The Trump Grinch that stole America!

 

The Trump regime has fired the person in charge of government statistics and is trying to hide what’s going on, but every indicator out there seems to point to our having already fallen into a serious recession. Substack newsletters are complaining that they’re not getting new paid sign-ups, two nonprofits that I do fundraising for are falling seriously short for the first time in years, advertising revenue across the media are down, housing prices just went negative for the first time since the pandemic, and The Wall Street Journal nailed it this week with the first paragraph of a major story under the title 

Big Winner in Trump’s Trade War: The Grinch: “Donald Trump was right again. ‘Maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls,’ he said in April about the consequences of his tariffs. ‘And maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more than they would normally.’ Sure enough, Christmas is coming, and parents looking for toys face tariff-induced price hikes and shortages.”

His use of tariffs to extort gifts and deals for himself and his family members, the GOP’s renewed $5 trillion tax break for billionaires, his pro-Putin and anti-democracy rhetoric that’s driving away our traditional allies and trading partners, and his ICE and other abominations that have collapsed travel into the United States (thus injuring a major industry) have all added up to our economy going into the toilet, just like Democrats predicted before the election. 

Buckle up: this is going to be a wild ride. It wouldn’t surprise me to see us slip into a second Republican Great Depression, as the Harding/Coolidge/Hoover policies were so similar to what Trump’s up to.

MAGA, meet the pothole: Trump floats withholding road money and refusing to pave roads in the Red states of his own base. How is that going to go over? The Heritage Foundation, architect of the second Trump presidency (and the Reagan Revolution back in the 1980s that’s gutted our middle class), put out a threat to Republican legislators in Indiana. 

They claimed that Trump would cut off federal funds to the state if the legislature didn’t help him/them rig the 2026 midterm elections with a massive new gerrymander that would leave the state with 9 Republican representatives in the House of Representatives and 0 Democrats. “Roads will not be paved,” wrote Heritage Action. “Guard bases will close. Major projects will stop. These are the stakes, and every NO vote will be to blame.”

Will he now follow through with the threat? If he does, he’ll be kneecapping his own base in that state, and if he doesn’t it’ll show every other Republican politician in the country that he’s really no longer the threat that he once was. The simple reality is that Trump’s slipping in virtually every way imaginable. The big question now is whether he’ll allow the slide in his power to continue, or will pull a Putin-style crackdown against the people he considers his political enemies. This may be a very, very dangerous moment for American democracy.

Grand Theft Retirement: Trump’s GOP war on Social Security and Medicare rolls on. George W. Bush and Republicans in Congress began the privatization of Medicare when they invented the Medicare Advantage scam back in 2005; now more than half the people who think they’re on Medicare are actually on these private usually for-profit scam plans that will dump you once you start getting sick and expensive for them, not to mention how often they simply refuse to pay for tests, procedures, surgeries, etc.

But to add insult to injury, Trump’s Medicare director, the notorious quack-TV-doc and supplement peddler Dr. Oz, is rolling out in a few weeks a new “trial” program in six states where even people on real Medicare will have their doctors’ bills and requests for tests, procedures, etc., subject to “preclearance,” an euphemism for inserting an approval process in between you and your physician just like with the scam Medicare Advantage programs. 

They call it the Wasteful and Inappropriate Service Reduction (WISeR) model (Republicans love to gut successful government programs using the excuses of “waste and fraud”), and it’ll run in New Jersey, Ohio, Oklahoma, Texas, Arizona, and Washington state. If you’re on real Medicare in one of those states, you may want to reach out to both your federal and state elected representatives and raise hell.

Meanwhile, Trump is also trying to get all of us so pissed off at Social Security that we’ll beg for him to hand the trillion-dollar program over to the big New York banks that bankroll the GOP. He’s doing this by having already fired or laid off over 8000 Social Security employees, and now his SSA Commissioner Frank Bisignano’s planning to shut down local offices across the country to cut the number of people they can see by more than half.

The excuse they’re using is that the system will be running low on cash in the coming decade, but (as Democrats keep pointing out) if millionaires and billionaires simply paid the same percentage of their income into the system as you do, the system would be solvent for 70 more years and everybody in the country on SSA could get a $2000/year raise. Right now, once a person has made more than $171,000 a year they stop paying SSA taxes on anything above that, which is nuts. If you’re on Social Security, near that age, or just concerned about it being there when you retire, again, raise some hell.

“Who's Antifa?” FBI Director can’t say because it’s not a membership club. The FBI’s Branch & Operations Director Michael Glasheen told Congressman Bennie Thompson that Antifa — short for anti-fascist — represented the “greatest threat” of domestic terrorism to America. In response, Thompson asked him who is Antifa, where is their headquarters, how many members they have, etc., and Glasheen was completely unable to answer the questions. Of course, he knew — as did the members of Congress questioning him — that there’s no such organization and people who oppose fascism aren’t a threat to our country.

Antifa is, in fact, most all of us. Arguably, my dad joined Antifa when, fresh out of high school at 17 in 1945, he joined the Army to go fight fascists. Ditto for all those members of the Greatest Generation who served our country in that war against the German, Italian, Spanish, and Japanese fascists. The simple reality is that the Trump regime is trying to invent a new “threat” they can use as an excuse to spy on those of us who oppose their neofascists policies and, in their dreams, one day imprison all of us. Like so much in Trump-World, it’s all utter bullshit, albeit one of the most dangerous and anti-American forms of bullshit imaginable.

