In the wake of the violence of January 6, 2021, some observers wondered why the insurrectionists at the U.S. Capitol weren’t charged with domestic terrorism. The reason is simple: There is no standalone federal crime on the books for domestic terrorism.
A 2023 Harvard Law Review article explains the conundrum this way:
“Domestic terrorism” itself evades easy definition. Terrorism is politically or ideologically motivated violence. But domestic terrorism is defined by its distinction from international terrorism. Its application focuses on whether the ideology or conduct at issue is international or domestic in nature. Though the USA PATRIOT Act defines domestic terrorism, it attaches no sanctions to such conduct.
The USA PATRIOT Act defines “domestic terrorism” as follows: Activities that “involve acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any state (and) appear to be intended: (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination or kidnapping; and occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States.”
The definition is intentionally vague. By nature, terrorism is “politically or ideologically motivated.” Charging U.S. citizens with domestic terrorism opens the door to First Amendment challenges. According to some, those who stormed the Capitol on January 6 were domestic terrorists. To others, they were patriots. To some, protesters who obstruct the work of masked ICE agents are patriots. To others, they are domestic terrorists.
“The Trump administration is taking advantage of this legal ambiguity to go after political dissent today.”
The Trump administration is taking advantage of this legal ambiguity to go after political dissent today.
How we got here
On September 22, 2025, President Donald Trump issued an executive order designating “antifa” a domestic terrorist organization. In an era of laughable executive orders, this one was particularly ludicrous because the word antifa simply means “anti-fascist.”
There is no singular group that calls itself antifa; no address or membership roster to go after. That the president is labeling those who fight fascism as “domestic terrorists” invites any number of memes pointing to D-Day and the history of the U.S. fighting the fascists of World War II.
Three days after the executive order was issued, the president issued a National Security Presidential Memo that operationalized the executive order. Until recently, there has been little attention given by the press to what is called NSPM-7. Recently, Brad Onishi and Matthew D. Taylor from the podcast “Straight White American Jesus” highlighted this little-known presidential memo. Now, it is popping up everywhere.
Every American — especially those who oppose the policies of this administration — should take note of this memo. NSPM-7 does what the USA PATRIOT Act, passed after 9/11, did not: It names certain ideologies and political beliefs as illegal and indicative of domestic terrorism.
The memo reads, in part:
“It names certain ideologies and political beliefs as illegal and indicative of domestic terrorism.”
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 toward those who hold traditional American views on family, religion and morality.
Taken to its logical conclusion, according to NSPM-7, Mainline Christians whose faith compels them to oppose unlawful ICE tactics and to stand for LGBTQ rights should be investigated as domestic terrorists because their views run counter to the expression of the faith preferred by this authoritarian administration.
NSPM-7 claims “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism and anti-Christianity” have led to increased political violence and assassinations and specifically calls out the murders of a senior health care executive and right-wing activist Charlie Kirk. Meanwhile, the memo conveniently omits the murders of by right-wing actors and the ideologies behind them.
As Mary B. McCord, national security expert, recently noted:
Though murders and threats of violence against individuals are reprehensible and illegal, the examples do not justify the stark lack of parity in NSPM-7’s treatment of supposedly dangerous ideologies. There is no mention in NSPM-7 of the apparently politically motivated murders of Minnesota Democratic legislator Melissa Hortman and her husband; or the mass shootings committed in Buffalo, New York; El Paso, Texas; and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, by white supremacists who justified violence based on the Great Replacement theory. The one-sided memorandum not only lacks legitimacy. It dangerously raises the stakes for organizations that hold views the administration perceives as hostile to White House policy. In other words, it has the strong potential to lead to the discriminatory targeting of organizations based on viewpoint — and to fuel the false narratives that drive white supremacist violence.
Even more unsettling, last month Wired magazine published its investigation into how the Department of Homeland Security is turning NSPM-7 on individuals opposing the construction of data centers and threats posed by AI. In the 1,000 pages of previously unpublished reports from DHS, the FBI and “fusion centers” created in the aftermath of 9/11 that serve as go-betweens for intelligence agencies and local law enforcement, Wired reports this:
Among the documents in the tranche obtained by Wired is a New York Intelligence and Counterterrorism Bureau report that warns of widespread upheaval in response to AI adoption. Of particular note is a novel term for what the bureau purports to be an emerging extremism threat. “The chaotic atmosphere that may result from emergent AI technology in the next five years may fuel large-scale protests that devolve into civil unrest and anti-tech violent extremist activity, especially in large urban areas such as New York City,” the report reads. The term “anti-tech violent extremism” does not appear in any publicly available DHS or FBI domestic extremism reports or guides and represents a novel grouping of a wide range of ideologies under a single extremist category.
So now anyone the federal government deems to be “anti-tech” is potentially a domestic terrorist.
Charlie Kirk appears at Utah Valley University on September 10 in Orem, Utah. Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA, was speaking at his “American Comeback Tour” when he was shot in the neck and killed. (Photo by Trent Nelson/The Salt Lake Tribune/Getty Images)
Are you scared yet?
On Dec. 4, 2025, former Attorney General Pam Bondi issued one of the most consequential internal directives since 9/11 outlining in greater detail how federal agencies are to carry out the president’s directive.
According to Bondi’s directive, the DOJ now views “organized doxing of law enforcement,” “mass rioting and destruction,” “violent efforts to shut down immigration enforcement” and “targeting of public officials or other political actors” as “criminal conduct rising to the level of domestic terrorism.”
The directive also expands upon the president’s language around immigration and gender to label individuals with “extreme viewpoints on immigration, radical gender ideology and anti-American sentiment” as a “domestic terrorism threat” that federal law enforcement will prioritize and “zealously” investigate and prosecute.
We are now witnessing the first prosecutions under NSPM-7 take place.
On June 16, the Department of Justice announced the indictment of 15 individuals who participated in neighborhood patrols in Minneapolis during the government’s Operation Metro Surge. Reading the government’s press release and indictment is chilling.
Mara Richards Bim (right) with another pastor at the Minneapolis airport protest
I traveled to Minneapolis in January. As a journalist, I participated in the kind of ICE Watch patrols those indicted participated in. Later in the week — on January 23 to be exact — I put on my clergy collar to participate in a collective, nonviolent action to shut down the airport. In that action, 100 clergy members knelt in the subzero temperature and were arrested.
January 23 is important because that day was a statewide day of protest. Those indicted as domestic terrorists under the NSPM-7 investigation are charged with a nonviolent action they participated in on that day at the Whipple Building, the local ICE detention facility.
The charges against each of the 15 defendants include “conspiracy to impede or injure a federal officer.” Many also are charged with “interstate stalking” for following officers throughout Minneapolis neighborhoods and blowing whistles to alert neighbors.
At the press conference announcing the charges, Daniel Rosen, U.S. attorney for Minnesota, refused to answer the question whether there were specific incidents where law enforcement officers were injured by the conspiracy.
These days, simply being opposed to the government’s actions can bring about a federal indictment. This should be alarming to every single person in this country. This is what fascism looks like.
Mara Richards Bim
Mara Richards Bim serves as a Clemons Fellow with BNG and as program director at Faith Commons. She is a spiritual director and a recent master of divinity degree graduate from Perkins School of Theology at SMU. She also is an award-winning theater artist and founder of the nationally acclaimed Cry Havoc Theater Company which operated in Dallas from 2014 to 2023.