Countering Domestic Terrorism?
The Trump administration is “trying to use fear and threat to coerce your silence,” warns Adam Cochran on Twitter. He is responding to a presidential memorandum issued over the weekend. Essentially:
-They are creating grounds to use warrantless surveillance on anyone who dissents.
-And then use their financial and phone records to charge them as terrorists via RICO. It’s the largest expansion of the Patriot Act ever.
Ben Wittes at Lawfare calls last week’s “Antifa” Executive Order and the memorandum, NSPM-7, “a weird mix of nonsense and menace.” While technically not excluding federal investigative action against groups like the Proud Boys, the real menace is to the left:
The purpose here is naked: It is to turn federal enforcement away from political violence of the right and the Trumpist movement and to spark investigations instead of major grant-making organizations of the left and center on the basis of the lie that they are actually behind political violence in the United States.
The factual premise is, as I say, nonsense. Focusing investigative attention on grant-making, which is presumptively First Amendment-protected activity, without any real basis for suspicion that people are knowing or intentionally funding violence is a grotesque abuse of law enforcement power.
Some of this abuse will affect institutions with the money and power to defend their rights. But as with the law firms and the universities, it will tie up resources and time and energy, and it will have a chilling effect on smaller organizations that don’t have the clout to defend themselves. And some activist organizations will be destroyed merely by the pressure of investigation.
Cochran’s is a long thread with highlighted passages from the memorandum. Catch it unrolled here.
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Our friend Susie Madrak is experiencing a cash crunch. She’s looking for whatever help you might lend this week. Making things worse is an insurance settlement delayed on account of paperwork. Plus:
In the meantime, my neurologist suspects I have an obscure lupus-like autoimmune disorder that’s causing all kinds of weird symptoms (for one thing, she says the signals my brain are sending to my feet aren’t making it through and I’m off balance) but first she has to rule out blood cancers, etc. There’s also a lesion on my lung and they want an MRI.
Susie has been posting at Suburban Guerrilla and Crooks & Liars for 20 years. It’s a calling, not a great-paying gig. We need to stick together. Help out Susie if you can.