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Open in TheBrain

ANTIFA 4 1025

ESTB 10 25

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3 HEADERS

SEE 3 [CRASH SEARCH?]

this is general for antifa, pro and anti}:}:

FMRLY THUGS ON A PLANE}:

REBOOT KIRK SHOOT 9 25 DESIGNATED TERRORISTS MILLER 3

SEE ANTI-COMMIE RUBIO 7 26 INTL

SEE RENEE GOOD MINNE ALEX PRETTI DOM TERROR

SEE LEFT VIOLENCE BS RADICAL LUNATIC IRRATIONAL MISO HYSTERICAL WINE MOM AWFUL

see martial law pretext

SEE EARTH 2 FOX BS PORTLAND

merri ok

bad trinity PLUS watters

MTG 3x

see whataboutism

see cop city 23 domestic terror

SEE INFLUENCER see andy ngo ICE RIDEALONG

bak 3 23 9 25 capt

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aha 12 23 big three bogeyman/enemies are antifa, BLM, commies

have to conjure violent left to justify militia BS (tho always gubmint for that)

premptive rubber glue projection re domestic terrorism?

CONCEPT HAS FADED? WHAT WAS PEAK? JAN 6 bs?

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AN 10 26

Trump's NSPM-7 could now label you as a terrorist

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GUK 8 26

US conducted ‘mass spying campaign’ against leftwing groups and anti-ICE protesters, records reveal

Newly disclosed records reveal the US government extensively spied on prominent leftwing organizations and on protesters as part of a vast operation into groups opposing the immigration crackdown in Minnesota earlier this year.

Internal investigative reports show the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) sent undercover agents to community meetings in the Twin Cities and New York City, infiltrated Signal chats and obtained financial records of mainstream unions and left-leaning non-profit groups.

Nearly 30 internal law enforcement reports were released on Thursday as part of a criminal case the Department of Justice has filed against 15 Minneapolis protesters. The defendants are accused of a “conspiracy” to “impede” US immigration officers during the Trump administration’s surge in the region.

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Protesters marching during a Nationwide Shutdown demonstration against ICE enforcement in Minneapolis on 30 January. Photograph: Stephen Maturen/Getty Images

The DHS investigative reports were disclosed by the government and submitted to the court by an attorney for one of the defendants. The records show that in January, DHS launched an inquiry called “Operation Puppet Master” to identify a “network of conspirators” organizing against US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The operation came as community organizing against ICE was swelling in the region in response to the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

A DHS report from February said the agency was looking into people who were “providing material support to violent opportunists and agitators”. The records suggest agents launched elaborate spying efforts targeting activists, protesters and mainstream progressive organizations opposing the Trump administration’s immigration policies.

“I was shocked at the scope and the apparent lack of investigative discipline involved, but not totally surprised,” said Kevin Riach, an attorney for one of the indicted protesters, who filed the tranche of records in federal court.

A DHS spokesperson said that Homeland Security Investigations, its branch that carried out the investigations, “does not comment on the existence or status of specific on-going investigations, nor on investigative methods”. The agency referred questions to the justice department in Minnesota, which declined to comment.

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A memorial to Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. Pretti was shot and killed by federal officers while recording them in January. Photograph: Bridget Bennett/The Guardian

The records indicate that the investigations followed the directive of Trump’s executive order last year that designated “antifa” a “domestic terrorist organization” responsible for “riots” against ICE. The investigations led to the criminal case filed in June against 15 protesters, which focused on Direct Action Minnesota, a loose coalition of organizers that the government says was part of a “conspiracy” opposing ICE’s surge in the region.

The documents show that the government alleged major groups were connected to the criminal conspiracy, including the national labor unions AFL-CIO and Service Employees International Union; the local unions Minneapolis Federation of Educators and the Minnesota Association of Professional Employees; and several large left-leaning groups, including the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ).

None of those organizations have been charged with any crimes.

The records have added fuel to the concerns of civil rights groups, who have argued that the federal government was criminalizing lawful protest activity under the guise of targeting leftwing “terrorism”.

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A man dressed up as a pickle shouts at counter-protesters through a megaphone during a protest against a new ICE detention center in the small town of Appleton, Minnesota, in August. Photograph: Tim Evans/Reuters

The documents show that DHS investigators obtained financial records of unions and non-profits, as part of an inquiry into “domestic terrorist financing”. One investigative record showed the DHS used administrative subpoenas to obtain “wire transfers from various financial institutions to and from” SEIU, one of the largest unions in the US. Investigators also requested that the Federal Reserve Bank of New York provide financial data from the Communications Workers of America, an international union, the records showed.

The DHS further obtained financial records related to the Sunrise Movement, a national non-profit focused on the climate crisis.

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Federal agents hold a person down, two weeks after the fatal ICE shooting of Renee Nicole Good on 7 January during an immigration raid. Photograph: Leah Millis/Reuters

The records also provided detailed documentation of spying operations conducted by undercover agents who posed as activists and surveilled community activities.

One DHS report documented “undercover agent activity” on 31 January at a Sunrise Movement “resistance skills training” at the Minneapolis public library. An agent described activists discussing recruitment and “de-escalation” at protests, with speakers suggesting having a “police liaison” and “safety marshal” at events. The report said: “It was clear that the Sunrise Movement organization focused on ‘peaceful’ protests.”

The undercover agent actively engaged participants, according to the report. At one point, the agent told someone in attendance that he “works in construction and could build items that might assist other groups with more ‘direct-action’ protests”. That agent told the individual that “going to jail did not bother him” and gave out his phone number.

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A protester kneels in front of state troopers outside the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building during a protest opposing ICE operations in Minneapolis in March. Photograph: Kerem Yücel/AFP/Getty Images

The records documented the operations of another undercover agent who joined Signal groups of activists involved in protests.

The records also showed undercover agents surveilling a virtual meeting at Hunter College in New York focused on “ICE brutality” and “responding to state violence”; a meeting at a labor center in Minneapolis during which activists discussed a wide range of political issues; a meeting in a Minneapolis public park about protest tactics; and a Direct Action Minnesota meeting at a church.

The documents indicate that agents made audio recordings of the events.

One undercover agent attended a “training” event at a gymnasium in a church and participated in “boxing/sparring practice”, according to a DHS report. The report noted that the agent was surreptitiously recording audio of the event, but that at one point the recorder “erroneously fell to the floor” and the agent had to return to the gym to retrieve the device.

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Rev Edward Ford Jr, from Shiloh Christian church in Middletown, speaks at a protest demanding justice for Renee Nicole Good. Photograph: Connecticut Post/Hearst Newspapers/CT Post/Getty Images

At one anti-ICE event at a church, agents documented the license plate information of attenders, the records showed. When two agents were approached by a man who “asked if they were ICE”, the agent responded, falsely, that they were not.

Riach, the defense attorney, filed the records as part of a motion urging the court to compel the government to release additional records. In his filing, Riach accused the government of presenting “wild conspiracy allegations … born from the fantasies of political retribution that animate the Trump Administration”.

He also alleged that DHS’s investigations were part of a “mass spying campaign” and said undercover agents “participated in organizing and directing the groups they were surveilling, at times working to entice people into discussing or committing crimes”.

The records relate to activities that extend far beyond the allegations of the 15 defendants facing prosecution. That case alleges a vast conspiracy to organize against ICE, but across a 94-page indictment, there are no allegations of injuries to specific ICE officers caused by any defendants and no charges of serious violence.

Emilia Gonzalez Avalos is the executive director of Unidos MN, a Minneapolis social justice non-profit group, whose activities were mentioned in the files.

“I believe that this is a clear attempt to intimidate us, to punish and politically repress disagreement and difference,” she said. “And that is not the America that we have built through hundreds of years. And it’s definitely not the America that we are organizing for.”

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A detained woman sits inside a vehicle surrounded by federal agents in January, two weeks after the shooting of Renee Nicole Good. Photograph: Leah Millis/Reuters

During trainings, organizers asked people not to record the sessions, Gonzalez Avalos said. But organizers would also say if there were any immigration agents or officers in the room, they were welcome to stay because the group had nothing to hide, because their work was “entirely grounded in the United States constitution”.

Mike German, a former FBI agent and civil liberties advocate, said it was striking that the DHS was leading the investigations when typically the FBI would spearhead operations targeting potential “terrorist” activity. He said it was also notable that the DHS was using administrative subpoenas, which don’t require judicial authorization, to obtain records.

The government, German said, also appeared to be relying on theories of “guilt by association” to justify surveillance instead of narrower investigations focused on specific alleged criminal activity. German, who previously served as an undercover agent, further scoffed at the notion of undercover agents spying on what appeared to be accessible, community events.

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An ‘ICE out’ sign in the window of a home in Minneapolis. Photograph: UCG/Universal Images Group/Getty Images

“You’re talking about meetings that are open to the public, where they are recruiting among the public, saying: ‘Please come to this protest,’” he said. “It’s hardly a challenge to ‘infiltrate’ this kind of meeting, and that should be a clue this isn’t a criminal group. It’s very rare for criminals to [publicize] discussion of their criminal activities.”

The investigations, he added, fit patterns in US history of the government targeting leftwing activist and labor organizing. After 9/11, he said, those powers to spy on communities were greatly expanded.

“Nobody should be surprised that the government would use these authorities to target political opposition rather than target criminals, particularly so under this administration,” he said.

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After "Political Terrorism" Summit, U.S. Names 43 Americans + Groups

a new State Department report on Cuba’s “campaign of subversion against the United States” is a virtual government blacklist against left-wing Americans and groups. Linked to last week’s Rubio-led summit on “political terrorism,” the report is unusually candid about the government’s targets.

“Many of the most significant upheavals in recent American political history — from the George Floyd riots to the rise of Antifa to the explosion of pro-terrorist activism on American college campuses — can be linked, in some way, shape, or form, to Cuban influence,” the report says.

As for who these supposed agents of Cuban influence are, the report is remarkably explicit. It names people like Ben Cohen (of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream fame), Mayors Zohran Mamdani and Karen Bass, media figures like Amy Goodman and Hasan Piker, and organizations like the Democratic Socialists of America and the Amazon Labor Union.

The implication is clear: Secretary of State Marco Rubio thinks there should be a modern-day blacklist of the political left in America. In fact, the report explicitly mentions the “blacklists, McCarthy-era investigations and prosecutions” of the 1950s and their effectiveness at dismembering the Communist Party USA.

The 100-page report, titled “Cuba: The Capital of 21st Century Communism,” was released this morning.

Cuba Report

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An entire section of the report — numbering over three pages long — is dedicated to the Democratic Socialists of America.

“The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) serves as a particularly potent illustration of the ideological victory of Cuba’s effort to position itself as the spiritual capital of Third Worldist Radicalism,” the report says. “This represents a significant advance for the Cuban influence operation: Havana no longer needs to rely solely on intelligence penetration or asset cultivation to exert influence over the United States.”

Though the report concedes that “DSA was not shaped by the direct and tangible influence of the Cuban government” and that it has “organic ideological commitments,” it insists that “None of that is to say that the group has no ties to the Cuban regime and its influence network.”

Instead, the report points to the group’s delegations to Cuba as evidence of Cuban influence.

“For more than six decades, the Cuban regime has been the leading sponsor of radical leftism and Third Worldism in the United States,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a post on X/Twitter linking to the report.

Whatever you think of DSA, it is hardly fringe. It claims as members prominent politicians like New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani and has helped to nominate dozens of politicians like him to office in recent years. Senator Bernie Sanders identifies as a Democratic Socialist — having himself popularized the term — as do Reps. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and Rashida Tlaib, who are card carrying members (as well as Mamdani).

The Cuba report follows last week’s Rubio-led international summit on “political terrorism.” That summit, as I reported, introduced the new term “Far-Left Terrorism” (abbreviated “FLT”), a term it never really defined.

A White House press release summarizing the event said that “far-left extremism will be treated with the same seriousness and ferocity the world has long reserved for jihadist terrorism.”

Speaking at the summit, Rubio vowed that further new terrorist designations for left-wing groups would be coming “soon.”

Jeremy Lewin, the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Assistance, linked last week’s political terrorism summit to today’s Cuba report, saying on X: “For seven decades, the Cuban regime has been behind both the ideological underpinnings of third worldism and subversive organizing structures of the new radical left political terrorists that @SecRubio called out with clarity last week.”

But virtually all the summit could do to substantiate the supposed scourge of political terrorism was to focus on groups that are almost comically dated — like the 70’s era Symbionese Liberation Army or the Weather Underground. The summit was vague about what are the equivalent groups today.

Today’s Cuba report, however, “names names,” in an obvious attempt to stigmatize American citizens who are very much politically active today.

In some cases these are even sitting politicians, from congresswoman Maxine Waters to Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass.

I read the 100-page report and counted references to at least 43 contemporary American groups and individuals, which the report identifies as follows:

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Guilt by association at its finest. But what exactly are they guilty of?

Guilt by association at its finest. But what exactly are they guilty of?

What the report shows isn’t that any of these people are knowingly taking directions from a foreign power — only that they disagree with the U.S. government on Cuba policy (or at most, agree with Cuba).

Their views can be wrong — aggressively, offensively wrong even — but it’s their goddamn right as Americans to express them.

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Remarks at the Opening of the Ministerial on the Resurgence of Political Terrorism - United States Department of State

...For far too long, however, our counterterrorism doctrine has had a blind spot – a blind spot when it comes to extremist violence from the political left. Even today, the very idea that far-left terrorism could be a serious threat is treated as a right-wing fever dream, or worse, as a dangerous fascist conspiracy. It’s treated this way by many in the press, by many in academia and our universities, and by many of our legacy institutions. You will no doubt see the dogma rear its head in the coverage of this very conference. In spite of the clear and the undeniable reality, in spite of the objective numbers and statistics, in spite of the fact that in this room today there are representatives from across the political spectrum, we will hear this organized – that this kind of organized violence and terror will be dismissed. It will be dismissed as a partisan fiction.

A whole industry grew up in our countries around the study of extremism. We have think tanks and fellowships and journals and consultancies, with the unspoken understanding among them that the only kind of political violence that was a true threat to our system – I’m sorry – that only one kind of political violence was a true threat to the system. A bomb planted by a neo-Nazi group was a nefarious and murderous act of evil. It is. But a bomb planted by a Marxist revolutionary – well, that’s just merely a tragic excess of idealism. Perhaps its means were misplaced or overzealous, but its ends were virtuous and just. That’s the implication of how they treat it.

For years, this extraordinary ideological prejudice was embedded in the way we talked about political violence and extremism. It was repeated again and again, until it was accepted as the neutral and objective baseline, so entrenched – so entrenched in the mainstream conventional wisdom that it came to be regarded as an apolitical fact. It is the reason why, here in my country, so many people in positions of power have repeatedly dismissed acts of violence and even terrorism as legitimate forms of political expression so long as they served a left-wing cause.

It is why during those George Floyd – so-called George Floyd – riots in the summer of 2020, as criminals and extremists burned and looted their way through American great – America’s great cities and nearly brought the country to its knees, city governments all across the country simply refused to prosecute the people conducting these acts of violence and terror. It is the reason for the now infamous image – and you all recall this – of a news anchor from a very prominent agency – a news anchor standing in a neighborhood consumed in flames; meanwhile the chyron on the bottom read that the protests were mostly peaceful. This was something worse than a double standard. Left-wing violence was not just excused; it was treated as sacrosanct, a protected class unto itself. That era has to end.

...

The simple fact is none of this that I’ve just described is new. Far-left political terrorism is not a recent-day, modern novelty. It is not a fiction manufactured by conservative politicians. For most of the modern era, it was, in fact, the dominant form of political violence. Every one of our friends here from the nations of the Western Hemisphere remember – remember the decades of kidnappings and bombings and assassinations and executions, the violent terror of the Tupamaros, of the Montoneros, of the FARC, of the ELN. You remember the inhuman savagery of Peru’s Shining Path, the Maoist fanatics who massacred the peasant villages of Peru, hacking pregnant women and newborn infants to death with axes and machetes. You remember the tens of thousands of Marxist guerrillas trained to kill in Castro’s terrorist camps.

All of you here from Europe remember. You remember the machine gun massacres of Italy’s Red Brigades, which held the five-time prime minister captive for 55 days before subjecting him to a revolutionary, so-called “people’s trial” and executing him in 1978. You remember the Red Army Faction’s nearly three-decade campaign of bombings, kidnappings, and assassinations in Germany, murdering dozens and injuring hundreds more. You remember the 17 November organization in Greece, the Marxist extremists that terrorized Athens for more than a quarter century, including, by the way, shooting my country’s CIA station chief dead outside of his home in front of his wife as they were returning home from a Christmas party.

And here in America we remember. We remember the same reign of deadly terror, justified by the same slogans, motivated by the same wicked ideas. We remember the Weather Underground, which bombed the Pentagon, which bombed the State Department, and bombed the Capitol. We remember the Black Liberation Army, which staged armed robberies and executed police officers at point-blank range. We remember the Symbionese Liberation Army, which shot a public-school superintendent to death with cyanide-packed hollow-point bullets. In one 18-month period between 1971 and 1972, the FBI counted some 2,500 bombings on American soil, a rate of nearly five a day. The overwhelming share of that violence came from left-wing extremists. Between 1970 and 1980, 93 percent of terrorist attacks in the West came from the far extremist left.

These are numbers that would shock most Americans today because we’ve been taught to believe that this kind of political violence, it simply doesn’t exist or it’s being exaggerated. But it does exist, and we’re actually underestimating it, and our nations bear the scars to prove it.

And today, we face a new wave of this old evil. Here in the United States, the share of left-wing terrorist attacks and plots has risen to levels not seen in decades. In Germany, far-left violence has jumped by more than 40 percent in just the last year alone. In Greece, more than 80 percent of radical violence is now driven by far-left and anarchist actors. These are not abstract statistics.

Americans have seen what those numbers mean – an all-out assault on our immigration officers, sniper attacks, explosives, armed ambushes. A transgender shooter opening fire on Catholic elementary school students as they pray, his gun marked with slogans like, “Where is your God now?” A health care executive executed in cold blood in the streets. Multiple assassination attempts on a sitting president. And the murder of the greatest conservative activist of a generation, a man who happened also to be a husband and the father of two young children, shot and killed while speaking to a crowd of students.

