impeding, and assault, we’re going to make them famous."
Reporting Tuesday that Pretti—the nurse who was disarmed and then shot dead by federal enforcers in Minneapolis last week—was known to Trump officials after a previous encounter in which agents broke his rib raised further questions about government watchlists.
"We came out of 9/11 with the notion that we would have a single ‘terrorist’ watch list to eliminate confusion, duplication, and avoid bad communications, but ever since January 6, not only have we expanded exponentially into purely domestic watchlisting, but we have also created a highly secretive and compartmented superstructure that few even understand," a DHS attorney "intimately familiar" with the matter told Klippenstein on condition of anonymity, referring to the deadly January 2021 Capitol insurrection.
According to Klippenstein:
Prior to 9/11, there were nine federal agencies that maintained 12 separate watchlists. Now, officially there are just three: a watch list of 1.1 million international terrorists, a watch list of more than 10,000 domestic terrorists maintained by the FBI, and a new watch list of transnational criminals, built up to more than 85,000 over the past decade...
Among other functions, the new watchlists process tips, situation reports, and collected photographs and video submitted by both the public and from agents in the field; they create a “common operating picture” in places like Minneapolis; they allow task forces to target individuals for surveillance and arrest; and they create the capacity for intelligence people to link individuals together through geographic proximity or what is labeled “call chaining” by processing telephone numbers, emails, and other contact information.
Asked about how the Trump administration might try to legally justify these watchlists, Rachel Levinson-Waldman, the Brennan Center for Justice's Liberty and National Security Program director, cited President Donald Trump's National Security Presidential Memo 7 (NSPM-7), which 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."
Levinson-Waldman also noted Attorney General Pam Bondi's December 5 memo directing federal agencies to expand the investigation and prosecution of "domestic terrorism," including groups "aligned" with antifa, an anti-fascist ideology that does not exist as an organization.
One senior intelligence official who confirmed the existence of the watchlists warned Klippenstein: "Lists of this and that—this social media post, that video taken of someone videoing ICE, the mere attendance at a protest—gets pulsed by federal cops on the beat to check for criminality but eventually just becomes a list itself of criminality, with the cops thinking that indeed they are dealing with criminals and terrorists. Watchlists, and the whole watchlisting process, should be as transparent as possible, not the other way around."
"If we don’t explore more why all of these secret lists exist," the official added, there could be "even more of an environment of paranoia on the ground and more tragic killings.”
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'Part of a Larger War': Whistleblower Exposes ICE Effort to Spy on Immigrants—and Americans
"The ICE crackdown isn’t just about immigration; it’s about gathering intelligence... on antifa, on the radical left... and anyone else they consider terrorists," said journalist Ken Klippenstein.
Jan 14, 2026
An "outraged" Border Patrol official has leaked files exposing numerous secret Trump administration efforts to spy on both migrants and American citizens, and to falsely portray every single person who enters the United States without authorization as a terrorist or drug trafficker, a US investigative journalist revealed Wednesday.
The disaffected Border Patrol official gave journalist Ken Klippenstein documents showing "the dizzying scope" of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations. These range from previously undisclosed code names of secret ICE missions to an explanation that a key objective of a nationwide campaign called Operation Abracadabra is "tying every individual who crosses the border illegally to a foreign terrorist organization [or a] transnational criminal organization."
A document on another operation—code-named Benchwarmer—reveals that, in an effort aimeda at "collecting information not normally gained" during standard interrogations, “plainclothes agents have been embedded in transport vans, sally ports, processing areas, and detention cells to gather important tactical intelligence and or information."
🚨Border Patrol whistleblower outraged by ICE's conduct exposes over a dozen secret ICE programs in documents leaked to me:www.kenklippenstein.com/p/21-secret-...
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— Ken Klippenstein (@kenklippenstein.bsky.social) January 14, 2026 at 9:40 AM
Klippenstein wrote that opposition to ICE's actions "has spread throughout the Department of Homeland Security" in the wake of last week's killing of Renee Nicole Good by ICE officer Jonathan Ross in Minneapolis. Articles of impeachment filed Wednesday by Democratic members of Congress against Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem note how she falsely accused Good of "domestic terrorism."
The discontent with ICE "is also affecting the Justice Department," said Klippenstein, who noted the resignation of half a dozen federal prosecutors "over pressure to investigate Renee Good’s widow," and that FBI officials are "increasingly split" over the White House's effort to link Good with extremists.
"The media is telling a certain story about ICE, giving the blow by blow on the most public horrors but never quite seeing the bigger picture that it’s part of a larger war," Klippenstein asserted. "As a military intelligence source told me, the ICE crackdown isn’t just about immigration; it’s about gathering intelligence in support of [President Donald] Trump’s war on cartels—as well as on antifa, on the radical left, those who are 'anti-American,' and anyone else they consider terrorists."
ICE has also come under fire during Trump's second administration for its surveillance of people who criticize the agency on social media, using facial recognition technology to identify US citizens without their consent, and other policies and practices.
Time's Philip Wang reported Wednesday on dissent among ICE's ranks over Good's killing and the Trump administration's response, which includes legally dubious claims of "absolute immunity" for Ross.
“I’m embarrassed,” one former ICE agent of over 25 years told Wang. “The majority of my colleagues feel the same way. It’s an insult to us... to see what they’re doing now.”
Insiders have pointed to the Trump administration's rush to hire and rapidly deploy more than 10,000 new ICE agents to carry out the president's plan for the "largest mass deportation operation of illegal immigrants” in US history as a major cause for concern. Critics say that ICE's ramped-up recruitment—which includes $50,000 signing bonuses and the use of racist messaging to lure applicants—is producing inadequately trained ICE officers who, confident of their impunity, are terrorizing communities.
"When thousands of over-militarized immigration agents descend on American communities akin to an invading military force, it seeks to terrorize us, actively harms public safety, and raises the likelihood of violence," Vanessa Cárdenas, executive director of the advocacy group America's Voice, said in a statement Wednesday.
"Meanwhile, the mass deportation agenda is diverting money, manpower, investigative attention, and resources away from real threats—like child exploitation, drug trafficking investigations, and... disaster preparedness funding—all for the purpose of becoming foot soldiers in Stephen Miller's anti-immigrant crusade," Cárdenas added, referring to the white nationalist White House deputy chief of staff.
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