Merry Christmas: the EU just kicked Trump and Putin in the nuts. The European Union got around Orbán’s obstruction on behalf of Putin and seriously froze over €200 billion in Russian assets, holding them to cover the costs of Ukrainian reconstruction. The EU is finally over Trump’s and Orbán’s pro-Putin meddling and is taking direct action; weapons for Ukraine are almost certainly next. In response, Russia is suing like crazy over the money and threatening nuclear war if weapons arrive.

Putin’s economy is collapsing, Ukraine is badly damaging their oil infrastructure, and Trump is increasingly looking impotent. He gave Ukraine “until Christmas” to take the deal he and Putin worked out that would give Russia about a quarter of Ukraine and keep them out of NATO forever. It’ll be interesting to see if, when they and the EU call his bluff, Trump will flip-flop and stop supporting Putin, or if the Butcher of Moscow still controls Donald like some kind of bizarre marionette. I’m betting on the latter, although why Trump always rolls over for Putin is still a mystery.

Detained for “looking Somali”: ICE goon grabs a U.S. citizen in Minneapolis. A US citizen and resident of Minneapolis was sitting in a restaurant having a quiet lunch when he looked up and saw a masked man decked out in camo running across the room at him. The ICE goon tackled the young man to the ground, roughed him up, and put him in a headlock as the citizen kept begging to be allowed to show the agent his passport.

Instead, because he “looked Somali” (in other words, he was Black), he was dragged out to an unmarked vehicle and taken to an ICE facility miles away. When he was finally — hours later — allowed to show them his passport, they simply threw him outside into the snow and told him to walk the miles back to the restaurant where his coat and car were.

The incident horrified local and state officials. Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara told the 20-year-old man, “I apologize that this happened to you in my city, with people wearing vests that say ‘police.’ That’s embarrassing.” The city’s mayor, Jacob Frey, condemned the young man being “taken into custody for no reason at all, in clear violation of law and the Constitution of the United States for simply walking down the street and looking like he’s Somali,” and began reaching out to other mayors across the nation to coordinate resistance to ICE’s unconstitutional overreaches.

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz wrote a strongly worded letter to puppy-killer Kristi Noem, saying, “The forcefulness, lack of communication, and unlawful practices displayed by your agents will not be tolerated in Minnesota.” Hopefully, he’ll follow through and find that agent, arrest him, and throw him into the clink for assault, although I doubt anybody’s holding their breath. This is what happens when you offer a cash bounty to officers for an arrest without requiring it to be legal and appropriate.

What happened to Republican’s love of states’ rights? Republicans used to love “states’ rights” when the phrase was invoked to allow states to prevent Black people from voting or using public facilities. Now, not so much, when it comes to states wanting to regulate AI. This week, Trump signed an executive order forbidding states from regulating the new technology, as his AI czar — a tech-bro billionaire who’s himself heavily invested in AI — pushes to prevent any meaningful regulation of the emerging technology. After all, there’s big money to be made by the billionaires at the top of this particular pyramid, even if it may end up destroying the world.

Not a Palace: National Trust sues to stop Trump’s “Presidential Ballroom.” The National Trust for Historic Preservation, a congressionally chartered historic preservation group, sued Trump yesterday, saying that no president can legally demolish the East Wing and start construction without the appropriate permits and public input. They claim Trump should have submitted plans to the National Capital Planning Commission and the Commission of Fine Arts because the two are required to approve any federal construction projects in DC, along with the requisite environmental and other reviews and permits.

They also accused Trump of violating the National Environmental Policy Act by proceeding with the demolition without protecting local residents and businesses from the release of asbestos and other toxics. Their complaint to the DC District Court was clear: “No president is legally allowed to tear down portions of the White House without any review whatsoever — not President Trump, not [former] President Joe Biden, and not anyone else.” Trump, of course, thinks that he’s above the law because the six corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court have given him such immunity that he can break any law he pleases with impunity. Keep an eye on this one.

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"It’s Europe that gets Team Trump’s blood up"

…Trump’s America is not merely indifferent to Europe – it’s positively hostile to it. That has enormous implications for the continent and for Britain, which too many of our leaders still refuse to face.

The depth of US hostility was revealed most explicitly in the new US national security strategy, or NSS, a 29-page document that serves as a formal statement of the foreign policy of the second Trump administration. There is much there to lament, starting with the skeptical quote marks that appear around the sole reference to “climate change”, but the most striking passages are those that take aim at Europe.

China and Russia, which you’d think the US would see as genuine strategic threats worthy of serious attention, are addressed flatly and with relative brevity. It’s Europe that gets Team Trump’s blood up, against Europe that it unleashes its rhetorical firepower. It warns that economic stagnation, “censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition, cratering birthrates” and above all, migration, raise “the stark prospect of civilizational erasure”.

You don’t need advanced decryption software to work out what that means. The NSS worries that soon some European countries “will become majority non-European”, which can only be a euphemism for non-white.