This is a distinctive and unique evil. It has always been driven by a hatred above all else, a hatred for civilization itself. It is a revolt of the worst against the best, a revolt of the weak and the cowardly against the strong and the good. It is perpetrated by those who cannot build, who cannot create, who cannot achieve great things, and take their revenge upon the world for their own inadequacy by seeking to destroy those who can. This is what radical leftism is. It may wear various different slogans and ideologies across place and time. They can call themselves anti-capitalist or anti-imperialist or communist or anarchist or Marxist. But the fundamental character is always the same. It’s always the same.

It is a poisonous resentment cloaked in the language of equality and justice and liberation, an overwhelming need to tear down what greater men have built, to wreck what is beautiful and what is right on behalf of people who are only filled with ugliness and have nothing else to offer the world. Through violence and through terror, they once again seek to impose their ugliness on all of us. The old dogma was wrong. The old dogma was wrong; none of this is driven by idealism. It is not utopian. In fact, it is the opposite.

One of the criticisms you sometimes hear of communism, for example, is that it sounds good in theory, but it never works in practice. That’s actually not true. Communism does not sound good in theory. The world it envisions for all of us is small, flat, grey, leveled of all exception, drained of all that is good and noble in the human soul. The world it envisions is a world without courage, a world without creativity or ambition, a world without heroes or glory or great causes to strive towards, without – a world without miracles, without myths, without men who rise above the rest to do incredible and extraordinary things. And the world communism envisions is a world without God.

For these architects of revolutionary violence, the towering achievement of our civilization – for them it’s an unbearable humiliation, a reminder of what they cannot do and a reminder of what they cannot be. So they choose instead to destroy. They attack pipelines; they attack railroads; they attack power grids and laboratories, the physical embodied symbols of power and invention and achievement. This is the nature of the terrorism we face today. They despise the West because the West is great.

This is an international conference because we are facing an international – we are facing a transnational threat. These are not distinct and isolated cells. They are interconnected networks. They do not recognize our borders. They do not believe, in fact, in the nation state itself. They coordinate, they communicate, they travel, they train, and they act together, sharing the same infrastructure, sharing the same enemies, sharing the same mission. Antifa militants and their comrades travel from across Europe and to the Americas to participate in each other’s attacks, to funnel propaganda and training materials and target information through shared encrypted channels, moving through underground networks of safe houses and finance, and sustain their operations through transnational funds.

And they work alongside hostile foreign states that share their mission, like Iraq’s – Iranian proxy networks who are increasingly intimately tied to leftist militant groups around the world. The Cuban regime’s sprawling intelligence and ideological network helped to build the far-left in our country and in our hemisphere, and it remains inextricably linked to the far-left groups and movements across and beyond the West.

Today’s far-left terrorists can raise money in one country; they can host their communications in a second country; they can receive training in a third country; they can recruit militants in a fourth country, and then together strike a target in a fifth country. And so, we have no choice but to confront this menace together. We will either cooperate across our borders or the terrorists will continue to exploit the gaps between them.

Under President Trump, for the first time, the United States is building the infrastructure, the partnership, and the strategy to defeat the scourge of far-left terror. The President signed National Security Presidential Memorandum number 7, outlining a comprehensive strategy to investigate and disrupt Antifa terror networks and their allies. Last November, the State Department designated four violent far-left extremist groups as Foreign Terrorist Organizations, and there will be more designations soon.

In December, we announced Rewards for Justice offering up to $10 million for information disrupting the financing behind these groups. In May, we convened the first Counter Terrorism Law Enforcement Workshop, joining American law enforcement officials and their counterparts in our partner country – nations together to map and develop strategies for dismantling these networks. The next workshop will be co-hosted with our partners in Germany. The coalition we’re building together is already bearing fruit, and we are here today to build on that work.

We can – and we must – identify and map this threat and rebuild our counterterrorism architecture to defeat it. Just as we have done together before, now we must do it together again. Through intelligence and information sharing, through coordinated law enforcement strategy, through financial targeting and disruption, we will dismantle these networks brick by brick. It is time for the people of the civilized world to defend ourselves, to stand united against this encroaching darkness, and fight – fight for what is ours.

It is easy to destroy great things; it is far more difficult to make them. The enemies of civilization are only capable of the former. They are only capable of destroying great things. All they know is destruction. But we have built great things together. We have done it time and again. We know what we must do, and now we must do it.

Thank you for coming today. (Applause.)

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PRAIRIELAND 100 YRS TODD CHEER ; TERR ENHANCE AND MAT’L SUPPORT? ---- NOT USED IN JAN 6

DOX TRESPASS CAN BE USED

30 YRS CONSPIR FOR MOVING BOX OF ZINES, NOT AT NOISE PROTEST

Prairieland Nine: Texas ICE Protesters Get Up to 100 Years in Prison as Trump Targets Anti-Fascists - YouTube

ANTIFA TERROR

Prairieland Nine: Texas ICE Protesters Get Up to 100 Years in Prison as Trump Targets Anti-Fascists

Jun 25, 2026 Latest Shows

:{A group of anti-ICE protesters in Texas were sentenced to 30 to 100 years in jail on Tuesday, after federal prosecutors accused them of being an "antifa terror cell." The activists attended a protest outside the Prairieland ICE jail in Alvarado, Texas, on July 4 of last year, during which fireworks were set off and a police officer was shot and wounded. All nine defendants were found guilty after being tried before a federal judge in Texas.

Matt Sledge, political reporter for The Intercept, warns that "we just have to watch for this playbook to be applied elsewhere." "Now anyone engaged in basic protests with the wrong political beliefs can be labeled a domestic terrorist, when they have no intention of violence, not engaged in any violence, not interested in any violence," says Sufia Khalid, deputy director of the National Security Criminal Defense Center, who represents one of the Prairieland defendants.}:}:

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Jun 25, 2026

You could end up on a watchlist for fighting back in the class war. The feds now consider opposition to data centers, inequality, and Big Tech as potential domestic terrorism. We uncovered how the FBI is colluding with corporate America to surveil ordinary Americans.

We Uncovered A New Government Watchlist. Are You Their Next Target? - YouTube

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cmd

The Heritage Foundation had Andy Ngo, a prominent propagandist for fascists, give a keynote speech about antifascists in 2019.

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goaded into doing report? // nsmp 7

rww -->

Sebastian Gorka released a new counterterrorism strategy on Wednesday, singling out “violent left-wing extremists,” “extreme transgender ideologies,” and “violent secular political groups whose ideology is anti-American, radically pro-transgender, and anarchist.”

Sebastian Gorka released a new counterterrorism strategy on Wednesday, singling out “violent left-wing extremists,” “extreme transgender ideologies,” and “violent secular political groups whose ideology is anti-American, radically pro-transgender, and anarchist.”

As with much that comes out of the Trump administration, the messenger needs to be taken into account with the message. At a press briefing on Wednesday, Gorka replied to a question about what impact the Iran war might have on terrorist threats by calling critics of the war “testicularly challenged,” describing it as a “low-T approach to threats to the United States.”

Low-T refers to low testosterone, and is a term used by extremely online manosphere influencers. Much of the new national counterterrorism strategy reads in a similar vein.

“We have assets outside the realms of hard security in the informational space that were allowed to atrophy in recent years or were used for partisan political purposes,” the strategy reads. “These were previously de-weaponized and must now be reinvigorated to demoralize and delegitimize terror threat groups and their enablers.”

The strategy names three groups as the main terrorist threats to the United States: drug cartels and gangs, “Legacy Islamic Terrorists,” and left-wing radicals, including “anarchists and anti-fascists.”

It’s the latest example of the Trump administration sweeping relatively anodyne left-wing political views into a broader definition of domestic terrorism. In National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7), the White House told federal law enforcement to prioritize those with views including “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity” in investigating domestic terrorism cases. That has been operationalized, TPM exclusively reported, via material support for terrorism cases brought against leftists accused of criminal wrongdoing in prosecutions nationwide.

The new counterterrorism strategy released Wednesday echoed NSPM-7’s terminology and broad folding of disfavored political views into potential threats.

“In addition to cartels and Islamist terror groups, our national CT activities will also prioritize the rapid identification and neutralization of violent secular political groups whose ideology is anti-American, radically pro-transgender, and anarchist,” the strategy reads. “We will use all the tools constitutionally available to us to map them at home, identify their membership, map their ties to international organizations like Antifa, and use law enforcement tools to cripple them operationally before they can maim or kill the innocent.”

The document ignores right-wing extremists, who, studies show, have stacked up more casualties in domestic terrorist attacks over the past several decades. Studies focusing on more recent timeframes suggest that may be changing.

Instead, the document argues that the Biden Administration used counterterrorism authorities to systematically target conservatives. There’s no evidence of that happening; rather, the Trump administration has done more than any other American administration in modern history to make political views with which it disagrees the basis for targeting by law enforcement.

In Gorka’s world, the result is that “as real threats were ignored or underplayed, Americans have witnessed the politically motivated killings of Christians and conservatives committed by violent left-wing extremists, including the assassination of Charlie Kirk by a radical who espoused extreme transgender ideologies.”

The strategy comes after ProPublica ran a story last month focusing on how Gorka, the counterterrorism czar, repeatedly claimed for the better part of a year that he was “on the cusp” of releasing a blueprint for going after terrorism. None had been released. On Monday, ProPublica reported that Gorka accused the reporter of publishing a “putrid piece of hackery.” The strategy was released on Wednesday.

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RWW

02/19/2026

by

Kyle Mantyla

In many democracies, criminal suspects are often held accountable — even if they’re politically powerful, even if they’ve served at the highest levels.

The banner was put up as critics accuse the president of weaponizing the DOJ against his enemies.

FBI Director cites NSPM-7 as enabling crackdown on left-leaning activists.

THE White House wanted investigations into those it describes as left-wing activists and the groups that fund them. And now, FBI Director Kash Patel says, the FBI is delivering.

The FBI is investigating funding associated with left-wing activism, Patel confirmed to longtime podcaster and brief FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino on his recently revived streaming show.

“This FBI, thanks to what we stood up over the last year, has made significant headway under the NSPM-7 process in looking at those who funded these streams,” Patel told Bongino, adding that the bureau is “starting to arrest people who used their funds to incite violence in the guise of political peaceful protest.”

The White House issued NSPM-7 in September, a presidential memo that directed federal law enforcement to investigate ideologies — naming those who espouse “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity” — as potential sources of political violence. That memo has been operationalized in part through several terrorism prosecutions, TPM reported this month. Patel’s remarks suggest that the FBI is implementing the memo to investigate funding sources for left-leaning activist groups.

At the same time, it’s Kash Patel. He’s more a streamer than a law enforcer. Bongino’s brief tenure at the FBI — during which he memorably complained about the workload before the administration took the unprecedented step of appointing a “co-deputy director” to assist him — testifies to some of this. Beyond that, Patel is operating in Trumpworld, a universe where senior officials can curry favor with the president by demonstrating how tough they are in carrying out his fantasies. Even in that credibility-killing environment, Patel has distinguished himself by using his megaphone as FBI director to misstate details in sensitive, ongoing investigations.

One ongoing case that Patel mentioned in Wednesday’s discussion with Bongino is the Prairieland prosecution. The case is the Trump administration’s first terrorism prosecution against a group of people that it has deemed members of “Antifa.” In the case, prosecutors accuse an “Antifa cell” in North Texas of having staged a demonstration outside an ICE detention facility that left one police officer shot and wounded.

After Bongino brought up the case, Patel claimed that there have been more than two dozen federal arrests. Per TPM’s count, sixteen people have been charged in federal court over the incident.

The trial was set to start on Tuesday. But District Judge Mark Pittman for the Northern District of Texas declared a mistrial during jury selection, reportedly after a defense attorney wore a jacket with a T-shirt underneath that featured a picture of Jesse Jackson and other civil rights leaders.

Patel likened the case to the Cop City prosecution in Georgia. There, state prosecutors filed a sprawling RICO indictment against a group of activists that had been protesting the construction of a police training center. Critics accused prosecutors of using the case to silence activists that had no tie to any act of alleged wrongdoing; a judge dismissed the RICO charges in December.

The FBI director said that his agency had to “rearrest everybody” in order to compensate for errors in the state investigation. It’s unclear what he was referring to. No federal charges have been filed in the Cop City case.

He did suggest that his leadership had seen a change in the FBI’s focus to “Antifa,” the chimerical group of beliefs that Trump II leadership has held up as a national, internal enemy.

Federal law enforcement is not only pursuing foreign threats, he said, “but those who cause violence here in America and use the guise of politics to delete that violence.”

Threats from the administration to investigate ideologically opposed charities spread fear in the nonprofit community last year. Some, per TPM’s reporting, sought to move money overseas; others considered whether to incorporate subsidiary fiscal sponsors as separate organizations.

He reminded Bongino that the two of them had “launched a serious investigation” when the podcaster was in government last year.

“We had said these organizations don’t operate alone, don’t operate in silence. They operate with a heavy heavy stream of funding,” Patel said. “And we started looking into it. And guess what, Dan? We found them.”

Josh Kovenskyis an investigative reporter for Talking Points Memo, based in New York. He previously worked for the Kyiv Post in Ukraine, covering politics, business, and corruption there.

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Sex workers, bankruptcy, stolen valor, a restraining order, and Trump’s “Complete and Total” endorsement for Congress.

A strategically-timed retirement announcement means the GOP could soon have another seat to fill on the high court.

Shirley’s new California video is little more than a rehashing of O’Keefe’s bogus claims from over a decade ago.

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1 26 no action taken? shapley IRS pledge to get soros terror 3 BS

nspm7?

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The Trump administration is using secretive orders to crackdown on dissent

SARAH MCL

Imagine finding out that the government is issuing secretive orders to unearth your personal information and then sending federal agents to question you — all because you sent an email criticizing the life-or-death decisions the government makes.

That sounds like something out of China, Russia or the increasingly dystopian United Kingdom, right? Well this time, it’s happening here.

The Trump administration is reportedly abusing oversight-free administrative subpoenas to chill protected speech. Recent targets include a man who sent an email criticizing efforts to deport an Afghan man on humanitarian parole seeking asylum.

Our right to express ourselves, particularly in ways that displease the government, is under attack — sometimes echoing authoritarian censorship efforts abroad.

While subpoenas have been used to chill speech across numerous presidencies, the way this administration is using them, and the broader repressive pattern they are part of, should disturb all Americans. As The Washington Post reported this week, a Philadelphia-area retiree wrote an email to a federal prosecutor last year asking him to “[a]pply principles of common sense and decency” to the deportation case of an Afghan man, who feared death at the hands of the Taliban. Only the retiree’s first name, Jon, is given, as he fears for his safety.

Only hours later, to Jon’s shock, he received a notice from Google that the company had received a subpoena compelling the release of identifying information, including older account activity and his physical address. The Department of Homeland Security issued an administrative subpoena, which doesn’t require the oversight of a judge or grand jury, to get Jon’s information. DHS attempted a similar stunt to target internet commenters who posted about Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

That was not Jon’s only brush with DHS. Agents would also soon show up at his door with a copy of the email he’d sent and ask him to explain himself.

There is no better guarantee of the right to speak and criticize our government than the First Amendment, which stands as guard between us and the power of the state. But our right to express ourselves, particularly in ways that displease the government, is under attack — sometimes echoing authoritarian censorship efforts abroad. Americans must understand that with enough time and pressure, even the strongest of foundations can weather down to dust.

These administrative subpoenas intended to unmask critics of government action are just the tip of the speech-chilling iceberg.

Between these disturbing allegations, recent alarming on-camera encounters between civilians and law enforcement and the ceaseless incursions from the Trump administration against our First Amendment rights, Americans must recognize that the United States is failing as a bulwark for liberty in a world increasingly bereft of it.

Alex Pretti’s death at the hands of federal agents in Minneapolis last month was deeply alarming. Rather than immediately commit to an intensive investigation of what took place, officials such as Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem spread the unfounded claim that Pretti tried to “kill” law enforcement. Senior adviser Stephen Miller called Pretti an “assassin” who “tried to murder federal agents.” The administration has since started to shy away from these fantastical claims after Americans could watch the video for themselves.

Their narrative might still stand, however, had protesters nearby not caught the shooting on camera from multiple angles. But that First Amendment right to film law enforcement is increasingly under attack. DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said filming and posting videos of ICE is “doxing our agents” and the government “will prosecute those who illegally harass ICE agents to the fullest extent of the law.” Pretti himself had been recording agents with his cell phone moments before he was killed.

U.S. federal agents also appear to be creating a database to track protesters and observers who are legally and peacefully exercising their First Amendment rights. In an encounter a woman filmed in Maine, an ICE agent told her he’s recording her information for a “nice little database” for “domestic terrorists” like her. A CNN report confirms a DHS memo informing agents to “capture all images, license plates, identifications, and general information on hotels, agitators, protestors, etc., so we can capture it all in one consolidated form.” News of this database follows in the footsteps of Attorney General Pam Bondi’s plan to crack down on “domestic terror organizations,” using a framework that targets broad ideologies such as “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity” as markers of political violence rather than constitutionally protected beliefs.

You may be familiar with lists of alleged anti-government activists from their other iterations in Belarus, Russia and China. The lists are frightening. What governments do with them is usually even worse.

The distance between freedom and tyranny is shrinking fast — and so is our window to combat it.

And many Americans were rightfully shocked by a “60 Minutes” exposé of German censorship last year, which included raids on the homes of social media users who had insulted politicians, and by regular reports from other nations such as the U.K., where a late-night knock at the door from police has become disturbingly commonplace. In Germany, the government treats insults to politicians more, not less, harshly than other forms of insult, essentially exempting the powerful from upsetting speech.

That’s the opposite of how we view political speech in the U.S. — with great power must come a thick skin.

But the Trump administration doesn’t see it that way. In fact, ICE and DHS leadership have undertaken a concerted effort in recent months to pervert the concept of “doxing,” the sharing of identifying information about an individual, into one so broad it includes simply saying the name of the men and women who serve as armed agents of the state. Administration officials have repeatedly — and wrongly — suggested this “doxing” is illegal.

