As Donald Trump deploys National Guard troops to Democratic party-run cities across the country, he’s taken other radical steps to consolidate his authoritarian rule by defying and circumventing the U.S. Constitution’s establishment of three co-equal branches of government to act as a check on abuses of power.
On Sept. 22, not long after the assassination of far-right leader Charlie Kirk, Trump signed an executive order designating “Antifa as a domestic terrorist organization” despite the fact that it’s a decentralized movement whose only unifying ideology is its opposition to fascism and far-right extremism, and lacks membership rolls and a leadership hierarchy. Just three days later, Trump issued National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7), which authorizes the FBI’s National Joint Terrorism Task Forces to investigate, prosecute, and disrupt entities and individuals engaged in acts of political violence and intimidation. The orders targets non-profits, activists and their donors and funders labeled “Anti-American, anti-capitalist, and anti-Christian.”
Civil liberties groups have expressed alarm at Trump labeling his critics and political opponents engaged in protected First Amendment activities as domestic terrorists, which clearly seeks to criminalize dissent. Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Chad Marlow, senior policy counsel with the ACLU who warns that NSPM-7 poses an unconstitutional threat to the president’s political opponents, freedom of speech and democracy itself.
CHAD MARLOW: To most people, to most of your listeners, they may not be familiar with what we refer to as NSPM-7, but I think what they are very familiar with is that the president of the United States has very little tolerance for people who do not share and fully embrace his views and are not enthusiastically supportive of his agenda and him personally. And so in that light, him handing down a memorandum instructing the federal government, in particular the attorney general and the secretaries of state, treasury and homeland security to identify nonprofits and charitable foundations whose work does not completely align and take a gentle knee to Trump and his agenda as what he will refer to as people who are promoting domestic terrorism and political violence.
But I do think you and your listeners and a lot of people out there realize that this is Trump just trying to pound a square peg into a round hole, which is to say that he still has enough acumen, I think, to not say, “I’m going to bring the entire force of the federal government down on anyone who dares disagree with me.” So he couches it in these vague terms as you point out, like terrorism and political violence, knowing that when it comes to enforcement, loose terms equal latitude. And so that gives him the opportunity to go after whoever he wants to tie into those groups.
One of the things that the memorandum specifically references as the type of politically-motivated terrorist acts that he’s going to clamp down on, so you’re expecting big things. He includes trespassing. He includes civil disobedience, which he calls civil disorder. And in order to rope in nonprofits and charitable institutions, he says it’s not only people who engage in those acts, but people who in any way support them, inspire them, talk about them. And so that is kind of the world that we’re looking at is anyone who attempts to organize a protest can come into the bullseye of this. Any nonprofit who attempts to go out and support people who want to have a conversation about the direction of our country and God forbid, may have an issue with the direction it’s going. Those unfortunately are all in the crosshairs of this memorandum.
SCOTT HARRIS: You wrote an article titled “Governors and Mayors Can Protect Nonprofits from Trump’s National Security Memo, NSPM-7,” that labels his opponents as domestic terrorists. Tell us a bit about your advice to governors and mayors of cities who can do something to be proactive, to defend citizens who are just exercising their constitutional rights from the effects of this memo.
CHAD MARLOW: One of the interesting things that appears in this memorandum is its acknowledgement that the people who are effectuating it in particular, as you mentioned, the Joint Terrorism Task Force, who were kind of the leading the effort, are going to have to work with state and local law enforcement in order to get what they need to go after these nonprofits and charitable institutions. That’s not because they want to work with state and local entities, it’s because they have to, because a lot of the on the ground enforcement capabilities and even more important, the information they need to try to dig up some pretextual reason to go after these are in the hands of state and local governments. And this can be everything from highly sensitive and on its face troubling surveillance data. But it could also be driver’s license information, tax records, business information, employee information.
What we are saying to governors and mayors is, “If this concerns you, if what Trump is doing with this memorandum concerns you, you can do something about it right now. And what they can do is they can sign an executive order that says, if it’s a governor, “My state” if it’s a mayor, “My municipality will not cooperate with this order.” If you have any inclination that the information that you are being asked for is to go after nonprofits or charitable institutions or their donors, their members, their employees, their leaders, anyone—you are to say “no.” If they actually have a case to make, let them go to judges, let them go to the courts and convince a judge that this isn’t a political witch hunt. Governors and mayors can do this right now. The ACLU has written model executive orders for governors and model executive orders for mayors.
All they have to do is call up their state affiliate and ask for a copy. We’ll get it to ’em immediately and they can start protecting people today. But there is no single thing that any of us can do to completely wipe out the power of this presidential memorandum. But they are absolutely things that our governors and mayors can do to make it far more difficult to effectuate. And I think we all need to be asking our governors and mayors, “1. Do you think this is a problem?” And “2. Do you have the courage to do something about it?” And all that requires them to do is lift up the most powerful weapon in the arsenal of democracy. And that is their pens and sign an executive order and people will be safer the minute after they do so than they were the minute before.
For more information, visit the ACLU at aclu.com.
Listen to Scott Harris’ in-depth interview with Chad Marlow (13:34) and see more articles and opinion pieces in the related links section of this page. For periodic updates on the Trump authoritarian playbook, subscribe here to our Between The Lines Radio Newsmagazine Substack newsletter to get updates to our “Hey AmeriKKKa, It’s Not Normal” compilation.
For the best listening experience and to never miss an episode, subscribe to Between The Lines on your favorite podcast app or platform.
Or subscribe to our Between The Lines and Counterpoint Weekly Summary.