Any doubt on that score was dispelled by the rambling speech the president delivered in Pennsylvania on Tuesday, in which he mused on how the US only takes people “from shithole countries” such as Somalia, asking plaintively: “Why can’t we have some people from Norway, Sweden … from Denmark?”

Perhaps this would not much matter if it merely confirmed that Trump and his circle view Europe through the same culture war lens that they apply to the US, blaming migration, DEI and “woke” for enfeebling societies that were stronger when they were solidly white and Christian (their understanding of “European”). But this is not merely a Fox News rant. It’s a plan.

The NSS makes clear that the Trump administration will not stand idly by as Europe allows itself to become “unrecognizable in 20 years or less”. It plans to join the fight, backing those far-right, ultranationalist parties it hails for their “resistance.”

It says that “the growing influence of patriotic European parties” is cause for great optimism and the US will do what it can to help Europe “correct its current trajectory”. In other words, the US is set on pursuing regime change in Europe and will be throwing its weight behind the likes of Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland or AfD, France’s National Rally and, no doubt, Reform UK.

Trump’s defenders have sought to argue that the administration has no problem with Europe per se; it’s the European Union it can’t stand. A Europe of individual, sovereign nation-states would, they say, find a warm embrace in Trump’s Washington. It just so happens that that’s the precise preference of one Vladimir Putin, who has regarded the weakening or breakup of the EU as a strategic aim for decades. No wonder the Kremlin lavished praise on the new US plan, which it was delighted to see aligned with “our vision.”

Maybe talk of visions is too grand. Perhaps what leads Washington to share Moscow’s low opinion of the EU is not philosophy but something more basic. Note how a chorus of Trump officials chose to restate their anti-EU stance, always in the loftiest terms of course, straight after Brussels had slapped the former Trump appointee Elon Musk with a €120m fine for “deceptive” practices on his X platform.

Could it be that what Trump and his acolytes really dislike about the EU is that it’s one of the few forces on the planet that can curb their power? The EU has muscle, and that alone infuriates the likes of Musk and Trump, especially when the common thread running through this second Trump term is the desire to remove or weaken any restraint on his ability to act. Far better a loose grouping of 27 states he can divide and conquer than a mighty bloc working together.

The motive hardly matters whether the US regards the EU as an enemy for transactional or ideological reasons, it now sees it as an enemy. That much should have been clear within weeks of Trump returning to the White House, and certainly by February when he gave Volodymyr Zelenskyy a dressing down in the Oval Office. But now that the US government has spelled it out in black and white, it is incontrovertible.

The trouble is that Europe’s leaders still cannot quite face this painful new truth. The head of Nato, Mark Rutte, ominously announced on Thursday that “Russia has brought war back to Europe” and that “We are Russia’s next target.” He feared that too many don’t feel the urgency of the threat. But he failed to mention that, in this new war, Nato’s most powerful member, the US, has picked a side – and it is Russia.

Note how the US is piling the pressure on Ukraine to accept armistice terms congenial to Moscow, instructing Kyiv to withdraw even from those parts of the Donbas region that it still controls, with no guarantee that Russian forces would not simply move in and seize the vacated land. Via an interview with Politico, Trump told Ukraine it had to “play ball” since Russia had “the upper hand”.

Rutte warns of war, urging Europe to prepare itself, yet he has nothing to say about the one-time ally across the Atlantic now turned foe. On the contrary, only a few months ago the Nato boss was literally calling Trump “daddy”.

Few embody the contradiction more fully than Britain’s own Keir Starmer. He prides himself on his solidarity with Zelenskyy but remains silent as Trump demonstrates his solidarity with Putin. The prime minister knows that the defense of Ukraine requires combining Europe’s military capabilities, yet last month he allowed the collapse of a plan for the UK to join a major European rearmament effort. The UK government had wanted to take part in the €150bn (£130bn) scheme, boosting Britain’s defense industry in the process, but balked at the entrance fee.

This week, Starmer ruled out rejoining the EU customs union, explaining that he didn’t want to unravel the trade deal secured earlier this year with the US. It’s the same choice, made over and over again, putting the US relationship ahead of the European one, even as the signals could not be any clearer: this love is unrequited.

It’s come to something when the sharpest geopolitical voice in Europe belongs to the pope. Leo criticized Trump for “trying to break apart” an Atlantic alliance that remained essential. In the current climate, even naming the problem counts as a radical act. Now it’s time for those leaders who do not speak in the name of God, but for the peoples of Europe, to be as brave.

-Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist

 

Global Inequality

A landmark report on global inequality published Wednesday shows that the chasm between the richest slice of humanity and everyone else continued to expand this year, leaving the top 0.001%, fewer than 60,000 multi-millionaires, with three times more wealth than the poorest half of the world’s population combined.

The global wealth gap has become so staggering, and its impact on economies and democratic institutions so corrosive, that policymakers should treat it as an emergency, argues the third edition of the World Inequality Report, a comprehensive analysis that draws on the work of hundreds of scholars worldwide. Ricardo Gómez-Carrera, a researcher at the World Inequality Lab, is the report’s lead author.

“Inequality has long been a defining feature of the global economy, but by 2025, it has reached levels that demand urgent attention,” reads the new report. “The benefits of globalization and economic growth have flowed disproportionately to a small minority, while much of the world’s population still face difficulties in achieving stable livelihoods. These divides are not inevitable. They are the outcome of political and institutional choices.”