Imagine a United States in which federal agents have the authority to fire their weapons as representatives of the government, and yet everyday Americans aren’t even free to state clearly who or where those agents are. Even worse, those same Americans may find themselves on a clandestine government database for engaging in protected speech. Or, like Jon, they could even face a secretive administrative subpoena followed by a knock at the door from DHS agents.

“Secret police” cannot be a necessary term in the American vernacular, but if we do not stem the tide of these First Amendment violations and transgressions, it may become one. The distance between freedom and tyranny is shrinking fast — and so is our window to combat it.

The post The Trump administration is using secretive orders to crackdown on dissent appeared first on MS NOW.

This article was originally published on ms.now

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A New Book Explores Antifa’s Spy Network | HuffPost Latest News

inside The Antifa Spy Network

Donald Trump’s fascism builds on generations of racial supremacy. A new book goes inside the secretive antifa groups fighting for freedom.

By Matt Shuham

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|Updated Jan 30, 2026

Anti-fascists in 2018 march near the site of a makeshift memorial where Heather Heyer was killed at the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, the year before.

Win McNamee via Getty Images

At a diner next to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, five men took turns loudly saying a racial slur to prove they are bona fide members of Patriot Front, a white nationalist organization.

Sometime later, one of them returned, alone, with a $300 tip and a message for their server, a woman of color: “Those guys aren’t my friends.”

The man, “Vincent,” was one of several “antifa” spies around the country who had gone undercover in fascist groups. Over several months, he worked out, hiked and camped with a group of committed white nationalists. He joined them as they dropped propaganda banners and vandalized public artwork depicting people of color.

Months later, in the middle of a nationwide Patriot Front video call, Vincent started playing a recording of “Bella Ciao,” the Italian anti-fascist anthem. “You guys really forgot to remove the antifa spy’s access?” he taunted them.

While embedded with Patriot Front, Vincent expropriated reams of previously unknown membership data and logistical information that allowed other anti-fascists, in anonymous collectives around the country, to “dox,” or publicly identify, the group’s members. These collectives vandalized extremists’ vehicles, alerted their neighbors and employers — and, step by step, worked to shrink their influence in American public life. Similar infiltrations have hit several neo-Nazi and white nationalist groups around the country over the years.

For years, the journalist — and former longtime HuffPost reporter — Christopher Mathias chronicled these efforts, cultivating sources from antifa groups across the country, verifying the information they gathered, and publicly outing cops, teachers and members of the military who led secret double lives as neo-Nazis and white power activists. (Mathias and I reported several stories together for HuffPost, including about Donald Trump’s fascism.)

Mathias’ new book, “To Catch a Fascist: The Fight to Expose the Radical Right,” takes readers behind the scenes of the fight to push back against the rising tide of fascism since Trump entered the political sphere over a decade ago.

Some may think the antifa movement is just about punching Nazis in the street, but as Mathias’ book explores, it’s about a lot more than that. It builds on generations of activists fighting for civil rights and pushing back against racial domination in the U.S. “To Catch A Fascist” takes a look back at this long history through today, as Trump’s second term delivers armed, masked federal agents to communities nationwide, stopping people at random because of their skin color and accents.

“Throughout history, when fascists wear masks, they do so in hopes of creating a world in which they won’t need masks at all,” Mathias told me this week. “I think it is an alarming and scary prospect to consider a world in which [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] agents feel comfortable not wearing masks.”

More observers than ever seem to be saying, “Yes, it’s fascism.” But Mathias and plenty of others have been saying that for a while. He spoke to HuffPost about antifa’s “fundamentally hopeful … struggle against impossible odds,” modern fascism, and what connects Minneapolis and Charlottesville, Virginia.

*This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

How do you think about the interplay between street-level fascist thugs committing violence and what it means for the most powerful government in history to be a fascist government?

Reporting and researching this book made me completely rethink what fascism is and the way we talk about it. So much punditry over the last 10 years, during the Trump era, has revolved around this question: “Is it fascism? Could it happen here? Is it happening here?” And there was always this impulse to suggest that, “Once we reach a certain point, it’s fascism.” Once it’s analogous to Mussolini’s Italy or Hitler’s Germany, then we can call it fascism.

What’s really interesting from the militant anti-fascist perspective is that there’s not a certain threshold we cross before things become fascist. Throughout American history, fascism has been a fact of life for many people.

There is a mythology we tell ourselves as Americans that we defeated fascism in World War II. And obviously, yes, the U.S. Army — my grandfather was part of that — defeated the Nazis. But the U.S. Army was also a segregated army. It was a colonial army. And when Black soldiers fighting in segregated units returned to the United States, they returned to Jim Crow and, later, mass incarceration. If you were, for example, a Black man swept up in mass incarceration, unjustly incarcerated for years and years of your life, what is the material difference between that experience and the experience of living in a fascist state the way we talk about it, in Europe? I would argue that it’s kind of negligible — that is a fascist experience.

So this is basically my way of saying, I’m glad people are calling what’s happening now fascist. And I think what is happening now is an intensification of these underlying social arrangements, these underlying dynamics of domination, and making those dynamics more and more explicit.

One of the foremost scholars of fascism, Robert Paxton, initially decided not to call Trump a fascist when he came to power in 2016. After Jan. 6, 2021, he revised that assessment and declared Trump a fascist. Obviously we’re at a point now where — there are just so many elements that point to calling Trump a fascist. I mean, he’s threatening to invade Greenland, and he has a secret police force raiding people’s homes [without warrants]. So it’s pretty blatant by this point.

A lot of your book is a corrective of the use of the term “antifa” and particularly how it’s become an all-purpose bogeyman for Trump and the right. To them, “antifa” is an “outside agitator,” but also they’re destroying their own communities. They’re “super soldiers,” but they’re also feminine, blue-haired transgender socialists. Talk about that label “antifa” and how it became so useful for propaganda on the right. Is it to create a pretext to confront racial justice activists while armed?

Totally. What’s really important context is that no one in America knew what the fuck antifa was before 2017.

And all the sudden, with Trump’s inauguration, you have Richard Spencerget punched in Washington, D.C. And then, as the far right is emboldened and mobilized across the country — in places like Berkeley and Gainesville and Lansing and Charlottesville, where Nazis felt like they could go on the street and make their presence known — all of a sudden there are these leftists, radical leftists, sometimes wearing all black, punching these Nazis. And these videos obviously go viral, and there’s a thousand explainers in the media about who these Nazi punchers are, and they are antifa.

[After the deadly “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville,] Merriam-Webster adds “antifa” to its dictionary, Oxford Dictionary short-lists “antifa” for its “word of the year.” That’s how, suddenly, the word became part of our lexicon, through this militancy. So most of the public associates antifa with just Nazi-punching. But in reality, that tactic — physical confrontation — represents a really tiny percentage of the work antifa does.

So in 2017, suddenly everyone knows who antifa is. And something really interesting happens after Charlottesville — when the right and MAGA finds itself on the defensive [because] Trump has called them “very fine people,” and it’s become obvious that this MAGA coalition includes Nazis, that these Nazis are very violent, and that they just killed someone in Charlottesville.

There is a pseudonymous pro-Trump troll called Microchip who starts a viral petition to the White House to designate antifa a domestic terror group. And Microchip gives this fascinating interview to Politico that’s incredibly frank and upfront about why he’s doing this. He knows that the White House can’t designate antifa a terror group because there’s no statute for that. That’s not the point. The point, as he puts it, is to set up antifa as a punching bag, and to distract and deflect from the right’s very real violence, and create this false equivalency where, “Yeah, we have our extremists, but look, the left has their extremists too!” Which is an absurd equivalence, of course. The far right has killed hundreds by this point over the previous couple decades, and antifa, at this point, hasn’t killed anyone.

And what happens throughout 2017, 2018, 2019 is, you have these far-right and MAGA influencers — guys like Jack Posobiec, Mike Cernovich, Andy Ngo and a lot of other people — who create conspiracy theories about antifa.

After nearly every mass shooting in America — even before America knew who the shooter was or what their motives were — they would rush to fill that information vacuum with baseless claims that the shooter was antifa. Even if later it proved that the shooter was actually a white supremacist, by that point, the waters have been muddied and people are confused.

Antifa gets blamed for natural disasters, for wildfires. There’s a rumor that antifa “super soldiers” are going to behead white parents. It’s absurd, and again, this is all to distract and deflect from the right’s escalating violence in America.

“To Catch a Fascist: The Fight to Expose the Radical Right,” by former HuffPost reporter Christopher Mathias, will be released next week.

Atria Books

[Eventually,] there’s a bit of a lull in the way the antifa bogeyman is used, but then in 2020 it’s repackaged as a response to the George Floyd uprisings. MAGA, Trump — they blame antifa for fomenting these mass, historic uprisings, which, again, is absurd. Yes, its practitioners did take part in the uprisings, but their numbers are so small that they would never have the power or organizing capacity to foment uprisings like that.

Moreover, those uprisings, as we know, were created and led by the communities that they were in, and they were Black-led uprisings. And that’s why MAGA and Trump blamed antifa for these uprisings in a big way — to distract from the very real grievance at the heart of the protest, which was for cops to stop murdering Black people.

It was also a tactic to sow division on the left — entangling the left in debates about tactics and so forth. The way they wield that label, they eventually start calling anyone they want antifa. And that’s just a way of designating someone as outside the realm of political respectability. When you do that, you are creating a pretext for that person to be targeted, either by state prosecution or by vigilante violence, which we saw a lot of in 2020.

Fast forward to 2025, Trump claims to designate antifa a domestic terror group — which, again, is an effort to label this burgeoning uprising against his agenda as outside the realm of political respectability and worth repressing.

Talk about the difference between “antifa” as a term and anti-fascist as an ideology or description.

When I say “antifa,” there is an important distinction to make. Antifa, yes, is just the shortening of the word “anti-fascist.” A lot of liberals and centrists will point to that fact as a way of saying, “Well, aren’t we all antifa?” It’s kind of a way of saying, “Antifa isn’t a real thing,” or that it doesn’t exist. But that’s not true. Antifa, as a word, refers to a very specific kind of militant radical tradition of combating the far right “by any means necessary.”

And when I talk about antifa, these are activists who practice a political tradition that believes in a few basic tenets: First, that, yes, sometimes fascists need to be confronted in the streets, sometimes violently. Fascists should be given no platform to speak or organize. That means revoking permits for them to speak in cities or parks, or de-platforming them from social media.

Another important tenet is that the state and law enforcement cannot be trusted in this fight. And that essentially means they view the government and law enforcement as inherently white institutions that will collaborate with and support fascists.

Antifa didn’t emerge out of nowhere. It emerged from preexisting networks of anarchists, socialists and communists — largely from a tradition born in the ’80s and ’90s to kick Nazis out of the punk scene, and the formations of groups like Anti-Racist Action and Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice, and they basically developed those tenets we talked about, those points of unity when combating the far right.

Q {You mentioned that there’s a tendency to say, “Well, I’m anti-fascist, and my grandfather was anti-fascist in World War II.” But you get into the history of anti-fascists, of doxing fascists, in the book, and the history traces back well before either of those words existed — before doxing existed, before the word fascist existed. You go back to investigative journalist Ida B. Wells. You go back to Walter White, who investigated lynchings in the early 20th century for the NAACP. You go back to Frank Schwab — the mayor of Buffalo who revealed the identities of 18,500 people who were members of the KKK in the area, posting their names at the city’s police headquarters — and the undercover detectives who infiltrated the Klan. Why was it so important to you to get into that history of very specialized resistance to racial domination?}:

So Langston Hughes made this point. “Negroes in America do not have to be told what fascism is in action. We know. Its theories of Nordic supremacy and economic suppression have long been realities to us,” [Hughes said in 1937, at the Second International Writers Congress in Paris.]

What I find frustrating about the discourse about fascism in America, again, is this mythology we tell ourselves that we’re the good guys who defeated the fascism. Robert Paxton, the scholar of fascism I mentioned, has described the Klan as the proto-fascist organization, right? Nazi Germany looked to Jim Crow laws in America for inspiration for its own race laws in Germany. America, in many ways, was fascist before the word fascist existed.

“Throughout American history, fascism has been a fact of life for many people. ... America, in many ways, was fascist before the word fascist existed.”

Christopher Mathias

What I found so compelling about efforts to unmask the First and Second Klans was, first, just how insanely brave that work was — people really putting their bodies on the line.

Edward Obertean, an undercover police officer who infiltrated the Klan in Buffalo, was murdered afterwards by a Klan member.

The history of white supremacy in America is marked by periods where its most ardent practitioners wore masks, and periods when they didn’t need to.

The First Klan is born to destroy Reconstruction. There’s an amazing effort to unmask them, and it’s successful in a lot of ways in destroying the Klan. But part of the reason that Klan dissolves is also because they were successful. They could trade the anonymity of the hood for the anonymity of the lynch mob.

The Second Klan, same kind of thing — an amazing effort to unmask them that goes a long way in destroying the Second Klan. But again, they were also dissolved, in a way, because they were successful. The 1924 immigration law is passed, the Johnson-Reed Act — and Johnson, the congressman, by the way, was in the Klan — and created these immigration quotas, which, incidentally, are the quotas that restrict immigration to Northern Europe, and is kind of what the modern far-right, including Stephen Miller, wants to go back to.

For me, it was really important to tell those stories, because I actually find them really inspiring. The people doing this work didn’t wait on anyone to save them. They understood that we have to save ourselves, and they didn’t always get to see the fruit of their work. The work they did would contribute to later victories.

Q {You talk a lot about antifa’s work as modern-day journalists. In my opinion, the anonymous collectives that comprise your description of antifa are some of the most skilled journalists working in the country today. That might be a surprise to readers, but to folks who have covered the “extremism” beat, they know. I mean, how many of your own stories that were published in HuffPost stemmed from that sort of work? Reading your book, it was striking to me how much projects like “Panic! In the Discord” or “Ignite The Right” sound like “The Panama Papers” — that is, collectives of journalists working together on a large project. Talk about the skill of these folks as journalists, and whether you think they get their due.}:

No, I don’t think they get their due. There is still this presiding snobbery in journalism that says you have to write for this outlet or that outlet to be considered a journalist. There’s also what I would consider an antiquated notion of objectivity around journalism that says that people doing the type of research that antifa does couldn’t possibly be journalists. I push back against that in the book and am upfront in the intro about the fact I, myself, subscribe to militant anti-fascism.

I do not think that objectivity exists or that there is a “view from nowhere” to report on masked secret police abducting my neighbors. And that is the perspective that antifa also takes. And if we are to consider journalism, first and foremost, to be in the public interest and for the public good, then I think journalism should be explicitly anti-fascist. The investigations that antifa did over the last 10 years were absolutely remarkable sometimes. I talked to one anti-fascist who read through 60,000 tweets to collect enough little morsels and clues and bread crumbs to unravel a Nazi’s identity.

You compared the leaks of Nazi chat messages to The Panama Papers, which is a really apt description. It goes grossly underappreciated that Unicorn Riot, the independent news outlet, created an absolutely remarkable database for leaked white supremacist chat messages — millions and millions of these messages that were open-source material that anti-fascist researchers across the country could mine and look through to figure out who among their neighbors is a Nazi. And that’s a remarkable story and a remarkable feat of journalism.

Talk about the source relationships that you have with anti-fascists. I take it you’ve been talking to some of these folks, unnamed sources of yours, for a decade, or at least many years. How did those source relationships develop over the years, and how have they changed you as a reporter?

It took a long time to gain the trust of anti-fascist sources. They are, understandably, wary of the press. And also, I take their trust in me very seriously, because there are fascists out there that want to harm them. So it’s important for me to protect their identities. And, of course, the state also wants to target antifa, so it adds an extra level [of concern].

But yes, I’ve been talking to so many people for upwards of a decade now. For the book, I ended up talking to about 60. What is most striking for me is that almost everyone involved in this work started doing it after personal brushes with fascists in their communities.

One anti-fascist I talked to a lot, her friend lost someone in the El Paso Walmart massacre, which inspired her to start doing this work.

One of the things that prompted me to do this book was seeing them do that work — neither for glory or acclaim — and also seeing diminishing returns when they were doing the doxes; for a while there, they were getting Nazis fired from their jobs and there was real accountability. But then, something started to shift, and occasionally there were towns where they didn’t care that they had a Nazi as a neighbor. And so I started to talk to anti-fascists about what that meant for American politics in general.

You spoke about inciting incidents for people to get involved in this work. You were at “Unite The Right” in Charlottesville in 2017. You sawDeAndre Harris being beaten. Can you talk about that as an inciting incident for a lot of journalists of the far right and the effect it had on you?

Anyone who was in Charlottesville on Aug. 12, 2017, had their lives irrevocably changed afterward. For me, it was the beginning of this long kind of reporting journey into this new, insurgent fascist movement — and then, eventually, into the anti-fascist opposition. But more generally — on a visceral, emotional level — when you see, up close, that kind of vile racism and bigotry so comfortable with itself in public, you start to realize how urgent the need is to fight back against it.

Especially in reporting this, I had a front-row seat to seeing how what we considered fringe in our politics actually wasn’t that fringe at all, and that the Republican Party was becoming the party of the Nazis that marched in Charlottesville. So, it’s just a radicalizing process. There’s no way around it.

What would you say to folks in Minneapolis today, who, I think you would argue, are looking at a different form of fascist violence, a traumatic sort of street violence, except this time it’s performed by the federal government?

I cannot stop thinking about the similarities between the uprising against ICE in Minneapolis and the uprising against all the fascists that were taking to the streets in 2017 through 2020. They’re embracing the same organic, grassroots tactics that are not dependent on law enforcement or the government, which, in Minneapolis, has kind of abandoned them. They have to do this on their own.

And they’re doing all the stuff that anti-fascists were doing to Nazis a few years ago — which was following them, monitoring them, identifying them, doxing them, pressuring businesses and hotels not to host them. They’re doing noise demonstrations outside of hotels. They are creating a social cost for being in ICE, for being part of the secret police, for being part of la migra, which is really heartening and really remarkable and really brave, and the similarities are really striking.

You talked to an ex-member of Patriot Front in the last chapter of this book, and he essentially laid out the argumentfordoxing. He explained that when people think of Patriot Front, “the first thing they think is, ‘If I join Patriot Front, I will be doxed.’” On the other hand, he noted, once unmasked, fascists sometimes dive further into those communities as a support network.

