Trump's Directive on 'Organized Political Violence' Could Lead to Increased Surveillance of His Critics

The president issued a directive that could make dissent riskier for people and nonprofits.

https://www.notus.org/policy/trump-directive-organized-political-violence-increased-surveillance



Former national security officials and constitutional law experts warn that President Donald Trump’s directive on “domestic terrorism and organized political violence” could lead to government surveillance of people who simply disagree with him. Trump’s directive, issued last week, links violent acts, such as the assassination of Charlie Kirk and the attempts on Trump himself, to “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity; support for the overthrow of the United States Government; extremism on migration, race, and gender; and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.”

At a time when Trump and Republicans routinely decry mainstream Democratic and progressive views as “extremist,” experts say Trump’s directive opens the door for surveillance of just about anyone outside the MAGA world. “They are deliberately blurring the line between speech protected by the First Amendment and violence or other unlawful activity, and they seem to be quite explicitly listing viewpoints that they don’t like as predicates for an all-of-government crackdown,” said Will Creeley, the legal director at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. “It’s deeply alarming.”

Trump’s directive 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,” directing the government’s counterterrorism efforts and resources to look inward, toward its citizens, for threats. The journalist Ken Klippenstein first reported on the potential ramifications of the directive. In the wake of Kirk’s assassination, administration officials and Republicans in Congress repeatedly warned of an impending crackdown on dissent, though they offered few coherent details about who would be targeted, or how.

This new directive, paired with an executive order targeting “Antifa” and new Justice Department guidance escalating some crimes to domestic terrorism, shows that the crackdown has begun, and surveillance will play a key role. Without providing evidence, Trump’s memo argues that “sophisticated, organized campaigns of targeted intimidation, radicalization, threats, and violence” resulted in recent high-profile, politically motivated lone-actor shootings, such as Trump’s assassination attempts, Charlie Kirk’s killing and a shooting at a Dallas Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility that killed two detainees. Authorities have not released evidence suggesting that those alleged perpetrators conspired with others or received help from any organizations.

snip