The richest 10% of the global population, according to the latest data, own three-quarters of the world’s wealth and capture more income than the rest of humanity. Within most countries, it is rare for the bottom 50% to control more than 5% of national wealth.

“This concentration is not only persistent, but it is also accelerating,” the report observes. “Since the 1990s, the wealth of billionaires and centimillionaires has grown at approximately 8% annually, nearly twice the rate of growth experienced by the bottom half of the population. The poorest have made modest gains, but these are overshadowed by the extraordinary accumulation at the very top.”

“The result,” the report adds, “is a world in which a tiny minority commands unprecedented financial power, while billions remain excluded from even basic economic stability.”

The report comes as the world’s richest and most powerful nation, led by President Donald Trump, abandons international cooperation on climate and taxation and works to supercharge inequality by slashing domestic and foreign aid programs while delivering massive handouts to the wealthiest Americans.

Jayati Ghosh, a member of the G20 Extraordinary Committee of Independent Experts on Global Inequality and co-author of the forward to the new report, said in a statement that “we live in a system where resources extracted from labor and nature in low-income countries continue to sustain the prosperity and the unsustainable lifestyle of people in high-income economies and rich elites across countries.”

“These patterns are not accidents of markets,” said Ghosh. “They reflect the legacy of history and the functioning of institutions, regulations and policies—all of which are related to unequal power relations that have yet to be rebalanced.”

Reversing the decades-long trend of exploding inequality will require the political will to pursue obvious solutions, including fair taxation of the mega-rich and bold investments in social programs and climate action, which is disproportionately fueled by the wealthy.

“The choices we make in the coming years,” the report says, “will determine whether the global economy continues down a path of extreme concentration or moves toward shared prosperity.”

-Jake Johnson, Common Dreams

"As America slides into recession, this is a struggle over who owns America’s future: a broad middle class—or a locked-in economy run by the richest few…"

 

America is in or on the verge of a seriously bad recession and the Trump regime is hiding the numbers; the signs are everywhere. His incoherent tariffs, massive tax breaks for billionaires, and gutting the Inflation Reduction Act are kneecapping our economy.

In response, Trump visited Mount Pocono, Pennsylvania this week and tried to pitch himself as a champion for the little guy, the middle class, small farmers, and working people. Which raises the question: who do Trump and the GOP really work for?

— Putin was furious that the Biden administration had been providing Ukraine with weapons systems, including air defense munitions and HIMARS rockets, so in March of this year Trump abruptly suspended delivery of most US military aid and Republicans in Congress never restarted it.

— American billionaires didn’t want to pay their damn taxes, so Trump and the GOP gave them trillions in new tax breaks with their Big Beautiful Billionaire’s Bill while increasing the taxes paid by the bottom 80% of Americans.

— After giving the Trump family gifts, trademarks, and patents, President Xi of China wanted Nvidia chips to help bring his military and AI capabilities up to where he could easily defeat a US effort to defend Taiwan, so Trump changed the rules so Xi could get his chips and Republicans in Congress are refusing to stop him.

— Both Putin and Xi were constantly irritated by the Voice of America broadcasting truthful news and pro-democracy programming so Trump killed off the broadcasts, is shutting down the stations and transmitters, and Republicans in Congress are letting it happen.

— Massive airline monopolies hated the $200-$775 per incident that they had to pay passengers as compensation for being bumped or having flights cancelled, so Trump had his reality-star FAA head undo the rule.

— Putin and Xi hated the “soft power” America got by saving millions of lives around the world every year with anti-poverty, anti-AIDS, and famine relief programs across the Third World, so Trump killed off the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and Republicans in Congress didn’t object.

— Rightwing billionaires who don’t believe they should have to pay taxes to “subsidize the little people” didn’t want Trump and Republicans to extend the taxpayer-funded subsidies of the Affordable Care Act that kept insurance rates down (Mike Johnson called them a “boondoggle” even though they keep rates low for millions of his Louisiana constituents), so Trump and the GOP obliged by refusing to continue them.

— Saudi Arabia, massive American fossil fuel corporations, and petrostates like Russia were offended by the Paris Agreement and other UN and Biden efforts to phase out petroleum and mitigate climate change, so Trump and the GOP pulled the US out of the Paris Agreement and refused to attend the most recent COP30 meeting in Belém, Brazil.

— The morbidly rich wanted to be able to pass their massive fortunes to their trust-fund babies without paying estate taxes, so Trump and Republicans in Congress passed a tax cut that primarily benefits the 400 richest families in America, costing our nation trillions that will be added to our debt and paid for by working-class people.

— Fossil fuel billionaires and their corporations were worried that the money Biden allocated for green energy projects might cut into their future profits, so Trump and the GOP slashed trillions from them, as well as subsidies and rebates for saving energy and electric vehicles.

— Rightwing billionaire-funded media operations were offended by how NPR and PBS kept showing up their lies, so Trump and congressional Republicans cancelled federal funding for the networks. Rightwing billionaires are enthusiastically buying up as much of the American media landscape as they can.

— Billionaire Elon Musk was reportedly facing billions in regulatory costs and fines that he was able to get rid of when Trump and Republicans hired him to start and run the DOGE program that gutted our government to the benefit of Russia and China.