There is also the question of, what happens when the social stigma around white supremacy is gone? Given the strength of fascism in America today, given its position inside the U.S. government, if antifa 10 years ago saw what was going to happen, do you think there would have been a change in tactic? How are these tactics changing now?

There’s this debate over whether antifa was successful. Because, obviously, they destroyed all these fascist groups. But of course, now, we have a much broader mass fascist movement, MAGA. It’s an interesting question, and I don’t have a clear answer.

But what antifa does at the local level is an insurgent form of community self-defense, and it was an urgent, pressing political tactic — or style of politics — that prevented Nazis from being comfortable in specific places, the streets. And in that way, it was really successful.

But you also have to remember, antifa is an incredibly small subculture — a small phenomenon or movement. It would never have had the members to stop what is happening now. That said, like I was saying with Minneapolis, we are seeing an adaptation of militant anti-fascist tactics on a bigger scale.

I personally think that those kinds of tactics, if replicated on a big enough basis, could be really effective. And I’ll say that there’s a reason MAGA — Kristi Noem, Trump — are so scared of efforts to dox ICE agents. And that’s in part because MAGA saw what doxing did to the alt-right. And doxing, again, is dependent on leveraging a societal taboo against explicit white supremacy. And I think doxing, identifying ICE agents, for example, is an important part of creating and maintaining a taboo against being in ICE.

I think it will be important now to let people in ICE know that they are the Nazis in this movie, and that in a generation, they will be depicted as villains in the movies their kids watch. We are already seeing public opinion turning against ICE. A [YouGov poll taken the day immigration agents fatally shot Alex Pretti in Minneapolis showed 19% of Republicans and 46% of American adults overall indicating support for abolishing ICE.] That is remarkable.

I quote an anti-fascist in the book saying that anti-fascism is fundamentally hopeful, that it’s a struggle against impossible odds. And I find that example of anti-fascists over the last few years, actually, very inspiring for this fascist moment that we’re in right now.

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AN 1 26

Despite denials from a senior Trump administration official, secret watchlists of Americans are being used by federal agencies to track and categorize US citizens—especially protesters, activists, and critics of law enforcement—as “domestic terrorists,” investigative journalist Ken Klippenstein reported Wednesday.

Klippenstein said that two senior national security officials speaking on condition of anonymity told him that there are over a dozen “secret and obscure” watchlists that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the FBI are using to track anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and pro-Palestine protesters, antifa-affiliated individuals, and “others who are promiscuously labeled ‘domestic terrorists.’”

“I can reveal for the first time,” he wrote, “that some of the secret lists and applications go by codenames like Bluekey, Grapevine, Hummingbird, Reaper, Sandcastle, Sienna, Slipstream, and Sparta (including the ominous sounding HEL-A and HEL-C reports generated by Sparta).”

“Some of these, like Hummingbird, were created to vet and track immigrants, in this case Afghans seeking to settle in the United States,” Klippenstein explained. “Slipstream is a classified social media repository. Others are tools used to link people on the streets together, including collecting on friends and families who have nothing to do with any purported lawbreaking.”

“There’s practically nothing available that further describes what these watchlists do, how large they are, or what they entail,” he added.

Klippenstein’s revelation seemingly flies in the face of DHS Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin’s recent denial that the administration has a database containing the names of people accused of domestic terrorism.

“There’s just one problem: She’s lying,” wrote Klippenstein.

Many observers already thought as much, especially after a masked federal enforcer taunted an anti-ICE protester in Maine by telling her that “we have a nice little database, and now you’re considered a domestic terrorist.”

White House “border czar” Tom Homan—who was recently sent to Minnesota to oversee the anti-immigrant blitz following the departure of Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino amid outrage over the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti—also said this month that “we’re going to create a database where those people that are arrested for interference, impeding, and assault, we’re going to make them famous.”

Reporting Tuesday that Pretti—the nurse who was disarmed and then shot dead by federal enforcers in Minneapolis last week—was known to Trump officials after a previous encounter in which agentsbroke his rib raised further questions about government watchlists.

“We came out of 9/11 with the notion that we would have a single ‘terrorist’ watch list to eliminate confusion, duplication, and avoid bad communications, but ever since January 6, not only have we expanded exponentially into purely domestic watchlisting, but we have also created a highly secretive and compartmented superstructure that few even understand,” a DHS attorney “intimately familiar” with the matter told Klippenstein on condition of anonymity, referring to the deadly January 2021 Capitol insurrection.

According to Klippenstein:

Prior to 9/11, there were nine federal agencies that maintained 12 separate watchlists. Now, officially there are just three: a watch list of 1.1 million international terrorists, a watch list of more than 10,000 domestic terrorists maintained by the FBI, and a new watch list of transnational criminals, built up to more than 85,000 over the past decade...Among other functions, the new watchlists process tips, situation reports, and collected photographs and video submitted by both the public and from agents in the field; they create a “common operating picture” in places like Minneapolis; they allow task forces to target individuals for surveillance and arrest; and they create the capacity for intelligence people to link individuals together through geographic proximity or what is labeled “call chaining” by processing telephone numbers, emails, and other contact information.

Asked about how the Trump administration might try to legally justify these watchlists, Rachel Levinson-Waldman, the Brennan Center for Justice’s Liberty and National Security Program director, cited President Donald Trump’s National Security Presidential Memo 7 (NSPM-7), which 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.”

Levinson-Waldman also noted Attorney General Pam Bondi’s December 5 memo directing federal agencies to expand the investigation and prosecution of “domestic terrorism,” including groups “aligned” with antifa, an anti-fascist ideology that does not exist as an organization.

One senior intelligence official who confirmed the existence of the watchlists warned Klippenstein: “Lists of this and that—this social media post, that video taken of someone videoing ICE, the mere attendance at a protest—gets pulsed by federal cops on the beat to check for criminality but eventually just becomes a list itself of criminality, with the cops thinking that indeed they are dealing with criminals and terrorists. Watchlists, and the whole watchlisting process, should be as transparent as possible, not the other way around.”

“If we don’t explore more why all of these secret lists exist,” the official added, there could be “even more of an environment of paranoia on the ground and more tragic killings.”

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MMA

Discussing Minnesota, FBI Director Kash Patel says “some of the best reporting” has been through Benny Johnson and Cam Higby: “As soon as Higby put that post out, I opened an investigation on it”

01/26/26

January 26, 2026, edition of The Benny Show, streamed to YouTube

BENNY JOHNSON (HOST): This is incredible to hear, and this has now been exposed with some of these Signal chat leaks, the independent journalist who had done the exposing was just on right before you and wanted to ask about this. He says that he has submitted some of the information that was available. There are top level leaders inside of the political infrastructure of Minnesota who are on these chats, and, obviously, you can't conspire in order to attack federal agents. This is something that is at scale. They have license plate readers. They're able to identify these agents. They're able to dox them, find out where they're sleeping at night. Is any of this legal, Kash?

KASH PATEL (FBI DIRECTOR): That's exactly what we're investigating. Look, again, the First Amendment, you wanna go peacefully protest, do it. You wanna bring your firearm, under the law, you're allowed to bring it as long as you don't incite violence and or commit another crime in doing so.

What we're asking people to do, what I'm asking people to do is on the ground in Minnesota is, why would you bring a firearm in a situation that is so volatile right now, where so many arrests have been made, where so many people are coordinating to attack and expose federal law enforcement officers? That is just not smart. It is just not going to lead to a good scenario. And so we need everybody to tamp down, obviously, on that side.

But you're right, some of the best reporting has been through you, and, I think Mr. Higby was just on before I was, and other individuals. Just so you guys know, we look at all this stuff. As soon as Higby put that post out, I opened an investigation on it.

Just like any other case, when we say, hey, quote, unquote, there was an attack in downtown Seattle. Does the public have information? We, the FBI, are looking to the public for information on these events. We immediately opened up that investigation because that sort of Signal chat being coordinated with individuals, not just locally in Minnesota, but maybe even around the country, if that leads to a break in the federal statute or a violation of some law, then we are going to arrest people. You cannot create a scenario that illegally entraps and puts law enforcement in harm's way.

Now, we will balance the First and Second Amendment constantly, but we have to let the community know that we will not tolerate acts of violence and an escalation and a violation of the federal code. There has to be a break point, and you've seen it broken in Minneapolis time and time again.

  1. ### Right-wing streamer Asmongold on Alex Pretti shooting: “There's literally no excuse for it”

01/26/26

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PRETTI AND GOOD CALLED TERROR RT AWAY THEN 3X DOWN

MMA

  1. ### Megyn Kelly: Minnesota protesters are “terrorists” who must “behave well and submit immediately”

01/26/26

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AN 1 26

Following the recent shooting of Renee Good by an agent for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the United States, the Donald Trump administration’s latest narrative suggests that “deluded wine moms” are to blame for the violence in ICE-related demonstrations in Minneapolis and across the country.

This mother-blaming is nothing more than an old trick with a new spin.

Organized gangs of ‘wine moms’

A Fox News columnist recently wrote that “organized gangs of wine moms” are using “antifa tactics” to “harass and impede” ICE activity. In the opinion piece, he claimed that “confusion” over the what constitutes civil disobedience is what “got 37-year-old Renee Good killed.”

Similarly, Vice-President J.D. Vance called Good a “deranged leftist” while a new acronym, AWFUL — Affluent White Female Urban Liberal — has appeared on social media.

In framing protesters like Good, a mother of three, as confused, aggressive and “delusional,” this narrative delegitimizes and pathologizes maternal activism.

This strategy aims to divert blame from the U.S. government and its heavy-handed approach to immigration — which has resulted in yet another slaying of a protester by ICE agents in Minneapolis, this time a male nurse who was reportedly coming to the aid of a female demonstrator — while also drawing on a centuries-old strategy of blaming mothers for social problems.

What makes a ‘wine mom?’

The term “wine mom” emerged over the last two decades as a cultural symbol of the contemporary white, suburban mother who turns to a nightly glass of wine (or two) to cope with the stresses of daily life.

The archetype goes back much further, reflected in literature, film and television characters, such as the wily Lucille Bluth of Arrested Development.

Yet, this motif is less light-hearted than assumed: a recent systematic review reveals a strong link between maternal drinking and stress, especially for working mothers.

While it would be easy to view problematic drinking as another example of maternal failure, it is important not to. Here’s why.

Mother-blame in history

Throughout history, mothers have found themselves in the midst of what American sociologist Linda Blum calls a “mother-valor/mother-blame binary.”

When behaving in accordance with socially acceptable and desirable parameters — that is with warmth, femininity and selflessness — mothers are viewed as “good.” When mothers violate these norms, whether by choice, circumstance or by virtue of their race or class position, they’re “bad mothers.”

Mother-blame ultimately reflects the belief that mothers are solely responsible for their children’s behaviour and outcomes, along with the cultural tendency to blame them when things go wrong. Yet, as Blum points out, “mother-blame also serves as a metaphor for a range of political fears.”

Perhaps the most striking example of this is the suffrage movement, which represented a direct challenge to patriarchal notions that women belonged in the domestic sphere and lacked the intelligence to engage in political discourse.

Suffragettes in the United Kingdom — many of them mothers — occasionally used extreme tactics, such as window-smashing and arson, while women in the U.S. obstructed traffic and waged hunger strikes.

These activists were framed as threatening to not only the establishment, but also to families and the moral fabric of society.

Ironically, despite the fact that women’s entry into politics led to increased spending and improved outcomes related to women, children, families and health care, scholars have found that mother-blaming was as common after the women’s movement as it was before.

Contemporary mother-blame

Beyond political matters, contemporary mother-blame is rampant in other domains.

Mothers have been blamed for a wide variety of their children’s psychological problems, including anxiety, depression and inherited trauma. In media and literature, mothers are often blamed for criminality and violence, reflecting the notion that “mothers make monsters.”

When children struggle in school, educators and administrators may blame the mother. Mothers risk being called “too passive” if they don’t advocate for their children or “too aggressive” when they do.

Similarly, the “crazy woman” or “hysterical mother” is a well-known trope in custody law, and mothers may be blamed even when their children are abused by others. Mass shootings? Mom’s failure. The list goes on.

By setting up mothering as a high-stakes endeavour, the cultural norm of mother-blame also serves to “divide and conquer.”

In my sociology research, I found that mothers on Facebook worked to align themselves with like-minded “superior” mothers, while distancing themselves from perceived “inferior” mothers. This feeds into the cultural norm of “combative mothering,” which pits mothers against each other.

An old trick with a new spin

The “wine mom” narrative builds on this historical pattern of mother-blame. It is meant to trivialize, delegitimize, divide and denigrate mothers who are, in fact, well-organized and motivated activists concerned for their communities.

While there are legitimate concerns around maternal drinking as a coping mechanism, the “wine mom” label has begun to represent something different. Mothers are reclaiming the title to expand their cause.

As @sara_wiles, promoting the activist group @redwineblueusa stated on Instagram: “They meant to scare us back into the kitchen, but our actual response is, ‘Oh, I want to join!’”

We should acknowledge that rather than causing societal problems, mothers have a long history of trying to fix them, even if imperfectly. Mothers like Renee Good are no exception.

Darryn DiFrancesco, Assistant Professor, School of Nursing, Faculty of Human and Health Sciences, *University of Northern British Columbia

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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viral minnesota 12 25 islaMophobe // welfare queen?

intercept

the day after Christmas, far-right YouTuber Nick Shirley posted a video claiming to have exposed fraud at Somali-owned day care centers in Minnesota. Portions of the 42-minute video — mostly scenes where Shirley is turned away at the day cares — went viral in conservative circles, catching the attention of the Trump administration, which was already at work targeting Minnesota’s Somali community amid its broader war on immigrants.

Thevideo, which has been viewed more than 2.2 million times on YouTube and millions more on other platforms, sparked a renewed crackdown in Minneapolis, with the Department of Homeland Security announcing on Monday it would visit 30 sites suspected of fraud across the city. A DHS official told CBS News Minnesota its agents would focus on a “little of everything,” when asked whether immigration enforcement would be a part of the crackdown. Threatening arrests, the agency posted a video to X in which agents enter a smoke shop and question an employee about a nearby day care center.

This isn’t the first time the conservative YouTuber has gotten the attention of the Trump administration. Shirley participated in President Donald Trump’s “Roundtable on Antifa” in October after an altercation at an anti-ICE protest. At age 23, his videos aren’t merely influencing his audiences — they’re also influencing government action.

This worries immigrant rights advocates, who fear that the fallout from Shirley’s video will only worsen the harm already being done to Minnesota’s immigrant communities at a time when Trump has taken to calling Somali people “garbage” at his rallies.

“The very real-world consequence is that it’s going to exacerbate the situation that we have in Minnesota right now where we have a lot of people, including U.S. citizens or people with lawful status being arrested and detained by ICE,” said Ana Pottratz Acosta, who leads the Immigration and Human Rights Clinic at the University of Minnesota Law School.

The video, she said, reinforces xenophobic tropes about the Somali community, specifically tying the community to fraud. Pottratz Acosta said she was worried the increase in DHS visits to day cares could be a pretext to simultaneously conduct immigration detentions.

“They’re doing these visits at day care sites under the auspices of conducting a fraud investigation, but if they happen to see anyone who fits a profile, they might be arrested,” Pottratz Acosta said.

[

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Shirley’s video builds off of the growing interest in a nonprofit fraud scandal in Minnesota involving a pandemic-era program focused on child hunger, which has resulted in dozens of guilty pleas. The Trump administration claims Minnesota’s fraud issue is much larger, to the sum of $9 billion worth of government funds being fraudulently funneled from social services. Republicans have painted Gov. Tim Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison, both Democrats up for reelection, as responsible for an alleged lack of oversight. Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., who is Somali American and Muslim, has also been the target of right-wing and xenophobic attacks. Among other racist stereotypes and false claims, Trump said, “We gotta get her the hell out” of the country at a Pennsylvania rally earlier this month.

State regulators said Monday that inspectors had visited the day cares mentioned in the video in the past six months, according to theMinnesota Star Tribune, that there was no evidence of fraud at the sites during those unannounced visits, and some of the centers have already been closed or suspended. According to Minnesota Public Radio, state Republican lawmakers had steered Shirley toward the day care centers he visited in the video.

Shirley defended his video and said people have been silent about “Somalians committing this fraud” because “people are scared to be called Islamophobic, racist.”

“Fraud is fraud — it doesn’t matter if it’s a Black person, white person, Asian person, Mexican,” Shirley told Fox News. “And we work too hard simply just to be paying taxes and enabling fraud to be happening.”

Despite Shirley’s insistence that race and religion have nothing to do with his investigation, the YouTuber has a long track record of using his man-on-the-street videos to target immigrants in the U.S., platforming individuals who spreadxenophobic andIslamophobic beliefsandconspiracy theories. While Shirley’s videos include interviews with those protesting against such hate, he often presents immigration and Islam as agrowing threat takingover the country. Combined with sensationalized headlines — “Exposing Dangerous Illegal Migrant Scammers” or “The UK’s Insane Migrant Invasion” — the end result is often a portrait of immigrants as lawbreakers, a societal threat, and a strain on government resources.

Shirley did not respond to The Intercept’s request for comment.

Nick Shirley speaks during a roundtable meeting with President Donald Trump on “antifa” in the State Dining Room at the White House, on Oct. 8, 2025, in Washington. Photo: Evan Vucci/AP

In 2019, Shirley began to post prank videos with friends on YouTube while attending a public high school in Farmington, Utah, a suburb of Salt Lake City. At first, his focus wasn’t especially political. He garnered a large number of his 1 million subscribers after sneaking into influencer Jake Paul’s wedding in Las Vegas.

But amid his comedic stunts, he documented theJanuary 6 insurrection at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., in 2021, where he interviewed far-right commentator and InfoWars founder Alex Jones and infamous rioter Richard Barnett. Shirley said he did not take part in the violence and filmed himself leaving without entering the building. Later that year, Shirley took a two-year hiatus from YouTube to go on a mission in Santiago, Chile, as part of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

In late 2023, after his return to the United States, Shirley shifted from prank videos to focus on political topics, such as immigration and crime. In May 2024, he orchestrateda stunt in which he paid day laborers $20 to jump into the back of a U-Haul van, drove them to the White House, and gave them signs demanding a meeting with Biden.

