Trump’s NSPM-7 Turns Dissent into Domestic Terrorism
America’s New Enemies List
President Donald Trump’s National Security Presidential Memorandum-7 is Operation TIPS on steroids. After 9/11, President George W. Bush proposed a program recruiting ordinary workers — truck drivers, postal workers, utility workers, cable installers — to report “suspicious behavior” to authorities. Critics quickly warned that TIPS resembled a domestic informant network, a kind of “neighbors spying on neighbors” setup reminiscent of East Germany’s Stasi or Soviet-style surveillance.
Operation TIPS (Terrorism Information and Prevention System) was launched with great fanfare: In March 2002, former Johnny Carson sidekick Ed McMahon introduced Attorney General John Ashcroft to cheering representatives of more than 300 Neighborhood Watch groups gathered in Washington, D.C. But TIPS never went into effect. By late 2002, Congress killed the program outright.
Today, however, an anti-Trump lawn sign, a “No Kings” button, a T-shirt with an anti-fascist slogan, a donation to a progressive organization, a subscription to an anti-capitalist publication, a social media post, or even a peaceful gathering of pro-peace grandmothers might be enough to draw federal scrutiny. Under Trump’s new directive, such activity could be viewed as evidence of “anti-Americanism” — a label that may land you on an FBI monitoring list.
As journalist Ken Klippenstein reported, “Attorney General Pam Bondi is ordering the FBI to ‘compile a list of groups or entities engaging in acts that may constitute domestic terrorism,’” according to a leaked Justice Department memo he published.
In late September, Trump issued National Security Presidential Memorandum-7, addressed to the Secretaries of State, Treasury, and Homeland Security, and to the Attorney General. Its subject: “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence.”
The memorandum cites recent political violence — including the murder of Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk — to argue that “a new law enforcement strategy” is required, one that “investigates all participants in “criminal and terroristic conspiracies,” including the “structures, networks, entities, organizations, funding sources, and predicate actions behind them.”
Klippenstein notes that NSPM-7 is fundamentally a law-enforcement directive. It avoids the legal complications of deploying the military or National Guard by directing the Department of Justice to mobilize the FBI’s roughly 200 Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTFs). These task forces represent an enormous domestic intelligence apparatus: more than 4,000 members drawn from over 500 state and local agencies and 50 federal agencies, including special agents, police officers, intelligence analysts, and surveillance technicians. Originally created in New York City in 1980 to formalize FBI-NYPD cooperation, JTTFs now operate out of all 55 FBI field offices.”
Most alarming, Klippenstein reports that the Trump administration is not only “targeting organizations or groups” but also individuals and “entities” identified by ideological “indicia” of potential violence, including:
*anti-Americanism,
* anti-capitalism,
* anti-Christianity,
* support for the overthrow of the United States Government,
* extremism on migration,
* extremism on race,
* extremism on gender
* hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family,
* hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on religion, and
* hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on morality.
These categories are so broad they could sweep up activists, journalists, academics, nonprofits, donors, protest organizers — or anyone with dissenting political views.
The Memorandum noted that in the wake of political violence, including the murder of Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk, “A new law enforcement strategy that investigates all participants in these criminal and terroristic conspiracies — including the organized structures, networks, entities, organizations, funding sources, and predicate actions behind them — is required.”
In practice, this opens the door to wide-scale surveillance and data-gathering targeting not just criminals but people whose associations, ideologies, or speech fall outside the administration’s definition of acceptable American political identity.
Before it was put into play, Operation TIPS died in 2002. NSPM-7 revives its core idea — but turbocharges it with the full force of federal intelligence, law enforcement, financial regulators, and 4,000-plus terrorism-task-force personnel.
The Stasi would be proud.
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