— Bitcoin billionaire Changpeng Zhao was serving a lengthy prison sentence for violating federal anti-money-laundering laws, but Trump pardoned him when he promoted a new stablecoin issued by a crypto firm that made billions for the Trump family.

— Giant corporations and their morbidly rich owners wanted to screw their workers so they could increase their profits, so Trump and congressional Republicans took over 100 individual actions that cut pay, gutted union protections, and slashed benefits for workers but helped the most massive corporations.

— Big banks that make billions every year on interest from student loans hated Biden’s efforts to pay them off and reduce interest rates, so Trump and congressional Republicans rolled them back and are ending the last of the loan forgiveness programs.

Have Trump or congressional Republicans done anything of major consequence to help out average working people or small businesses in the 44 years since the beginning of the Reagan Revolution?

Nope. Instead, the neoliberal Reagan Revolution has seen the American middle class go from over two-thirds of us to around 43 percent of us today, and it takes two paychecks to have the lifestyle a single one could produce in 1981. Only the morbidly rich have benefited from every GOP action during all these years. And Trump is making it all worse.

The 2026 elections are coming sooner than most realize, which is why Republican secretaries of state are vigorously purging the voting rolls in their Blue cities. Double-check your registration every month at vote.org and make sure everybody you know is informed and ready.

It’s going to take a huge effort to defeat these monsters, so we need everybody on board. Pass it along…

-Thom Hartmann

"No president can take [our Constitutional Rights] away from us" -ACLU

On September 25, Donald Trump signed a presidential order called NSPM-7 (National Security Presidential Memorandum), a sweeping attack on free speech that targets progressive organizations and individuals for prosecution for “domestic terrorism.” And now, the first arrests linked to NSPM-7 have begun, including multiple people attending a peaceful protest outside an ICE detention facility near Chicago.

Under NSPM-7, anyone who holds virtually any vaguely left-of-center political views is now considered a target for federal prosecution. Simply holding a protest sign or posting on Facebook could be enough to get a knock on the door from the FBI. This should be on the front page of every newspaper in the country, but other than the coverage of a few independent journalists, it’s almost totally flying under the radar. That stops now. Inequality Media Civic Action is sounding the alarm and urging Congress to take action now to stop implementation of NSPM-7, and I’m asking you to help power this campaign by making a monthly donation to Inequality Media Civic Action today.

-Robert Reich

From the ACLU:

What President Donald Trump’s latest memorandum targeting civil society does, does not, and cannot do:

Nonprofits, their donors, and activists striving for a more equal, just, and fair country and world are core components of American civil society. Yet on September 25, President Donald Trump issued a (NSPM-7) called “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence,” essentially adding them to an ever-growing list of what he calls the “Enemy Within.”

Civil society nonprofits and activists thus join segments of academia, the legal profession, public health professionals and scientists, and so many others President Trump sees as his political opponents and critics. For all of us seeking to uphold the Constitution, fundamental human rights, and civil liberties, it’s almost a badge of courage and honor.

On its face, NSPM-7 is chilling to read: If anyone needed proof that “terrorism” and “political violence” are slippery and fraught categories subject to political, ideological, and racial manipulation and bias—well, this is it.

Like the president’s investigation into the Open Society Foundations and his order purporting to designate “Antifa” as a “domestic terrorist organization,” which is not a thing!), NSPM-7 is a deliberate attempt to sow fear and intimidate and silence opposition to the president’s abuses. 

But true strength in this country comes not from political leaders engaged in fearmongering and political vendettas; it comes from our vibrant civil society, activists, and communities steadfastly pursuing the goals of equality, fairness, and democracy for all. We must not let ourselves be cowed.

We cannot predict exactly how the memo will be implemented or provide legal advice on the specific questions groups and individuals may have, but here, we lay out what the Memo does not do, what it aims to do, and what it cannot do.

The bottom line in cutting through the noise of reprehensible and irresponsible presidential rhetoric and actions is this: 

No president can rewrite the Constitution and the safeguards we have under it. These safeguards most emphatically include our First Amendment-protected freedoms of belief, speech, and association; our Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable searches and seizures; our Fifth Amendment right to due process; and our right to Equal Protection under the laws of this country. Under the 14th Amendment, these due process and equal protection rights apply equally to actions taken by federal and state agencies against tax-exempt nonprofits.

What NSPM-7 Does Not Do:

A key thing to know is that the presidential memorandum does not create any new federal powers or crimes.

When the president refers in the memo to “designation” of groups as “domestic terrorism organizations,” that rhetorical label is dangerously stigmatizing and harsh, but it does not in itself have legal force and the president does not cite any authority for it. That is because, unlike for “foreign terrorism,” there is no “domestic terrorism” labelling or designation regime. 

Congress has passed no law creating any such domestic [terrorism] designation regime, and for very good reason: it would inevitably sweep in First Amendment-protected beliefs, associations, and speech.* 

No matter where civil society groups and activists might fall across the ideological spectrum, from far left to far right, nonpartisan to partisan, religious or not, everyone’s First Amendment rights would be at risk. For that reason, there is also no standalone crime of “domestic terrorism.”

Put another way, any political, legal, or social definition of “terrorism” includes ideological motivation, and there are very serious First Amendment problems with attaching criminal or other sanctions to people or groups based on ideology or belief as opposed to actual, serious criminal conduct—which is already unlawful.