Shirley’s mother, Brooke — herself a right-wing influencer who goes by Brooker Tee Jones on TikTok, where she has more than 250,000 followers — occasionally joins her son in the videos. It was Brooke who pushed her son to start covering immigration at the southern border after his mission trip, according to an interview with Columbia Journalism Review. Early on, she’d feed him questions to ask and lines to say in the videos, she recalled. Her content has similarly focused on immigration in recent years, including other videos that accuse Somali residents in Minnesota of health care fraud without providing evidence.

Reached by The Intercept, Brooke did not answer questions about her work or the work of her son.

Shirley has made a habit of visiting cities and countries that are settings for right-wing, anti-immigrant conspiracies, such as Aurora, Colorado, amid the manufactured crisis around the Tren de Aragua gang.

During a visit to El Salvador in 2024, Shirley filmed a series of videos sympathetic to President Nayib Bukele’s violent anti-crime crackdown on his citizens, including a video from the notorious CECOT prison. It’s his most-viewed video to date, with 6.6 million views. In another video from El Salvador, Shirley recorded from the Centro Industrial prison, which has become a manufacturing hub where incarcerated men build school desks and vegetable market display racks, a form of forced labor. “It’s pretty amazing if you think about what Nayib Bukele has been able to do with this country — the streets are as safe as they’ve ever been, because all these guys are out,” Shirley said while inside a CECOT cell block, gesturing to the incarcerated men. At no point in the video does he mention the stories of torture and abuse within the country’s prison system.

Shirley was recently awarded a “citizen journalist of the year” prize by far-right media figure andProject Veritas founder, James O’Keefe, in large part because of his CECOT video.

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In other videos, Shirley himself has become a part of the story.

In September, Shirley and a small crew filmed a videoantagonizing street vendors in New York City’s Chinatown, referring to them as “Dangerous Migrant Scammers.” Vendors could be seen scrambling away while Shirley strolls down Canal Street. At one point, one man tells Shirley to leave and asks why he’s filming, leading to a physicalconfrontation with Shirley’s cameraman.

Several weeks later, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents raided the street, detaining nine individuals. Shirley praised ICE for the raid that left the street “completely clean of illegal activity” andtaunted an individual who was detained as a “scammer [who] got ICED.”

Shirley hasaccompanied federal agents during immigrationraids in Chicago, interviewing a detained man in the backseat of a federal vehicle. Since Trump’s election, media access at raids has largely been given only to outlets or individuals sympathetic to the administration’s mass deportation campaign.

[

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Alongside other far-right influencers such as Andy Ngo and Cam Higby, Shirley landed an invite to participate in Trump’s “Roundtable on Antifa,” a White House event where the administration advanced its campaignagainst antifascist activists. “People may wonder, ‘What’s the threat to us as Americans?’ You’ll be labeled as a fascist, you’ll be labeled a Nazi, and they’ll wish death upon you as they wished death upon me,” Shirley said of the decentralized protest group at the event.

Leading up to the Minnesota day care video, Shirley released a video about “the rise of Islam” in the U.S. and what he called “Minnesota’s Somali Takeover.” The July video makes a spectacle of the call to prayer and individuals praying inside a mosque and singles out Omar, as well as an Islamic center that converted from a Lutheran church to illustrate his point of the apparent takeover.

:{:{In October, Shirley published an hour-and-a-half sitdown interview with British far-right anti-immigrant and anti-Islam activist Tommy Robinson, during which he repeated the false claim that there are “40,000 British Muslims” on the United Kingdom’s terror watchlist living in Britain.}: The figure is a misreading of a real list by British intelligence agency MI5, which does not include religious identifiers and contains the names of many people who have never traveled to the U.K. “At what point does this break out from a revolution to a civil war?” Shirley asked.

Shirley’s recent viral video in Minnesota was a continuation of this narrative.

In an attempt to lure people into gotcha situations, Shirley visited day care centers and health care facilities that he claims are operated by Somali Americans. Taking a page out of his prank days, he poses as a parent looking for child care for his fictitious son, “Joey.” Throughout the video, Shirley approaches individuals with dark skin or women wearing hijabs, peppering them with questions about supposed “missing” children and whether they were aware of fraud.

Police are called on Shirley and his team twice in the video, including while at one health care complex where a woman explains to a responding officer, “He’s trying to assume because they’re Somalian providers everyone here is fraudulent — he’s here with some kind of propaganda.” He claimed to be “checking rates” for health and child care. Police eventuallyescorted him out of the building.

The video’s claims of fraud rely heavily on a Minnesota resident and apparent whistleblower who is identified in the video as David. Toward the end of the video, David claims he was attacked by Somali men who he had confronted about the alleged fraud, describing the men as “very, very violent people.”

Since early December, federal agents have increased their presence in Minnesota’s Twin Cities, profiling and detaining individuals who appear to be Somali, including individuals who are U.S. citizens. The crackdown has also led to the targeting of Latin American immigrant communities in search of undocumented residents. Trump and other right-wing figures have propped up their campaign by falsely depicting “Somalian gangs” who are “roving the streets” of Minneapolis and St. Paul, “looking for prey,” the president said on social media.

Even though Shirley’s video claims to have exposed new truths about fraud in Minnesota, the day care facilities highlighted in the video have previously been spotlighted as problematic by local ABC News affiliate, KSTP, as well as the state government, which earlier this year began to increase oversight of funding to day care facilities over similar fraud concerns.

The most effective way to combat fraud is increased oversight, said Pottraz Acosta. The recent crackdown in Minnesota, which has been exacerbated by Shirley’s video, she said, is not the kind of oversight that will prevent bad actors from exploiting public funds. The issue of anti-Somali sentiments is also a problem within Minnesota, she said, with residents facing demeaning stereotypes and unsubstantiated speculation that they are sending money to al-Shabab, the Somali militant group on the U.S foreign terror list.

This narrative, perpetuated locally and nationally, “feeds into larger narratives around certain immigrant communities,” Pottraz Acosta said. “There are bad actors in every community and just because certain people commit fraud, it doesn’t mean that every person who fits that same demographic profile is a bad actor.”

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VID CANAL STR NICK SHIRLEY--> SAVANAH --> ICE?

Laura Ingraham claims that Democrats are "signaling very clear that it's war time" | Media Matters for America

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only fox tv?

USMC 2 TOURS 45% RULE TO SHOOT, PIZZA WOMAN SHAKING

INFLU INSTIGATORS then run to fox cam

MOLOTOV TENTS BURN NOT BY PROTESTORS

120 DAYS SOLD HOMES

ice enjoy cruelty, post vid soc med; riot staged 2 feds in plain clothes w/ cams? drones? push out 4 blocks

15 agents manhandle daca w expired lic; woman w small kid walked when filmed

The Truth Behind "War Ravaged Portland" | Jerrod Zisser | TMR

[

The Majority Report w/ Sam Seder

1.98M subscribers

Dec 31, 2025 The Majority Report w/ Sam Seder

Check out Jerrod Zisser on ⁨@theringoffire3228⁩ Watch the Majority Report live Monday–Friday at 12pm EST on YouTube OR via daily podcast at http://www.Majority.fm Send us IM messages during the live-stream with our free Majority Report App: http://majority.fm/app Subscribe to MR's daily AM Quickie newsletter: https://am-quickie.ghost.io

The Truth Behind "War Ravaged Portland" | Jerrod Zisser | TMR - YouTube

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context

an no lnx

Trump admin hits protesters with terrorism charge

FILE PHOTO: Protesters march during a brief rally after the sentencing of Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis policeman found guilty of killing George Floyd, a Black man, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S. June 25, 2021. REUTERS/Eric Miller/File Photo

:{:{Jordan Green and Raw StoryDecember 21, 2025}:

Two Alabama Black Lives Matter activists accused of setting a shopping cart on fire as part of a protest against the fatal police shooting of a young Black man have been charged with conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists, in what one supporter calls a “railroading.”

The federal charge unveiled as part of a superseding indictment against Mercutio Southall, 41, and Lillian Colburn, 26, alleges that the pair committed terrorism through an arson at a Walmart Supercenter in Homewood, a Birmingham suburb, on Aug. 22.

“They’ve been trying to label Black Lives Matter a terrorist movement,” RaShaun Whetstone, a friend of Southall and Colburn, told Raw Story. “This is a railroading.”

The indictments come as President Donald Trump attempts to paint left-wing activism as “domestic terrorism,” through a national security memorandum that accuses activists of undermining “support for law enforcement” in order “to justify and encourage acts of violent revolution.”

This month, Attorney General Pam Bondi issued a memo instructing the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Forces, which include local law enforcement partners, to prioritize investigations of antifascist groups.

Echoing Trump’s national security memo, Bondi claimed: “These domestic terrorists use violence or the threat of violence to advance political and social agendas, including opposition to law and immigration enforcement; extreme views in favor of mass migration and open borders; adherence to radical gender ideology, anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, or anti-Christianity.”

‘Not even Mercutio’s MO’

Luke Baumgartner, a research fellow at the Program on Extremism at George Washington University, told Raw Story the Alabama case is, as far as he knows, the first time the federal government has applied the material support to terrorists charge to Black Lives Matter protesters.

Southall and Colburn pleaded not guilty.

Whetstone told Raw Story he believes Southall and Colburn to be falsely accused. He said the alleged crime was completely out of character for Southall, who as an early leader of Black Lives Matter became one of the most high-profile racial justice activists in the Birmingham area.

Whetstone added that Colburn doesn’t match the person seen in store surveillance video.

Homewood has seen protests since June, when an 18-year-old Black man, Jabari Peoples, was fatally shot by an unidentified police officer at a city park. Police said the shooting followed a struggle, after which Peoples attempted to retrieve a handgun from his car, according to WVTM 13. Peoples’ family and a young woman who was with him say he was unarmed.

Community members have held several protests resulting in multiple arrests, WVTM 13 reported. The news station quoted a leader of the Birmingham chapter of Black Lives Matter as saying they planned to disrupt businesses until their demands, including the release of police body camera video, were met.

Homewood police said in a press release shortly after Southall’s arrest on state charges that detectives obtained evidence he attended a protest at the park on the day of the alleged arson.

The police allege Southall traveled from the protest to Walmart, and accuse him of filling “a shopping cart full of rags, blankets, charcoal bags, small engine fuel, and paint thinner,” then pre-positioning “the shopping cart in a clothing aisle,” before returning to the protest.

Southall was charged in state court with arson and first-degree criminal mischief.

The police said at the time they were working with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms “on pursuing federal arson charges.”

Colburn was arrested on identical charges.

AL.com reported that detectives testified that Colburn accompanied Southall from the protest to Walmart and the two loaded the cart together, then left in a car that investigators determined was registered to Colburn.

Later, investigators said, a woman wearing a blond wig, identified as Colburn, returned to the store and ignited the cart.

Whetstone told Raw Story he doesn’t buy prosecutors’ claims.

“It’s not even Mercutio’s MO,” he said. “Never has he done anything like that. Being who he is, he’s going to set a shopping cart on fire? What the hell kind of sense does that make?”

Federal prosecutors obtained an indictment for arson in late October. A month later, a grand jury returned a superseding indictment adding the charge of material support to terrorists.

Southall and Colburn could not be reached for comment.

An announcement by the FBI’s Birmingham office last week did not mention the defendants’ ties to Black Lives Matter, but characterized them as “violent actors.”

“Let it be clear: While peaceful protesting is a protected right, arson and destruction of property are violent crimes that will not be tolerated in our community,” Special Agent in Charge Dave Fitzgibbons said.

Baumgartner told Raw Story: “It’s not surprising they would levy this charge given that their focus has shifted [to the left]. They’re focusing on these left-wing or anarchist groups. Coming at them with all the tools in their toolkits is definitely in line with their stated strategy.”

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for Northern Alabama did not respond to a question about whether AG Bondi played any role in the decision to charge the defendants with terrorism. A spokesperson said the office did not comment on ongoing litigation.

‘Federal crime of terrorism’

Federal statute makes it a crime to act in support of “an offense identified as a federal crime of terrorism.”

Federal prosecutors have applied the material support to terrorists charge to white supremacist groups and activists, recently including Dallas Erin Humber, the leader of Terrorgram Collective, who is linked to a mass shooting targeting LGBTQ+ people in Slovakia and a deadly school shooting in Brazil, in addition to plots to assassinate politicians and attack the power grid.

The United States, Canada and New Zealand have all designated Terrorgram as a terrorist entity.

In another case, in 2022, four white supremacists pleaded guilty to material support to terrorists, for plotting to carry out coordinated attacks on the power grid in an attempt to instigate race war.

The charge is also being used to pursue violent nihilist groups.

Writing with Barry Jonas, Baumgartner noted in the journal Just Security that in October, for the first time, federal prosecutors indicted a leader of 764, a nihilist network, for conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists.

The government alleges that 764 leader Baron Martin manipulated child victims to self-harm.

Baumgartner and Jonas wrote: “By charging Martin with conspiring to provide material support for terrorists, the shift represents a long-overdue recognition that such conduct is not just depraved — it is terrorism.”

Last week, Canada became the first country to list 764 as a terrorist entity.

A closely related and better-known statute making it a crime to knowingly support “a foreign terrorist organization” has been used frequently since the Sept. 11 attacks to prosecute American citizens who attempted to join jihadist groups such as al-Qaida and ISIS.

Baumgartner said federal prosecutors now appear to be utilizing the material support charge with increasing frequency against defendants across the ideological spectrum.

Last month, prosecutors in Texas obtained an indictment against eight defendants for providing material support for terrorists, regarding an attack on an ICE facility.

The government has named one defendant as firing a weapon at law enforcement, while alleging others ignited fireworks, destroyed a surveillance camera, and vandalized vehicles and a shed.

‘Cause of justice’

Birmingham is a Southern city known as a cradle of the Civil Rights movement, where the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. launched a massive desegregation campaign in 1963, in which child marchers were met with police dogs and firehoses.

In his famous “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” King excoriated “the white moderate” and called himself an “extremist for the cause of justice.”

Of the two activists now facing federal charges, Southall has a long history of activism — which has seen him singled out by Trump for verbal abuse.

In November 2015, the activist was forcibly ejected from a Trump rally in Birmingham.

After Southall disrupted the event by chanting, “Black lives matter,” the Washington Post reported that video showed him falling amid a throng of white men who appeared to kick and punch him.

A Post reporter observed a man put his hands on Southall’s neck and a female onlooker shout, “Don’t choke him!”

“They said, ‘Go home, n-----, and somebody punched me,” Southall told Al.com.

Speaking to Fox News, Trump reportedly said: “Maybe he should have been roughed up, because it was absolutely disgusting what he was doing.

“I have a lot of fans, and they were not happy about it. And this was a very obnoxious guy who was a troublemaker who was looking to make trouble.”

‘Untethered from reality’

Despite Trump’s hostility, conservative efforts to get Black Lives Matter designated as a terrorist group did not gain traction in his first term.

In 2017, the FBI drew criticism for an internal assessment that appeared to classify BLM activists as “Black Identity Extremists” who posed a threat of lethal violence.

Three years later, a law enforcement training group characterized BLM protesters as “terrorists.”

It also drew rebuke, one advocate for police reform calling the characterization “untethered from reality” and worrying that it could lead “to people dying unnecessarily.”

In the South, the Ku Klux Klan long waged a campaign of terror which succeeded in intimidating Black people from exercising their right to vote and ousting multiracial governments. Whetstone noted that the U.S. government has never designated the Klan as a terrorist organization.

“Black Lives Matter ruffles a few feathers, and they want to call us terrorists,” he said. “This is just one small step in how they normalize punishing anyone who is associated with any liberation movement. They’re trying to criminalize it.”

---

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rww

12/12/2025

by

Kyle Mantyla

---

ref

tony perkins

Rep. Chip Roy Highlights the latest on the Defense Bill & Looks Ahead to 2025 Agenda

0:00

And here we have Texas Congressman Chip

0:02

Roy who has joined us here in the media

0:06

center at the Family Research Council.

0:09

Uh a familiar face and voice on

0:11

Washington watch. Uh Congressman, thanks

0:13

so much for running off the hill and

0:15

coming down here and joining us.

:{:{...}:

about something. You are hosting or

4:06

actually you're chairing, I should say,

4:07

a subcommittee hearing next week. You

4:09

chaired the constitution committee in

4:12

the judiciary committee on the southern

4:14

poverty law center that has in fact when

4:18

you walk out the door of this room you

4:20

will see the bullet holes in the wall

4:21

that was inspired a gunman to come into

4:24

this building. Uh Congress is ready to

4:27

act on that. They're ready to move to

4:29

expose these this long-term relationship

4:32

that SPLC was had has had with

4:34

government agencies.

4:35

Well, I'm certainly ready to do that. I

4:37

think uh Congressman uh and chairman

4:39

Jordan uh rightly agreed that we should

4:42

have this hearing in the subcommittee on

4:43

the Constitution. And so we're going to

4:44

be doing this next week. Uh Tony will be

4:46

one of the witnesses. Uh uh Tyler Boyer

4:49

from TPUSA is going to be one of the

4:51

witnesses. Uh as well as an individual

4:54

who's pretty knowledgeable here in town,

4:55

a journalist named Tyler O'Neal about

4:57

all of the dot connecting of all the

4:59

money. Now, there's a lot to unpack

5:01

here, which we probably don't have

5:02

enough time to do in full, but the short

5:04

version is anybody who loves and is

5:06

familiar with with with F FRC knows what

5:09

Southern Poverty Law Center meant with

5:11

respect to the attack here over a decade

5:12

ago uh here in this building. Um, but

5:16

and now we've seen the connection to

5:18

what happened with Charlie and and the

5:20

extent to which your, you know,

5:21

crosshairs are put on you. Heck, my name

5:23

is now getting put in the crosshairs

5:25

because I'm daring to call out the

5:26

Islamification of America. So what we're

5:29

going to do in this hearing is expose

5:30

that, demonstrate what's actually

5:32

happening, but I want to take that a

5:34

step further so people understand the

5:35

vast array of networks that are funding

5:37

all of it. The Soros operation, uh,

5:40

Arabella, all of the groups and all of

5:42

the operatives that are involved, the

5:43

Islamification funding, the open borders

5:45

groups, the NOS's, the United Nations,

5:48

your taxpayer dollars, all of it coming

5:50

together in this vast network to have a

5:52

red green alliance where you've got the

5:54

Marxists and the Islamists who want to

5:56

take our country over. and it's all

5:58

related and SPLC is right at the center

6:00

of it. Antifa is at the center of it.

