It’s Official: We Are All the Enemy Now

We already knew that truth, free speech, and democracy are antithetical to Trump’s authoritarian agenda. It should also be common knowledge by now that demonizing and undermining of judges, journalists, scientists, public health professionals, intellectuals, historians, and teachers, is basic to the fascist playbook. That was already a long list of enemies of state, but it has expanded dramatically in recent weeks.

Sowing chaos and gradually becoming more and more extreme is part of the Trump strategy. And so it is, that some of the Administration’s most consequential recent actions, including memorandums and executive orders, drop with little notice. In this post, we’ll look at two which explain a lot about the blatant lies the Administration repeats regarding the violence of protesters and the threat posed by opposition generally.

National Security Presidential Memorandum 7

On September 25, 2025, the Trump Administration formalized its enemy list with National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7), “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence.” The strategy it outlines attempts to equate opposition—virtually any progressive group, funder, or individual—with political violence and domestic terrorism. To say that it’s chilling is a vast understatement. It is authoritarianism writ large.

According to reporting by Ken Klippenstein, NSPM-7 directs a new national strategy to “disrupt” any individual or groups “that foment political violence,” including “before they result in violent political acts.” This means that even holding certain views can put you in the crosshairs of political prosecution. And just what are those views? To quote directly from the NSPM-7 memo, with the added emphasis mine:

There are common recurrent motivations and indicia uniting this pattern of violent and terroristic activities under the umbrella of self-described “anti-fascism.” These movements portray foundational American principles (e.g., support for law enforcement and border control) as “fascist” to justify and encourage acts of violent revolution. This “anti-fascist” lie has become the organizing rallying cry used by domestic terrorists to wage a violent assault against democratic institutions, constitutional rights, and fundamental American liberties.

Common threads animating this violent conduct include 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. As described in the Order of September 22, 2025 (Designating Antifa as a Domestic Terrorist Organization), the groups and entities that perpetuate this extremism have created a movement that embraces and elevates violence to achieve policy outcomes, including justifying additional assassinations. For example, Charlie Kirk’s alleged assassin engraved the bullets used in the murder with so-called “anti-fascist” rhetoric.

As you can plainly see, the list of offenses casts a very broad net, and sets up the deepening of the assault on free speech and the Constitution that we are already experiencing. Actual violence, whether political or not, is already, and always, punishable by law—so it’s not about that. According to a detailed analysis by the ACLU:

NSPM-7 is a deliberate attempt to sow fear and intimidate and silence opposition to the president’s abuses….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.

In NSPM-7 we have the conflation of opposition and protest with violent, anti-American views and actions, hence the “domestic terrorism” label applied to ICE-related community defense. You will already know that both Renee Good and Alex Pretti were immediately labeled as domestic terrorists—no facts, no evidence, just knee-jerk slandering in line with the new strategy.

The Follow-up Bondi Memo

As if NSPM-7 was not bad enough, it gets worse. On December 4, 2025, in a clear follow-up to NSPM-7, Attorney General Pam Bondi released a memo entitled: Implementing National Security Presidential Memorandum-7: Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence.

Ken Klippenstein is one of the very few to report on this follow-up memo, of which he states: “Where NSPM-7 was a declaration of war on just about anyone who isn’t MAGA, this is the war plan for how the government will wage it on a tactical level.”

Again framed loosely as targeting people involved in actual violence, such as certain anti-fascist (“Antifa”) activists, this memo continues the pretense of actual law enforcement while further setting the stage for a broad attack on political opposition and free speech.

Citing directly from the memo, which he includes as a downloadable pdf in this article, Klippenstein reports that the target is those expressing “opposition to law and immigration enforcement; extreme views in favor of mass migration and open borders; adherence to radical gender ideology,” as well as “anti-Americanism,” “anti-capitalism,” and “anti-Christianity.” This clearly echos and amplifies the language found in NSPM-7.

In their own analysis of this second memo, entitled The Government Unconstitutionally Labels ICE Observers as Domestic Terrorists, the Cato Institute writes:

Specifically, the document defines domestic terrorism broadly to include “doxing” and “impeding” immigration and other law enforcement. Doxing is not specifically defined, but the memo references calls to require Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to give their names and operate unmasked. Individuals who donate to organizations that “impede” or “dox” will be investigated and deemed to have supported “domestic terrorism.”

Therefore, it is crucial to understand that ICE and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) consider people who follow DHS and ICE agents to observe, record, or protest their operations as engaging in “impeding.” DHS has a systematic policy of threatening people who follow ICE or DHS agents to record their activities with detentions, arrests, and violence, and agents have already chased, detained, arrested, charged, struck, and shot at people who follow them.

These two memos, together with the earlier Antifa executive order (1), make it clear why acts protest are routinely and falsely described as violent, and why we will continue to hear that it’s all a leftist conspiracy orchestrated and funded by wealthy progressive donors, such as George Soros. The gaslighting is clear: actual defenders of democracy are cast as enemies of the state, while those running roughshod over the Constitution are the protectors of law and order. When a fascist government targets anti-fascists, it is obviously targeting everyone in the opposition.

Democracy is still the main problem for Trump’s authoritarian agenda, as Attorney General Bondi’s recent letter to Minnesota demanding access to voter rolls makes clear. As Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison said of that letter in a very recent interview, “she (Bondi) said the quiet part out loud.”

Continued Escalation

In a follow-up piece, ICE Making List of Anyone Who Films Them, the journalist Klippenstein includes a video showing an ICE agent taking pictures of a car belonging to a woman who had been recording him. After she asks why she’s being recorded the ICE agent replies: “‘Cause we have a nice little database and now you’re considered a domestic terrorist. So have fun with that.”

Escalation and the continued narrative of domestic terrorism is what we can expect from here. That is exactly what these memos set up. The Bondi memo directs the FBI to better publicize its “tip line” and establish “a cash reward system” for information leading to identification and arrest of leadership figures within purported domestic terrorist organizations

As I get ready to post this article, Trump is inching closer to invoking the insurrection act. According to reporting by The New Republic, MAGA leader Steve Bannon is leading the charge, declaring on his War Room podcast on Jan 26, “This is just not Minneapolis—this is an organized, well thought through effort to invade the country….This is a Marxist—this is the red-green alliance coming together to try to take down the American republic.... It’s a domestic terrorist mob.” Bannon was joined by fellow right-wing commentator and conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec, who claimed that leftist insurgents are flooding into Minneapolis on “Soros buses.”

Bannon reportedly told the Wall Street Journal on Jan. 25th, that Trump should invoke the Insurrection Act, adding Alex Pretti, “knew exactly what he was doing and he knew the consequences. The violent domestic terrorist mob in the streets of Minneapolis needs to stand down now.”

As Klippenstein writes at the conclusion of his piece on the Bondi memo, “And so here we are, with a new War on Terrorism—only this time, millions of Americans like you and I could be the target.”

Notes

1. On September 22, 2025, a few days before the release of NSPM -7, President Trump signed an executive order classifying “Antifa” as a domestic terror organization. It was already well known that Antifa is not a group or an organization, but a decentralized movement opposing fascism. Furthermore, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, “the administration has no authority to designate groups as domestic terrorist organizations, as is obvious from the failure to cite any statute or constitutional provision in support of the president’s action. There is none, and the purported designation has no legal effect….Both the order and the memo are ungrounded in fact and law. Acting on them would violate free speech rights, potentially threatening any person or group holding any one of a broad array of disfavored views with investigation and prosecution.” The focus on Antifa is simply part of the strategy to criminalize opposition.