The fact remains: in this country, everyone is entitled to their beliefs and to act on them lawfully without fear of punishment, no matter how extreme or disfavored the government thinks those beliefs are.

*[The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects fundamental rights: freedom of religion, preventing government establishment of religion or prohibiting free exercise; freedom of speech, including symbolic speech and expression; freedom of the press, allowing for publication; the right to peaceably assemble, or gather; and the right to petition the government for redress of grievances, ensuring citizens can voice concerns.]

What NSPM-7 Aims to Do:

The memo is a fever dream of conspiracies, outright falsehoods, and the president’s distorted equation of criticism of his policies by real or perceived political opponents with “criminal and terroristic conspiracies.” It stitches together a few disparate, serious acts of actual or attempted criminal conduct with First Amendment-protected beliefs and protests against the president and his policies and wrongly conflates them as “political violence.” 

It ignores what any responsible understanding of actual political violence would make clear: political violence does not fit into neat ideological buckets and while increasing in frequency, it remains rare. After all, the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol by the president’s supporters is a paradigmatic example of actual political violence, but NSPM-7 pointedly fails even to mention it.

Perhaps the most chilling rhetorical move the president makes is to use vague, broad labels that, even if true—and there’s good reason to question the truth of virtually all of the memo’s assertions—encompass First Amendment-protected beliefs unconnected to any actual criminal conduct. These labels include: “Anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity,” “support for the overthrow of” the federal government, “extremism on migration, race, and gender,” and opposition to “traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.” 

The president even bizarrely imagines that “support for law enforcement and border control” are “foundational American principles” that his political opponents paint as “fascist” to encourage violence. No wonder many in civil society see NSPM-7’s rhetoric as a threat to human rights, civil liberties, and democracy-building work.

Through the memo, the president instructs federal departments and law enforcement agencies to use authorities they already have and focus them on investigations of civil society groups — including nonprofits, activists, and donors—to “disrupt” and “prevent” the president’s fever-dream version of “terrorism” and “political violence.”

NSPM-7 Uses Already Vague, Overbroad, and Abused Federal “Domestic Terrorism” Powers:

To understand the fundamentals of these existing authorities—and how they are abused— it helps to know what is already on the books. When Congress passed the USA Patriot Act in 2001, it defined domestic terrorism as acts that are dangerous to human life and already criminal, which are intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population or influence government policy or conduct. Again, this definition is not itself a “domestic terrorism” crime; federal agencies use it for investigative purposes.

As the ACLU and other rights groups have consistently criticized in the decades since 2001, federal agencies have used the Patriot Act “domestic terrorism” definition to claim expansive authorities to investigate and surveil people and groups with little or no factual, evidentiary basis, including those engaged in First Amendment-protected protest and other activities. 

Indeed, the Justice and Homeland Security Departments have for decades created categories of investigative priorities ostensibly focused on “violent extremists” with a variety of what the agencies describe as “ideological agendas”—ranging from “racially and ethnically motivated” to “anti-government/anti-authority” to “potential bias related to religion, gender, or sexual orientation,” and more. In other words, abusive use of “domestic terrorism” investigative authority is not a new problem, but it is a serious one.

One important, concrete thing we can do for ourselves and our communities is, therefore, to educate people about the variety of scenarios in which they may encounter federal agencies and their rights in those scenarios—particularly if questioned by law enforcement agencies and when exercising the rights to free speech and protest. And if, in fact, an individual or group is actually investigated, invoke the right to a lawyer.

NSPM-7 Instructs Joint Terrorism Task Forces to Conduct Investigations:

The memo instructs Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTFs) to conduct investigations. Here, it helps to know what JTTFs are, the rights concerns they’ve long raised, and measures to help mitigate some of these issues.

JTTFs are FBI-operated task forces that are intended to work with state and local law enforcement agencies to conduct counterterrorism investigations. There are about 200 JTTFs throughout the country, including at least one in each of the FBI’s 56 field offices. They operate with little transparency or meaningful oversight and we have long raised serious red flags about their privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties violations.

JTTFs in major cities have monitored Black Lives Matter activists, targeted Muslims, journalists, and environmentalists for investigation, including with intimidating visits to their homes or workplaces and, in May 2020, then-Attorney General William Barr announced that JTTFs would be used in response to racial justice protests. It’s perhaps no surprise that President Trump would again use JTTFs to target real or perceived critics for surveillance and investigation.

The memo tells JTTFs to investigate “potential federal crimes relating to” “recruiting or radicalizing” people for what it describes as “political violence, terrorism, or conspiracy against rights” as well as investigations of funders and their leadership. It widens an already open door to politicized rights-violating enforcement. It also assigns to JTTFs investigation of violations of the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA), a law requiring individuals or groups who are defined broadly as acting as “agents” of foreign governments or political entities to register with the government and disclose extensive information about their associations and activities. 

Government enforcement of FARA, too, has raised constitutional issues virtually since it was passed. FARA’s terms are so broad and vague that they raise concern it could be read to apply to nonprofits, journalists, and others with some “agency” connection to foreign groups or entities. Its registration and disclosure requirements could chill a wide range of speech on issues of public concern. As with the memo’s approach writ large, the government could selectively target speakers for their viewpoints in violation of the First Amendment. Again, it’s important to know your rights if approached, questioned, or investigated by federal law enforcement agents—whether they are part of a JTTF or not.