6:02

All of these groups need to be exposed

6:04

and we're going to be doing that next

6:05

week and we're just getting started and

6:06

I've had some great conversation with

6:08

Secretary Bessant with people in the

6:09

administration. Um I think there's a

6:11

hunger to go break this network down

6:14

because it's attacking our way of life.

6:15

Well, it's it's

6:18

finninging violence and it's and it's

6:20

it's leading to death. Yep.

6:22

And it's chilling our First Amendment

6:24

freedoms. Chip Roy, always great to see

6:26

you. Thanks so much for joining us. Look

6:27

forward to seeing you next week.

6:28

Absolutely.

---}:

---

bondi memo

Pam Bondi is Coming for Domestic Terrorists. You Might Be One of Them. - YouTube

alt

https://charliesykes.substack.com/p/pam-bondi-is-coming-for-domestic

---

TAKING CLUES FROM BECK AND JONES?

an 12 25

A top FBI official struggled to explain his claim that Antifa is the “most immediate violent threat” America is facing, as he was challenged to provide details.

Former Trump FBI Director Christopher Wray stated in 2020 congressional testimony that Antifa is “not a group or an organization. It’s a movement or an ideology.” The BBC has explained that Antifa is “a loosely organized, leftist movement that opposes far-right, racist and fascist groups.”

“Antifa is short for anti-fascist,” BBC added. “It is a loose, leaderless affiliation of mostly far-left activists.”

:{:{House Homeland Security Committee Ranking Member Bennie Thompson }:on Thursday asked Michael Glasheen, FBI National Security Operations Director, to describe “organizations that pose, on the domestic side,” the number one and number two threats to the homeland.

Glasheen asked for clarification.

“Any domestic terrorist organizations that poses a threat to the homeland as we speak,” Thompson replied.

Pointing to President Trump’s designation of Antifa as a domestic terrorist organization, Glasheen said, “That’s our primary concern right now.”

He described Antifa as “the most immediate violent threat that we’re facing on the domestic side.”

“So, where is the Antifa headquartered?” Thompson pressed.

After a pause, Glasheen said: “What we’re doing right now —” before Thompson cut him off.

“Where, in the United States, does Antifa exist?” he asked. “If it’s a terrorist organization — and you’ve identified it as number one.”

“We are building out the infrastructure right now,” Glasheen responded.'

“So what does that mean?” Thompson pressed. “Where do they exist? How many members do they have in the United States as of right now?”

“Well, that’s very fluid,” Glasheen said, describing it as “ongoing,” before comparing the situation to Al Qaeda and ISIS.

“I asked one question, sir,” Thompson replied. “I just want you to tell us. If you said Antifa is the number one domestic terrorist organization, operating in the United States, I just need to know where they are, how many people. I don’t want a name. I don’t want anything like that. Just, how many people have you identified with the FBI, that Antifa is made of?”

“Well, the investigations are active,” Glasheen replied.

“Sir, you wouldn’t come to this committee and say something you can’t prove. I know. I knew you wouldn’t do that. But you did.”

---

---

context

an 11 25

IFrame Content

President Donald Trump’s Department of Defense is now targeting a sitting U.S. Senator, one of six Democratic lawmakers who appeared in a video reminding members of the U.S. Armed Forces and the Intelligence Community of their right to refuse to obey an illegal order.

U.S. Senator Mark Kelly (D-AZ), a retired astronaut and former naval officer, along with the other five said, “threats to our Constitution aren’t just coming from abroad, but from right here at home.”

“Our laws are clear,” they added. “You can refuse illegal orders.”

In an official statement on social media, the Department of Defense alleged it has “received serious allegations of misconduct against Captain Mark Kelly, USN (Ret.).”

It added, “a thorough review of these allegations has been initiated to determine further actions, which may include recall to active duty for court-martial proceedings or administrative measures.” The statement also said, “federal laws such as 18 U.S.C. § 2387 prohibit actions intended to interfere with the loyalty, morale, or good order and discipline of the armed forces.”

President Trump last week in a series of social media posts promoted hanging the six Democrats.

“It’s called seditious behavior at the highest level,” the president also charged. “Each one of these traitors to our Country should be Arrested and put on trial. Their words cannot be allowed to stand – We won’t have a Country anymore!!! An example must be set.”

“Seditious behavior, punishable by death!” he continued.

Critics blasted the Pentagon’s move.

“Sen. Kelly didn’t tell troops to defy lawful orders, he reminded them of their duty to refuse unlawful ones, which is literally what the UCMJ and decades of military precedent require!” wrote The Bulwark’s Evan Rosenfeld. “Pretending that doing so is ‘misconduct’ is complete propaganda and not rooted in law.”

Punchbowl News’ Andrew Desiderio called it “Pretty extraordinary to call out a sitting senator in this way.”

The Bulwark’s Sam Stein labeled it “ham-handed,” and Bill Kristol of Defending Democracy called it “Naked authoritarianism.”

But The Independent’s Andrew Feinberg noted that the video “looks to have been an official one for which [Kelly] would enjoy Speech or Debate immunity.”

---

---

intercept 11 25

Federal prosecutors have filed a new indictment in response to a July 4 noise demonstration outside the Prairieland ICE detention facility in Alvarado, Texas, during which a police officer was shot.

There are numerous problems with the indictment, but perhaps the most glaring is its inclusion of charges against a Dallas artist who wasn’t even at the protest. Daniel “Des” Sanchez is accused of transporting a box that contained “Antifa materials” after the incident, supposedly to conceal evidence against his wife, Maricela Rueda, who was there.

But the boxed materials aren’t Molotov cocktails, pipe bombs, or whatever MAGA officials claim “Antifa” uses to wage its imaginary war on America. As prosecutors laid out in the July criminal complaint that led to the indictment, they were zines and pamphlets. Some contain controversial ideas — one was titled “Insurrectionary Anarchy” — but they’re fully constitutionally protected free speech. The case demonstrates the administration’s intensifying efforts to criminalize left-wing activists after Donald Trump announced in September that he was designating “Antifa” as a “major terrorist organization” — a legal designation that doesn’t exist for domestic groups — following the killing of Charlie Kirk.

Sanchez was first indicted in October on charges of “corruptly concealing a document or record” as a standalone case, but the new indictment merges his charges with those against the other defendants, likely in hopes of burying the First Amendment problems with the case against him under prosecutors’ claims about the alleged shooting.

It’s an escalation of a familiar tactic. In 2023, Georgia prosecutors listed “zine” distribution as part of the conspiracy charges against 61 Stop Cop City protesters in a sprawling RICO indictment that didn’t bother to explain how each individual defendant was involved in any actual crime. I wrote back then about my concern that this wasn’t just sloppy overreach, but also ablueprint for censorship. Those fears have now been validated by Sanchez’s prosecution solely for possessing similar literature.

Photos of the zines Daniel Sanchez is charged with “corruptly concealing.” Photo: U.S. District Court, Northern District of Texas

There have been other warnings that cops and prosecutors think they’ve found a constitutional loophole — if you can’t punish reporting it, punish transporting it. Los Angeles journalist Maya Lau is suing the LA County Sheriff’s Department for secretly investigating her for conspiracy, theft of government property, unlawful access of a computer, burglary, and receiving stolen property. According to her attorneys, her only offense was reporting on a list of deputies with histories of misconduct for the Los Angeles Times.

If you can’t punish reporting it, punish transporting it.

It’s also reminiscent of the Biden administration’s case against right-wing outlet Project Veritas for possessing and transporting Ashley Biden’s diary, which the organization bought from a Florida woman later convicted of stealing and selling it. The Constitution protects the right to publish materials stolen by others — a right that would be meaningless if they couldn’t possess the materials in the first place.

Despite the collapses of theCop City prosecution and the Lau investigation — and its own dismissal of the Project Veritas case — the Trump administration has followed those dangerous examples, characterizing lawful activism and ideologies as terrorist conspiracies (a strategy Trump allies also floated during this first term) to seize the power to prosecute pamphlet possession anytime they use the magic word “Antifa.”

That’s a chilling combination for any journalist, activist, or individual who criticizes Trump. National security reporters have long dealt with the specter of prosecution under the archaic Espionage Act for merely obtaining government secrets from sources, particularly after the Biden administration extracted a guilty plea from WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. But the rest of the press — and everyone else, for that matter — understood that merely possessing written materials, no matter what they said, is not a crime.

Most Read

Pardoned Capitol Rioter Tried to Hush Child Sex Victim With Promise of Jan. 6 Reparation Money, Police Say

Amanda Moore](https://theintercept.com/2025/11/17/pardoned-jan-6-child-abuse-molestation-andrew-paul-johnson/)

[

Wyden Blasts Kristi Noem for Abusing Subpoena Power to Unmask ICE Watcher

Sam Biddle](https://theintercept.com/2025/11/21/wyden-noem-dhs-customs-unmask-social-media/)

Guilt by Literature

At what point does a literary collection or newspaper subscription become prosecutorial evidence under the Trump administration’s logic? Essentially, whenever it’s convenient. The vagueness is a feature, not a bug. When people don’t know which political materials might later be deemed evidence of criminality, the safest course is to avoid engaging with controversial ideas altogether.

The slippery slope from anarchist zines to conventional journalism isn’t hypothetical, and we’re already sliding fast. Journalist Mario Guevara can tell you that from El Salvador, where he was deported in a clear case of retaliation for livestreaming a No Kings protest. So can Tufts doctoral student Rümeysa Öztürk, as she awaits deportation proceedings for co-writing an opinion piece critical of Israel’s wars that the administration considers evidence of support for terrorism.

At least two journalists lawfully in the U.S. — Ya’akub Ira Vijandre and Sami Hamdi — were nabbed by ICE just last month. The case againstVijandre is partially based on his criticism of prosecutorial overreach in the Holy Land Five case and his liking social media posts that quote Quranic verses, raising the question of how far away we are from someone being indicted for transporting a Quran or a news article critical of the war on terror.

Related

“Antifa” Protesters Charged With Terrorism for Constitutionally Protected Activity](https://theintercept.com/2025/10/17/antifa-ice-protesters-terrorism-texas-prairieland/)

Sanchez’s case is prosecutorial overreach stacked on more prosecutorial overreach. The National Lawyers Guild criticizedprosecutors’ tenuous dot-connecting to justify holding 18 defendants responsible for one gunshot wound. Some defendants were also charged with supporting terrorism due to their alleged association with “Antifa.” Anarchist zines were cited as evidence against them, too.

Sanchez was charged following a search that ICE proclaimed on social media turned up “literal insurrectionist propaganda” he had allegedly transported from his home to an apartment, noting that “insurrectionary anarchism is regarded as the most serious form of domestic (non-jihadi) terrorist threat.” The tweet also said that Sanchez is a green card holder granted legal status through the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

The indictment claims Sanchez was transporting those materials to conceal them because they incriminated his wife. But how can possession of literature incriminate anyone, let alone someone who isn’t even accused of anything but being present when someone else allegedly fired a gun? Zines aren’t contraband; it’s not illegal to be an anarchist or read about anarchism. I don’t know why Sanchez allegedly moved the box of documents, but if it was because he (apparently correctly) feared prosecutors would try to use them against his wife, that’s a commentary on prosecutors’ lawlessness, not Sanchez’s.

Violent rhetoric is subject to punishment only when it constitutes a “true threat” of imminent violence. Even then, the speaker is held responsible, not anyone merely in possession of their words.

Government prosecutors haven’t alleged the “Antifa materials” contained any “true threats,” or any other category of speech that falls outside the protection of the First Amendment. Nor did they allege that the materials were used to plan the alleged actions of protesters on July 4 (although they did allege that the materials were “anti-government” and “anti-Trump”).

We don’t need a constitutional right to publish (or possess) only what the government likes.

Even the aforementioned “Insurrectionary Anarchy: Organizing for Attack” zine, despite its hyperbolic title, reads like a think piece, not a how-to manual. It advocates for tactics like rent strikes and squatting, not shooting police officers. Critically, it has nothing to do with whether Sanchez’s wife committed crimes on July 4.

Being guilty of possessing literature is a concept fundamentally incompatible with a free society. We don’t need a constitutional right to publish (or possess) only what the government likes, and the “anti-government” literature in Sanchez’s box of zines is exactly what the First Amendment protects. With history and leaders like Vladimir Putin and Viktor Orbán as a guide, we also know it’s highly unlikely that Trump’s censorship crusade will stop with a few radical pamphlets.

The Framers Loved Zines

There’s an irony in a supposedly conservative administration treating anti-government pamphlets as evidence of criminality. Many of the publications the Constitution’s framers had in mind when they authored the First Amendment’s press freedom clause bore far more resemblance to Sanchez’s box of zines than to the output of today’s mainstream news media.

Revolutionary-era America was awash in highly opinionated, politically radical literature. Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense” was designed to inspire revolution against the established government. Newspapers like the Boston Gazette printed inflammatory writings by Samuel Adams and others urging the colonies to prepare for war after the Coercive Acts. The Declaration of Independence itself recognized the right of the people to rise up. It did not assume the revolution of the time would be the last one.

One might call it “literal insurrectionist propaganda” — and some of it was probably transported in boxes.

The framers enshrined press freedom not because they imagined today’s professionally trained journalists maintaining careful neutrality. They protected it because they understood firsthand the need for journalists and writers who believed their government had become tyrannical to espouse revolution.

For all their many faults, the framers were confident enough in their ideas that they were willing to let them be tested. If the government’s conduct didn’t call for radical opposition, then radical ideas wouldn’t catch on. It sure looks like the current administration doesn’t want to make that bet.

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11/21/2025

by

Kyle Mantyla

---

5 YR OLD B ROLL ON FOX? btb SAYS MOLO COCK ONLY BURNED FEET OF PROTESTOR, NOT BLDG? 10 25

---

AN PP 11 25

When President Donald Trump told reporters on Sept. 5 he’d started looking at sending the National Guard to Portland, Oregon, he said it was because of something he saw on television.

He said the city was being destroyed by paid agitators. “What they’ve done to that place, it’s like living in hell,” he said, a comment that became an internet meme as some Portland residents juxtaposed it with tranquil images of the city.

Trump didn’t say which channel he watched; he said at one point he saw something “today” and at another “last night.”

The evening before, on Sept. 4, Fox News aired a two-and-a-half-minute segment spotlighting protests outside a federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office in Portland. Similar footage aired the morning of Trump’s remarks. The president went on to announce Sept. 27 on Truth Social that he would send troops, saying that he was “authorizing Full Force, if necessary.”

He later said he’d told Oregon’s governor, Tina Kotek, that “unless they’re playing false tapes, this looked like World War II. Your place is burning down.”

ProPublica examined months of Fox News’ coverage and reviewed more than 700 video clips posted to social media by protesters, counterprotesters and others in the three months preceding the Sept. 4 broadcast.

The review found that the news network repeatedly provided a misleading picture of what was happening in Portland.

As The Guardian and The Oregonian/OregonLive have reported, Fox News on Sept. 4 used footage from the 2020 protests after the police killing of George Floyd and said it was from 2025. We found two clear cases from that night as well as one that seemed to match a scene filmed at a key site of the 2020 protests. Fox also mislabeled two other dates of actions shown on screen, and one broadcast implied that a protest from elsewhere was happening in Portland.

Fox News chyrons about Portland the week of Trump’s remarks carried phrases like “violent demonstrators,” “protesters riot,” “anti-I.C.E. Portland rioters” and “war-like protests.” One host said protesters were attacking federal officers.

This portrayal of protesters as routinely instigating violence or rioting was also misleading.

As ProPublica reported last week, most clashes between protesters and police before the Fox News segment did not result in any criminal charges or arrests alleging protesters committed violence. What’s more, based on news releases from federal and local authorities, charges and arrests for assault, arson or destruction of property were almost entirely confined to a period that ended the night of July 4.

Videos after that date captured numerous images of federal officers forcefully moving in on protesters without corresponding criminal charges alleging protester violence.

A spokesperson for Fox News did not respond to ProPublica’s requests for comment.

The Department of Homeland Security did not answer requests to comment on its officers’ tactics.

White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said of action on the ground in Portland: “This isn’t a peaceful protest that’s under control, like many on the left have claimed, it’s radical violence. President Trump is taking lawful action to protect federal law enforcement officers and address the out-of-control violence that local residents have complained about and Democrat leaders have failed to stop.”

Here’s how Fox News’ coverage of the Portland story was misleading.

Fox News Said It Was 2025. It Wasn’t.

Protests in 2020 in the wake of Floyd’s murder by a police officer attracted large, sometimes violent crowds to Portland — along with a federal law enforcement response authorized by Trump.

The protests outside the ICE facility have typically been far smaller. Still, Fox spliced footage from 2020 into its coverage this year and claimed it was from 2025.

The Fox News correspondent in the segment that aired the night Trump was watching TV said: “On this night in late June, police used tear gas.”

The accompanying image appears to be not from the ICE building but from the federal courthouse in downtown Portland, more than a mile away. A nearly identical scene was shown in aFox News video five years earlier. Footage that aired Sept. 4, shot at a slightly different angle, blurs out spots where graffiti was visible on the building in Fox’s July 2020 broadcast.

Almost immediately after showing the courthouse scene, the segment cuts to another image as the correspondent says, “federal police used tear gas and flashbangs.”

On screen at that moment is a U.S. Navy veteran who was pepper-sprayed and repeatedly struck with a baton. But it didn’t happen in September 2025. The video was posted on social media on July 18, 2020.

The Fox News segment about the ICE protests soon shows an American flag burning.

That image was posted on social media July 16, 2020.

The location: the base of a downtown Portland statue more than a mile away from the ICE building where protests are happening in 2025.

On the webpage for its Sept. 4 video segment, Fox News added an editor’s note at least two weeks later: “This video contains footage from protests in Portland in 2020 and 2025.”