NSPM-7 Tasks Other Federal Departments and Agencies with Problematic Investigations:

NSPM-7 also tasks other departments and agencies with investigations and actions that are already within their purview, and that could raise significant constitutional concerns depending on their implementation. We’ll be watching, for example, to see if NSPM-7’s instruction to the Justice Department to issue guidance on investigation of “politically-motivated” acts and “identification of any behaviors, fact patterns, recurrent motivations, or other indicia common to organizations and entities that coordinate these acts” results in investigations and retaliation for groups and people engaging in First Amendment-protected activities.

The memo also instructs the Treasury Department and IRS to pursue investigations using their existing authorities. It’s worth emphasizing that in a tax code provision aptly titled “Prohibition on Executive Branch Influence over Taxpayer Audits and Investigations,” Congress made it a felony for top officials, including the president, to use the IRS for politically motivated retaliatory investigation and actions. In any event, anticipating the harm to nonprofits and tax-exempt groups from unwarranted investigations, civil society groups have already issued guidance on compliance and preparation.

How State and Local Governments Can Help Protect Residents from Federal Abuses

States and local governments can also act to protect their residents and the nonprofit and tax-exempt groups in their states: They can end or limit their participation in JTTFs and other similar joint federal, state, and local law enforcement investigative and surveillance partnerships. They can prohibit or limit data-sharing with federal agencies through these partnerships. At a minimum, states and local governments must make agreements governing these partnerships with federal agencies public.

Indeed, police forces in some of the nation’s largest cities, including Atlanta, San Francisco, Oakland, and Portland, have chosen to leave or limit cooperation with JTTFs because of disputes with federal officials over transparency and accountability for abuses. 

That’s in part because these task forces are structured to deputize state and local law enforcement officers, so they act with the authority and immunities of federal agents—sometimes anywhere in the country. Because state and local laws may provide stronger protections for residents’ privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties than federal law, JTTFs can effectively function to shield state and local officers from accountability for violations of their own states’ laws.

In short, by withdrawing from or limiting participation in JTTFs and other federal-state task forces, state and local governments can both protect residents and ensure their own oversight over their law enforcement agencies.

Why NSPM-7 Cannot Rewrite Our Constitutional Rights:

The president cannot rewrite the Constitution by memo or otherwise. No matter what the president says or tries to do through NSPM-7, the First Amendment constrains what federal agencies can do when it comes to punishing groups and people for exercising their rights to free speech, peaceful protest, and supporting causes by making donations. It also safeguards against viewpoint-based government discrimination, coercion, and retaliation.

If any U.S. group or person is investigated or prosecuted, the Constitution guarantees the right to due process—requiring notice and a meaningful opportunity to challenge wrongful government conduct. And if, for example, a particular group or organization is targeted based on protected characteristics—race, national origin, religion, sex, age, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity—the right to equal protection under the laws and other rights would apply. Under the 14th Amendment, these due process and equal protection rights also apply to federal and state agencies’ actions against tax-exempt nonprofits.

In short, no president—of any party—should have the power to punish nonprofit organizations and activists simply because he disagrees with them. Sadly, however, the government using intimidation tactics against those standing up for human rights and civil liberties is not new in this country’s history. Extreme as the memo is, it echoes past and ongoing abuses of executive power.

For example, the president’s strategy “to investigate and disrupt networks, entities, and organizations” harkens straight back to the Civil Rights Era, when J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI launched a top-secret program “to expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize” Black leaders, civil rights groups, and protest, particularly when it was Black and student-led. 

That Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO), grew to encompass also-discriminatory and unwarranted investigations of labor unions, and Native American, Latino, and other rights and social justice groups. Eventually, the massively rights-violating law enforcement abuses of the Civil Rights Era resulted in a landmark congressional investigation, called the Church Committee, and an overhaul of national security and intelligence agencies and their authorities that was intended to protect civil liberties and rights.

But in the post-9/11 era, presidents, agencies themselves, and Congress undid many of those post-Civil Rights Era national security and intelligence-agency reforms. And in many ways, the story of the last 20 years is a story of how Black, brown, and Muslim communities and groups bore the brunt of the resulting executive branch abuses. These abuses spread—as government abuses do—to AAPI communities, racial and social justice activists, environmental and animal rights movements, pro-Palestinian groups and activists, and so many others with beliefs the government have deemed unpopular or controversial.

Ultimately, we need another generational overhaul of federal agencies’ law enforcement and intelligence authority, which can only come from Congress, and pressure from all of us to achieve it. Until then, we can arm ourselves with knowledge and a recognition that chilling as NSPM-7 is, and painful and difficult though its implementation may well prove to be, it contains nothing that we have not seen before. Civil society groups and activists have worked hard to survive other similar moments in our history. We must do so again, in solidarity with nonprofit groups and leaders who are or will be unjustly and illegally targeted by the Trump administration. 

No president can take that away from us.

"Humans Aren't Illegal"

 

Challenging Presidential Power

 

During oral arguments in Trump v. Slaughter—a case that could redefine how much control presidents have over independent federal agencies—a tense exchange between Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Solicitor General D. John Sauer brought the Supreme Court chamber to a standstill. 

Sauer’s insistence that “the sky will not fall” if long-standing limits on presidential power are removed prompted Sotomayor to warn that his argument would effectively let the president “do more than the law permits.”

That moment shocked the room because it showed just how far the government’s position could go: it could take away important limits that keep presidents from fully controlling watchdog agencies, thereby shifting the balance of power between Congress and the executive. 

Why It Matters

In a case that could redefine the balance of power between Congress and the presidency, the Supreme Court on Monday heard arguments over whether to overturn Humphrey’s Executor, the 90-year-old precedent insulating independent agency officials from at-will removal.

The sharp exchange between Sotomayor and Sauer—culminating in Sotomayor’s warning that the government’s position would let the president “do more than the law permits”—captured the stakes of Trump v. Slaughter, which could grant presidents sweeping new authority over federal regulators and reshape the structure of the administrative state.

What To Know: A Direct Challenge to a 90-Year Precedent

At the very heart of this matter is whether the Court should narrow or overturn Humphrey’s Executor (1935), the longstanding precedent that permits Congress to limit the president’s ability to remove commissioners of independent agencies such as the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

President Donald Trump’s removal of FTC Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter—Trump v. Slaughter—without a statutory finding of “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office”—triggered the challenge now before the Court.

A Clash Over Presidential Power

The government’s position, advanced by Sauer, is that the Constitution vests full removal authority in the president and that Humphrey’s Executor should be discarded. That stance, aligned with the broader shift in the Justice Department’s arguments throughout 2025, has been reflected in litigation concerning the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and other agencies.

A Tense Exchange in the Courtroom

But at Monday’s argument, the debate crystallized in a direct confrontation over the consequences of abandoning limits on presidential control. Justice Sotomayor pressed Sauer on the structural implications of his argument. “You’re asking us to destroy the structure of government and to take away from Congress its ability to protect its idea that the government is better structured with some agencies that are independent,” she said.

Justice Samuel Alito invited Sauer to respond. Sauer offered reassurance: “The sky will not fall,” he said, adding, “The entire government will move toward accountability to the people.”

The exchange underscored the divide between justices who view removal protections as essential to preserving congressional design and those who see such limits as incompatible with Article II – which creates the presidency and gives the president the power to run the executive branch, while also setting limits and rules for how that power must be used.

As noted in the briefing for the petitioners, the government now argues that the president’s removal authority is “conclusive and preclusive,” a position that builds upon the Court’s recent decisions emphasizing executive control over administrative officers.

Sotomayor, however, focused on the breadth of the government’s position. She responded to Sauer’s explanation by stating, “What you’re saying is the president can do more than the law permits.” The room fell silent. Sauer, after a pause, hurriedly repeated a few of his earlier points and concluded that Humphrey should be reversed.

The moment captured a tension running through both argument and briefing. Petitioners contend that modern agencies such as the FTC exercise “considerable executive power,” rendering removal restrictions unconstitutional. Respondents counter that Humphrey’s Executor “controls this case,” emphasizing that the FTC continues to perform quasi-legislative and quasi-judicial functions that Congress intended to shield from direct political pressure.

The Stakes for the Administrative State

The Court’s resolution could have consequences far beyond the FTC. As reflected in related litigation—including challenges involving the NLRB and Merit Systems Protection Board—the Court has already allowed several removals to proceed while appeals were pending. Those interim rulings have been read, including by lower courts, as signaling skepticism toward the constitutionality of removal protections.

Still, Monday’s oral argument revealed that at least some justices remain concerned about the potential reach of the government’s theory. Justice Elena Kagan earlier noted that the Solicitor General’s argument rested on the premise that the Vesting Clause gives “all of the executive power to the president,” a proposition that, she suggested, raised questions about what limits, if any, would remain.

Whether the Court ultimately follows the path Sotomayor warned against—or embraces the broader presidential removal authority urged by Sauer—remains uncertain. But the brief moment of silence after Sotomayor’s final remark suggested the stakes were understood on all sides.

What People Are Saying

D. John Sauer, Solicitor General, at oral argument in Trump v. Slaughter: “Humphrey's must be overruled. It has become a decaying husk with bold and particularly dangerous pretensions.”

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, questioning Sauer at oral argument in Trump v. Slaughter: “Which other case has fundamentally altered the structure of government? For over a hundred years, actually, since 1887, we've had multi-member boards.”

Chief Justice John Roberts, describing Humphrey’s Executor in discussion of Trump v. Slaughter: “Humphrey's Executor is just a dried husk of whatever people used to think it was...”

What Happens Next

The justices will now meet privately to take an initial vote, after which the senior justice in the majority will assign the opinion and the justices will begin drafting and revising their positions—a process that can take months, especially in a major separation-of-powers case. Only once the opinions are finalized will the Court publicly announce its decision, likely before the term ends in June 2026.

The ruling will immediately shape the president’s power to remove the heads of independent agencies, affect ongoing disputes involving bodies like the NLRB and MSPB, and prompt rapid adjustments within the executive branch and potentially in Congress, depending on how broadly the Court reshapes the balance of authority between the branches.

-Robert Alexander, Newsweek