“Still Going On”

After mislabeling 2020 events as 2025, Fox’s Sept. 4 evening broadcast explicitly drew a connection between the two periods.

“The protest chaos, which began with riots aimed at social justice in 2020, has severely damaged Portland’s reputation,” the correspondent said.

The dramatic footage at this moment shows fires in the street and was broadcast on Fox on Aug. 19, 2020, the day after a crowd smashed through windows and set items on fire in the headquarters for the government of Multnomah County, where Portland is located.

We don’t know for certain which broadcast got Trump thinking about Portland. The White House did not respond to questions about what Trump watched. But the president said on Sept. 5 that what he’d seen about Portland on TV was “unbelievable.”

“I didn’t know that was still going on,” he said. “This has been going on for years.”

The reality: Portland’s 2020 social justice protests, which resulted in hundreds of arrests and continued for months, turned sporadic by early 2021. Protests in years since have led to occasional property damage, but nothing in Portland has matched the scale of events that followed Floyd’s death.

Portland police Chief Bob Day said at a Sept. 29 press conference that the city had been inaccurately portrayed through the lens of the protests in 2020 and 2021.

“What’s actually happening, and the response we’re seeing both from Portlanders and from the Portland Police Bureau,” Day said, “is not in line with that national narrative. And it is frustrating.”

A Riot That Wasn’t

In a Sept. 2 segment featuring the video from a day earlier, anchor Bill Hemmer said it shows “riots raging.” Anchor Trace Gallagher teased another Sept. 2 news segment by once again showing the video, saying, “It’s a riot outside a Portland ICE facility.”

The Sept. 4 segment shows Julie Parrish, an attorney for a neighbor of the ICE facility, accusing Portland police of saying, “Meh, we’re just gonna let violent rioters do this for 80 straight nights.”

The physical behavior of protesters that was captured on the video is not violent. The camera instead shows federal agents advancing on them. In the moments before officers tossed munitions into the crowd, videos show, one protester was blowing bubbles. The Portland police did not declare a riot, a legal designation that allows for an elevated police use of force. (They declared a riot just once, a police spokesperson said, on June 14.)

The Sept. 1 protest had “little to no energy,” according to an internal Portland police summary, before federal officers dispersed the crowd to collect a prop guillotine that had been brought. Katie Daviscourt, a Trump-aligned commentator who filmed the clips, noted on X that protesters were having dance parties and that their main problems were “not leaving restricted areas, burning a flag, and possessing a deadly object (guillotine).”

ProPublica found a similar pattern for the three months before Fox’s Sept. 4 broadcast: clashes that on most days and nights had no criminal allegations of protester violence to explain them.

After dozens of arrests and charges were announced in June through July 4, federal prosecutors accused just three people of crimes at the ICE building in the roughly two months leading up to Fox’s Sept. 4 broadcast.

During that same two-month time frame, ProPublica’s review found numerous instances of police using force: videos from more than 20 days or nights with federal officers grabbing, shoving, pepper-spraying, tackling, firing on or using other munitions on protesters.

No local arrests or federal criminal charges were announced on these days or nights, and only a handful of dates corresponded with incidents of protester aggression later asserted by federal authorities in their legal case for sending troops.

Asked whether Fox News accurately represented her footage, Daviscourt said: “I stand by my four months of accurate reporting.”

Parrish told ProPublica she had collected evidence that “shows ongoing and persistent activity” outside the facility that under statute and police directive “would be considered riotous, unlawful assembly and/or disorderly conduct.” She declined to share this evidence, saying it was privileged as part of her client’s file.

Her lawsuit on behalf of a neighbor living near the ICE facility, which sought to require police to enforce Portland’s noise ordinance, was dismissed.

The Reappearing Neighbor

A Sept. 5 “Fox & Friends” segment showed a neighbor from an apartment building confronting protesters over noise, shouting at protesters: “Turn that (bleep) down, it’s midnight! … We the people need sleep!”

Fox said it happened Tuesday, which would have been Sept. 2. Co-host Ainsley Earhardt said, “This has been going on for months now, but a lot of this since Labor Day,” as the video shown on screen sandwiches footage of the neighbor between other scenes from the Labor Day protest.

“This is a chaotic city,” co-host Brian Kilmeade said.

The next day, the clip of the neighbor appeared again on Fox News. This time, the network said the footage was from Wednesday, or Sept. 3.

In reality, the confrontation was captured on video months before. Daviscourt published the video on June 29 on X.

On the two September nights that Fox said the neighbor’s confrontation happened, ProPublica’s review found no videos of violent clashes posted on social media, and federal authorities announced no arrests.

For example, according to a Portland police email from 11:22 p.m. on Sept. 3: “There are still about 20 people hanging around but only 4 were even on the sidewalk in front of the building.”

Misrepresentations Continue After Trump’s Guard Order

On Sept. 28, the day Trump’s order was implemented, a Fox News broadcast played a clip of Kotek saying that Guard troops were not needed in Portland, then immediately cut to a clip of a hectic scene of protesters clashing with police.

“Wish she could see some of those images,” the anchor said. Sarcastically, as a co-anchor chuckled, she added: “Look at that. Just a peaceful protest.”

A small box on the screen showed the footage wasn’t from Oregon.

It was from Illinois.

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MMA

THe Gateway Pundit's Rumble channel on November 9, 2025

STEWART RHODES (FOUNDER, OATH KEEPERS): I've been invited to speak across the country about January 6. And now that I'm relaunching Oath Keepers, I'm getting more invitations to come speak as well. So, yeah, I'm relaunching the organization and rebuilding it.

...

They tried to take us out after January 6 but what man means for evil, God will use for good. I came out stronger after it, and so my goal is to rebuild the organization stronger than ever because it's an essential mission. Absolutely.

JIM HOFT (HOST): Oh, that's wonderful news. So the Oath Keepers is going to have a relaunch here, and Stewart's breaking that news this weekend?

RHODES: Yes, sir.

...

RHODES: I mean, I have to make sure that if I'm ever taken out again or if I'm or when I'm taken out again, that the organization can drive on without me. That's not what happened last time.

...

So we want to make sure it's got resilience and redundancy built in that it can drive on strong. With the same mission, though. You can't call yourself an Oath Keeper if you're not willing to protect people against radical antifa and other leftist violence in the streets. NEW USE OF TERM?

Later in the interview, Rhodes said he wanted to let Trump know that “we're ready to serve, encourage him to do that, call us up as a militia,” and “order us all to come together in our counties under his command.”

Video

Citation

From The Gateway Pundit's Rumble channel on November 9, 2025

STEWART RHODES (FOUNDER, OATH KEEPERS): And one other thing I want to say is that President Trump, as commander in chief, always has absolute authority to call all of us up as the militia because every one of us — in federal statues defining the militia, it's every able-bodied male from age 17-45. And for us veterans, it goes up to age 64 because of our prior training and experience.

Right now, under federal statutes, President Trump can call us up as the militia if he sees it necessary, especially for three purposes: to repel invasions, to suppress insurrections, and to execute the laws of the union. And right now, we see all three of those in play. We have — we're facing an ongoing invasion of this country, it has not stopped. We're facing an insurrection by the left. And we're also facing a direct blocking and resistance against enforcing federal law — federal immigration laws, attacking ICE agents, you know, trying to ram them and run them off the road, throwing bricks to their windows. All of that is going on. And so under those three purposes, he can call up the militia.

And the militia is all of us. So the National Guard is part of the militia, which is why it's completely lawful for him to use the National Guard as he has, and he should do more of that, I think, across the country.

...

He could just say given the circumstances of an invasion, insurrection, and resistance against federal law being being enforced, I'm calling up the militia, ordering all the men to come together [in] every county, put the veterans in charge of training and organizing all the other men and just have them stand too and await his orders. He can do that and I think he should do that. And so that's what I'll be advocating for from him. So from the bottom, from down the rank and file, we can let President Trump know that we're ready to serve, encourage him to do that, call us up as a militia, order us all to come together in our counties under his command, which gives you complete legal sanction to do what you're doing.

...

RHODES: So President Trump is well within his power and authority under the Constitution to bring out the militia — all of the militia, not just the National Guard but the rest of us too. And I think he should.

//

  1. ### January 6 participants are touring right-wing media and calling for retribution following Trump’s pardon

01/24/25 12:57 PM EST

  1. ### Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes says he has men stationed outside of D.C. ready to engage in violence on Trump’s order

11/12/20 3:23 PM EST

  1. ### On Infowars, Stewart Rhodes likens Oath Keepers to Nelson Mandela, suggests the U.S. is a dictatorship

10/11/22

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TARGET

Justice Department investigating fraud allegations in Black Lives Matter movement, AP sources say

, October 30, 2025

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department is investigating whether leaders in the Black Lives Matter movement defrauded donors who contributed tens of millions of dollars during racial justice protests in 2020, according to multiple people familiar with the matter.

In recent weeks, federal law enforcement officials have issued subpoenas and served at least one search warrant as part of an investigation into the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, Inc. and other Black-led organizations that helped spark a national reckoning on systemic racism, said the people, who were not authorized to discuss an ongoing criminal probe by name and spoke on condition of anonymity to The Associated Press.

From AP’s Standards and Stylebook teams:

The AP is using anonymous sourcing to provide information for this story. Click here to hear Washington Bureau Chief Anna Johnson explain AP’s policy on the use of anonymous sources.

It was not clear if the investigation would result in criminal charges, but its mere existence invites fresh scrutiny to a movement that in recent years has faced criticism about its public accounting of donations it has received. The recent burst of investigative activity is also unfolding at a time when civil rights organizations have raised concerns about the potential for the Trump administration to target a variety of progressive and left-leaning groups that have been critical of him, including those affiliated with BLM, the transgender rights movement and anti-ICE protesters.

Spokespeople for the Justice Department declined to comment on Thursday.

Related Stories

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One of the people said the investigation had been initiated during the Biden administration but is getting renewed attention during the Trump administration. A second person confirmed that allegations were examined in the Biden administration.

The foundation said it took in over $90 million in donations following the 2020 murder of George Floyd, a Black man whose last breaths under the knee of a white Minneapolis police officer sparked protests across the U.S. and around the world.

Critics of the nonprofit foundation, and of the BLM movement broadly, accused organizers of not being transparent about how it was spending the donations. That criticism grew louder after BLM foundation leaders in 2022 confirmed they used donations to purchase a $6 million Los Angeles-area property that includes a home with six bedrooms and bathrooms.

The leaders previously denied wrongdoing and publicly released tax documents. No prior investigations into the nonprofit’s finances have yielded proof of impropriety.

Leaders of the foundation have received subpoenas. In a statement emailed to the AP on Thursday, the foundation said it “is not a target of any federal criminal investigation.”

“We remain committed to full transparency, accountability, and the responsible stewardship of resources dedicated to building a better future for Black communities,” the foundation said in the statement.

Several localized BLM chapters, which are not affiliates of the foundation, have previously been at odds with the nonprofit over its plans for donations. Those chapters operate and fundraise independently of the foundation.

The Black Lives Matter movement first emerged in 2013 after the acquittal of George Zimmerman, the neighborhood watch volunteer who killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Florida. But it was the 2014 death of Michael Brown at the hands of police in Ferguson, Missouri, that made the slogan “Black lives matter” a rallying cry for progressives and a favorite target of derision for conservatives.

Movement founders and organizers pledged to build a decentralized organization governed by the consensus of BLM chapters. But as the movement’s influence grew, so did the number of organizations that became affiliated with BLM. In 2020, a tidal wave of public contributions in the aftermath of protests over Floyd’s murder came mainly to the BLM foundation, although other organizations were resourced from those funds.

Leaders of the foundation opened up about finances and organizational structure in 2022, revealing detailed accountings of expenditures. The latest Form 990 filing shows the BLM foundation had $28 million in assets for the fiscal year ending June 2024.

The investigation is being run out of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California in Los Angeles.

The top prosecutor there, Bill Essayli, was determined by a federal judge this week to have stayed in his temporary acting U.S. attorney job longer than allowed by law. He was permitted to effectively remain the office’s chief prosecutor but with a different title of First Assistant United States Attorney.

Essayli had previously served as a Republican assemblyman in California, where he took up conservative causes and criticized the state’s COVID-19 restrictions. He has been outspoken against state policies to protect immigrants living in the country illegally, and he has aggressively prosecuted people who protest Trump’s ramped up immigration enforcement across Southern California.

As a private practice attorney, he characterized BLM as a “radical organization” while defending a white couple charged in 2020 with a hate crime after they were videotaped defacing a BLM mural in Martinez, California.

At the time, city-sanctioned BLM murals had been painted on roadways in cities throughout the U.S. in an expression of solidarity with the racial justice movement. Essayli was quoted as telling reporters that his clients were simply expressing their political viewpoints and that they disagreed with taxpayer funds being used to “sponsor” Black Lives Matter, which he described as a “radical” group.

At the height of the Floyd-sparked reckoning on racial injustice, some state officials vowed their own investigations in the foundation’s finances, citing their responsibility to protect residents who may have donated to BLM. But most of those probes were resolved without official action.

In 2022, Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita filed a lawsuit against the BLM foundation for failing to comply with an investigation into the organization’s finances. Soon after, a representative of the foundation responded with the necessary information and documentation, a spokesperson for the attorney general’s office said, and the lawsuit was dismissed.

Alana Durkin Richer in Washington, D.C., and Graham Lee Brewer in Oklahoma City contributed.

---

OMG

RWW

10/27/2025

by

Peter Montgomery

Heritage Action, the political arm of the MAGA “think tank” behind the Trump administration’s Project 2025 policy agenda, is claiming that America’s city streets have been occupied by Marxist rioters to rally support for legislation that would empower President Donald Trump’s Justice Department to more aggressively wage war against the president’s political opponents.

“End the Marxist Occupation of our Streets,” reads a Heritage Action campaign message, which praises Trump's designation of Antifa as a "domestic terrorist organization." The message includes an illustrated graphic of a television “PUBLIC SAFETY ALERT” reading “MARXIST RIOTERS IN YOUR CITY AVOID PUBLIC AREAS AT ALL COSTS.”

The campaign by Heritage Action urges people to petition Congress to pass the Stop FUNDERS Act being promoted by Sen. Ted Cruz, Rep. Beth Van Duyne, and other MAGA Republicans. FBI Director Kash Patel endorsed the legislation at a congressional hearing last month.

Cruz told Fox News this month that his legislation would allow the Justice Department to “prosecute the money” that is funding “No Kings” protests and suggested without offering any evidence that the more than 200 organizations that have supported the overwhelmingly peaceful “No Kings” protests are part of a “criminal enterprise.”

Advocates warn that the Cruz legislation would, especially in the hands of the nakedly politicized Trump Justice Department, threaten freedom of speech and the right to dissent:

The legislation “would dangerously lower the bar for government investigations into Americans exercising their right to peaceful demonstration,” said Cole Leiter, executive director of Americans Against Government Censorship, a coalition of progressive and labor groups that launched late last year.

“By branding protest as a criminal activity, this bill threatens to intimidate people from engaging in peaceful, lawful advocacy and puts everyday Americans at risk of being dragged into sprawling investigations,” he added.

Trump has publicly demanded that the Justice Department deploy the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act – known as RICO – to prosecute his political opponents and progressive organizations and funders.

The Cruz bill would allow the federal government to, in Cruz’s words, “use the full suite of RICO tools against entities who fund or coordinate violent interstate riots.” According to Cruz’s office, those tools include “joint liability and group prosecution, conspiracy charges, asset forfeiture, and enhanced criminal penalties.” The Cruz press release claims the act would also “deter abuse of nonprofit status and expose hidden financial pipelines behind politically motivated violence.”

In his “war on the left,” Trump and his allies have repeatedly smeared and threatened philanthropists George and Alex Soros and the Open Society Foundations. The Guardian noted recently that Trump’s unsubstantiated claims “provided more specificity to a threat that liberal non-profits have been planning for since his election victory last year: a crackdown on their organizations and major Democratic funders designed to intimidate them from carrying out their work, waste their time with investigations and ultimately hobble the opposition.”

The Open Society Foundations recently responded to Trump administration attacks, saying in part:

Our activities are peaceful and lawful, and our grantees are expected to abide by human rights principles and comply with the law.

These accusations are politically motivated attacks on civil society, meant to silence speech the administration disagrees with and undermine the first amendment right to free speech. When power is abused to take away the rights of some people, it puts the rights of all people at risk.

Our work in the United States is dedicated to strengthening democracy and upholding constitutional freedoms. We stand by the work we do to improve lives in the United States and across the world.

Dozens of civil society organizations have condemned the Trump administration's attacks on the Open Society Foundations. In addition, People For the American Way has denounced “President Trump’s campaign to weaponize the entire federal government against anyone who stands in the way of his destructive agenda.”

Heritage Action is also urging the House to “establish — and dedicate adequate time, authority, staff, and resources to — a select committee to investigate the rise of left-wing terrorism.” In reality, there is evidence that “most domestic terrorists in the U.S. are politically on the right, and right-wing attacks account for the vast majority of fatalities from domestic terrorism.”

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no lnx

‘Absurd’: Noem claim to have arrested ‘antifa’ founder’s girlfriend stirs ridicule

Jordan Green, Investigative Reporter

October 15, 2025 reuters?

:{:{This article was paid for by Raw Story}:

A dramatic claim by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to have arrested “the girlfriend of one of the founders of antifa,” therefore putting the Trump administration in position to “eliminate” the leftwing “network,” was dismissed by both the activist the arrested woman was said to have dated and a leading expert on such leftwing groups.

“I want to make it absolutely clear that I am not now, nor have I ever been, the ‘founder’ of ‘Antifa’ — in Portland [Oregon], the United States, or anywhere else,” said Luis Enrique Marquez, the activist, in a statement on a website promoting a book.

“It’s an absurd claim, no matter how they try to frame it,” Stanislav Vysotsky, an associate professor of criminology at the University of Fraser Valley in British Columbia, told Raw Story.

ALSO READ: This Trump lackey's ridiculous promos actually point to the fall of American law

Nonetheless, Noem’s trumpeting of the arrest of Katherine Vogel, 39, showed the administration’s determination to make headlines as it seeks to paint “antifa” activists as a danger to the American public, and Portland as the supposed base of such groups.

‘Root them out’

Seated alongside President Donald Trump during a White House roundtable last week, Noem said: “One of the individuals we arrested in Portland was the girlfriend of one of the founders of antifa.

“We are hoping that as we go after her, interview her and prosecute her, we will get more and more information about the network and how we can root them out and eliminate them from the existence of American society.”

On Sept. 30, Vogel was the subject of a targeted arrest carried out by Federal Protective Services and U.S. Border Patrol agents, after she was allegedly observed with a group of people spilling red paint on the sidewalk outside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility.

A federal criminal complaint alleges that “while Vogel was being escorted into the facility for processing, she actively resisted by flailing her body” and struck one of the agents on the jaw with a closed fist.

She told an investigator she did not recall striking the agent.

Vogel was a contractor with the U.S. General Services Administration. As a result of her arrest “she was found unsuitable” and will no longer work for the agency, a spokesperson told Raw Story.

Noem’s description of Vogel as a potential linchpin for a nationwide network supposedly posing a terrorist threat appears to have been sourced to Andy Ngo, a right-wing media figure who Trump said at the roundtable was “a very serious person.”

Ngo was previously represented in a lawsuit for assault against Rose City Antifa, a Portland group, by Harmeet Dhillon, now assistant attorney general for civil rights at the Department of Justice. Rose City Antifa was dismissed as a defendant. Ngo and Dhillon frequently share each other’s posts on X.

A week before Noem’s White House remarks, Ngo posted that Vogel was “a veteran Rose City Antifa member” and “the previous girlfriend of violent Rose City Antifa member Luis Enrique Marquez.”

Vogel, who was released from custody on Oct. 1, could not be reached for comment.

Marquez, the author of the book Antifascist: A Memoir of the Portland Uprising, refuted Ngo’s claim. The statement on his website said: “I have never been a member of Rose City Antifa or any other Antifa group.”

Marquez also said his relationship with Vogel ended in 2020, adding, “Any insinuation of an ongoing connection between us is false and disingenuous.”

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) did not respond to a request to clarify Noem’s reference to Vogel as “the girlfriend of one of the founders of antifa.”

Vysotsky, who has extensively interviewed antifascist activists, said that notion was difficult to square with reality, given that the movement dates back to the early 20th century.

“If we’re talking about the girlfriend of the founder of antifa, then we’re talking about someone who would have to be 120 years old or 130 years old,” Vysotsky told Raw Story.

While antifascism emerged in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s, in response to the rise of fascism in Italy and Germany, Vysotsky said the modern antifascist movement in North America can generally be dated to the mid- to late-1980s.

Rose City Antifa, the Portland-based group referenced by Ngo, was founded in 2007. Vysotsky said that to the best of his knowledge, Marquez was not a founder.

“He came on the scene in 2016 or 2017,” Vysotsky said. “He happens to be someone who is prominent and outspoken on social media. It’s an absurd claim, no matter how they try to frame it.”

A DHS spokesperson, Tricia McLaughlin, said Vogel’s activist connections were the subject of “an ongoing investigation,” adding: “We will release more information when we can.”

‘A militarist, anarchist enterprise’

In a Sept. 26 X post, DHS described Rose City Antifa as a “domestic terrorist organization.” The post followed an executive order issued by Trump days earlier, which described “Antifa” as “a militarist, anarchist enterprise.”

But Vysotsky said Noem’s vow to “root out” and “eliminate” an “antifa” network was likely to go nowhere because there is no formal membership organization or international network.

“It’s an orientation, because it’s a set of beliefs by people opposed to fascism,” Vysotsky said.

“What they mean when they say ‘fascism’ is a movement based on a belief in an inherent inequality between people that is enforced by violence. What antifa stands for is equality between people, and what drives antifascism is a desire to create a more just and equal world.”

The idea that the Trump administration will be able to use Vogel’s arrest to identify a leadership cadre and, as Noem put it, “eliminate” an “antifa” network “from the existence of American society” is “an almost absurd claim,” Vysotsky said.

“Antifa activism, as it exists, is highly decentralized,” Vysotsky said, adding that antifascist activity ranges from individuals engaged in intelligence gathering and educational work “to small, local affinity groups that are organized in a direct, democratic manner.

“There’s no leadership,” he said.

The Sept. 26 DHS post accused Rose City Antifa of doxing ICE agents.

On Sept. 19 a website called Rose City Counter-Info did post two profiles that showed the names and images — and in one case, information about the employment history of a spouse — of two individuals purported to be ICE agents active in the Portland area. The DHS post included a photo of a flyer soliciting information about ICE agents that appears to include Rose City Antifa's email address, although it is partially redacted.

A statement published on Rose City Antifa's behalf denies that the group has doxed ICE agents or had anything to do with the flyer. The statement references a Bluesky post two months earlier that acknowledges the flyers but indicates Rose City Antifa was not responsible for putting them out.

The DHS X post referencing Rose City Antifa came a day after Trump issued a national security memorandum, NSPM-7, which argued that domestic terrorists organized under the banner of “anti-fascism” are engaged in “sophisticated, organized campaigns of targeted intimidation.”

The memo claims campaigns “escalate to organized doxing, where the private or identifying information of their targets (such as home addresses, phone numbers, or other personal information) is exposed to the public with the explicit intent of encouraging others to harass, intimidate, or violently assault them).”

The memo specifically references activists targeting ICE agents.

“For the Trump administration to argue that antifa activists are terrorists, they’re going to have to greatly expand what acts constitute terrorism,” Vysotsky said.

They’re already doing that, he argued, by “talking about doxing as a form of terrorism.”

‘Exceptionally broad’

Vysotsky said rhetoric from the Trump administration linking antifascism to terrorism appears to be calculated to distract attention from ICE activities and violence by far-right actors.

“This serves as a distraction to focus Trump supporters away from the negative images of families being separated,” Vysotsky said. “It’s also a way to distract away from political violence, which has overwhelmingly been right-wing political violence.”

Antifascists, with journalists and observers, confront white supremacists in Charlottesville, Va in 2017. Picture: Anthony Crider

Vysotsky and Marquez said they saw the campaign against “antifa” as signaling a crackdown on all who oppose Trump’s policies — not just the far left.

“It’s exceptionally broad, because when they talk about antifa, they’re creating this image that ranges from the bogeyman of black-clad protesters to mainstream politicians like Adam Schiff [the Democratic senator from California] to the Ford Foundation, which is a major philanthropic organization,” Vysotsky said.

NSPM-7 charges that an “‘anti-fascist’ lie has become a rallying cry used by domestic terrorists to wage a violent assault against democratic institutions, constitutional rights and fundamental American liberties.”

Core tenets of antifascism, the memorandum claims, “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.”

Marquez said that “by targeting innocent people and fabricating threats that do not exist,” the Trump administration is “attempting to build a mythical enemy in order to expand control over our lives.”

This story was updated on Wednesday, Oct. 15, 2025 at 1:57 p.m. to reflect that Rose City Antifa has denied doxing ICE agents and responsibility for the flyer soliciting tips on agents.

Jordan Green is a North Carolina-based investigative reporter at Raw Story, covering domestic extremism, efforts to undermine U.S. elections and democracy, hate crimes and terrorism. Prior to joining the staff of Raw Story in March 2021, Green spent 16 years covering housing, policing, nonprofits and music as a reporter and editor at Triad City Beat in North Carolina and Yes Weekly. He can be reached at jordan@rawstory.com. More about Jordan Green.

Thom Hartmann

This Trump lackey's ridiculous promos actually point to the fall of American law

Here's how to bring Trump and his lawless thugs to justice

John Stoehr

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congr res serv 2020 summ

IF10839

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Here's a full list of conservative influencers present at the roundtable: Nick Sortor, Cam Higby, Jonathan Choe, Andy Ngo, Katie Daviscourt, James Klug, Savanah Hernandez, Nick Shirley, Brandi Kruse and Julio Rojas.

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90 min vid

President Trump Participates in a Roundtable on ANTIFA - YouTube

bella ciao fasc catch; blk eye

45:12

The President: Great job. Thank you very much. Katie, please. Katie: Hi, Mr. President.

45:19

It is an honor being here today and I first wanted to start by thanking you guys for designating Antifa.

45:24

A terrorist group is exactly what this group is. It's a long time coming. I'm an investigative journalist from Seattle.

45:31

I work for the Post-Millennial alongside Andy Ngo and Jack Posobiec. I have been infiltrating Antifa cells

45:38

in Seattle and Portland for the past decade. I know their inner workings and Antifa uses extreme political violence

45:45

to crush the civil rights of their political enemies and believes that violence is justified by any means necessary.

45:52

But today, I want to focus on what is happening in Portland at the ICE facility.

45:58

I've been covering this for the past four months, and this is a call-out to corporate media

46:03

who has completely ignored this story, or has falsely reported on it. This is nothing short

46:10

other than a sustained attack on the United States, which is being supported by Democratic-elected officials.

46:16

The Portland Police Bureau has completely abandoned several blocks outside the ICE facility,

46:22

giving away their jurisdiction to a terrorist group who has spent the past four months harassing,

46:28

assaulting and intimidating anyone they perceive to be against their cause.

46:33

Not only have federal agents been, agents been relentlessly assaulted for more than 100 consecutive days,

46:40

black-clad anarchist militants concealing their identities behind black facial coverings

46:46

have been assaulting reporters just for trying to cover their crimes.

46:51

Today, I'm sitting here with a black eye and a concussion after being violently hit in the face with a metal pole

46:58

while reporting outside the ICE facility. Just this past week after the attack, I immediately went to three Portland police officers

47:06

who refused to detain the suspect. I took the time to chase down the suspect in the streets,

47:12

had her held for 35 minutes. I was waiting for Portland Police to come

47:17

and they never came then. That's what opened my eyes to what this group is actually doing.

47:23

I watched 20 Antifa militants help my assault suspect escape into an Antifa safe house

47:31

that is one block away from the ICE facility. And this safe house is where Antifa-affiliated protesters

47:37

are conducting parliamentary operations. It's where they're resting, they're showering,

47:44

they're eating to continue this occupation. I have staked out this safe house and have observed shift changes. This group is highly organized.

47:53

It is being funded through mutual aid groups, and they have no plans of stopping. Residents living across the ICE facility

48:00

have been held hostage by Antifa. They're begging for federal intervention. The city refuses to help,

48:07

and they want you, President Trump, to come in and restore law and order. I want to stress the importance of taking this situation

48:14

seriously because when I first started reporting on this occupation, I went undercover in Black Bloc.

48:21

I talked to these Antifa militants. I lasted for about a month. They believe that ICE agents are the Nazi Gestapo

48:27

who need to be killed, they told me that directly. And I think that if this situation is not taken as seriously as it is,

48:33

it's just a matter of time before someone gets killed. And thank you for having me. The President: Thank you, Katie. That's pretty incredible.

48:41

The only question nobody can answer is why? Why are they doing this? They're like insurrectionists.

48:47

They're terrible people, but you really wonder why. Why are they doing it? What are they gaining?

48:52

Other than they're obviously paid. They're paid a lot of money. Go ahead, please. Unknown Speaker: Mr. President, if I can answer that question,

48:58

the reason why they're doing it is because the same media that's sitting in this room with us has declared all of us at this table, Nazis and fascists,

49:06

and they've been doing this for years. This is why Antifa feels emboldened to attack us. Now, almost every single person at this table

49:13

has been threatened with a steel bat. We've been assaulted, we've been harassed, we've been threatened. And that is, in huge part, due to the media.

49:20

So, my message right now is for you guys because back in 2020,

49:26

by the way, I was censored for my reporting on Antifa here in Washington DC. You were talking about how safe it is now, Mr. President.

49:34

It wasn't so safe back then. Back in 2020, I watched as a father was being mobbed

49:39

and surrounded by Antifa members as his terrified crying children looked on the police here did nothing.

49:46

I watched as a woman had her hair violently ripped out of her skull simply for waving an American flag

49:51

on the streets of Washington DC. And by the way, if you guys try to go and find any of this footage,

49:57

you won't find any of it because Twitter deleted all of it because our president shared my reporting and they deleted my entire account immediately after.

50:05

So, now, if you want to know what happened in 2020, all you're going to see is the media headlines that said that,

50:10

"It was fiery, but mostly peaceful." Thanks for that one, CNN. The reality is that it was an extremely violent period of time.

50:16

And for the last 10 years, Antifa has been wrecking havoc on law-abiding and innocent American citizens, and it needs to end.

50:24

Now, I'm with Turning Point USA. It's an honor to be here. Mr. President. Thank you guys so much, everybody in the administration,

50:31

for giving us a seat at the table. Because the media has not only been demonizing us for so long,

50:37

but immediately after the brutal assassination of our founder, Charlie Kirk, our Turning Point USA chapters

50:43

have seen an uptick in violence across the nation, as Antifa chapters that are embedded in our universities

50:49

go and target them. It's been extremely difficult to report on the ground.

50:55

And for a long time, I was afraid to go to Portland because I knew that the only people who would have my back, like Julio said, were one of my friends on the ground

51:02

because there was no police force there. I was terrified to go because I knew if I got shot or stabbed, and I have been assaulted,

51:08

I've been mobbed and robbed in Austin, Texas by Antifa, that nobody would come to help me. So, my plea to the entire administration,

51:15

especially to the DOJ, is every single radical left-winger who is in front of the ICE facility in Chicago,

51:21

in New York, in Portland, please make sure that you use the full force of the law to come after each and every single one of them

51:29

because it is us being soft on left-wing violence that has fomented all of the terror

51:35

that we have seen in this country. And it is the left-wing getting away time and time again with assaulting law-abiding American citizens

51:42

that has led us to this place. So, truly, to the Americans that I speak to on the ground, they feel completely abandoned by their state

51:50

and local government. So, please step in. We have Americans begging for the National Guard. And to the media over here, please report on the truth.

51:58

Please do your jobs. I'm an American citizen. Everybody at this table simply views ourselves

52:03

as American citizens who have an iPhone and the will to actually tell the truth. So, please take your job seriously

52:10

and tell the truth to the American people. And thank you for letting me be here on behalf of Charlie to continue his legacy of cleaning up the country.

52:15

Thank you, Mr. President. The President: Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Wow, you feel very strongly I can see.

52:20

Unknown Speaker: I'm mad. I got beat up so many times, Mr. President. My friends have gotten beaten up. And I want to cry right now from happiness

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NO TXT JUST VID NO TRANSCRIPT

INGR id BOTH AS JRNLISTS ANN-TIFA FRIEND

ATTACK ON STUDENT MINN CHRLIE ASSAS TRIUMP, CATH SCH? ...NO TIME TO LOSE FELOINY CONSP STATE DEPT DECL INTL ARM OF ANTIFA TERROR ORG; OPEN UP TO SANTIONS; SAV BIDEN IGNORE JRNL AND STREETS; ANDY BRITALLY ASSAULTED; DOM TERR ORG ; JRNL DEMONIZED BY LAMESTREAM, ALSO IGNORE VIOLENT STR THUS VINDCATED; PRO HAMAS FREAS IN HY, PPL TIRED OF TERROR BEG FOR NAT GD; PRTOZ MAYOR JOHNSON CALLED TUMP NAZI IS THAT INCTE VIOL; ANTIFA SHOCH TROOPS FOR DEMS, ATTACK POL OPP; YOU ARE ON HIT LIST BRAVE TO COME TO DC

OMFG TERROR

Inside the road to dismantle Antifa: 'We don't have any more time to lose' | Fox News Video

Inside the road to dismantle Antifa: 'We don't have any more time to lose'

Journalist Andy Ngo and Frontlines TPUSA contributor Savanah Hernandez discuss their experiences reporting on rioters on 'The Ingraham Angle.'

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MMA

October 9, 2025, edition of Newsmax's Carl Higbie Frontline

CARL HIGBIE (HOST): This is interesting, a Chicago -- this is some woke pastor who's -- well, he's actually an antifa member masquerading as a pastor. He's now suing the Trump administration after being shot in the head by ICE with rubber pellets and tear gas paintballs or whatever. You tell me what's going on here. Roll this.

...

HIGBIE: So this guy is doing that. It appeared to be he was on federal property, but now he's got this whole shtick that, like, I'm a pastor. Let me tell you, I am an ordained minister of the Universal Life Church. It's my name right there. I do — I officiate weddings.

This is such garbage. I got one of those collars, too, but I'm not going to go out holier than thou talking about, oh, yeah — you know, ICE is — this is so crazy to me.

PATRICK DORINSON (GUEST): Well, let's look at a couple of things. First of all, he's not a pastor at all. He's some divinity student who kind of masquerading as a pastor. So the turned around collar doesn't mean a darn thing. Second of all, he's trying to recreate the days of the 60s in the South when white pastors would go arm-in-arm with, you know, Black civil rights leaders and they get fire hosed. The only difference was, and then they were trying to protect the rights of American citizens, Black citizens, here. Here they're trying to defend the rights of illegal immigrants. So that's another thing. The third, he's a member of the Presbyterian Church, which is the biggest bunch of progressives ever to set foot in a mainland Christian Protestant religion. So he's a big fraud, and he's trying to get, you know, attention out there. And by the way, if he really thought that he was going to do something, he'd obey the law as Jesus obeyed the law. Because remember when Jesus, they tried to trick him and say, you know, should we pay taxes to the Romans? He said, well, you got to pay taxes. You got to obey the Roman law, render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's, but to God which is God's.

The Independent reported about the lawsuit:

A Presbyterian minister in Chicago is suing Donald Trump’s administration after Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were captured in viral video firing pepper balls at his head during protests against the president’s anti-immigration agenda.

The Rev. David Black joined a lawsuit with Chicago reporters and protesters accusing the administration of unconstitutional threats to their First Amendment rights and religious freedoms with “a pattern of extreme brutality” designed to “silence the press and civilians.”

Last month, Black — dressed in black and wearing a clerical collar while standing with demonstrators — was hit with chemical agents while praying in front of an ICE facility in Broadview, a Chicago suburb that has emerged as a flashpoint for protests against the administration as the president deploys National Guard troops to Illinois.

“I invited them to repentance,” Black told Religion News Service. “I basically offered an altar call. I invited them to come and receive that salvation, and be part of the kingdom that is coming.”

Black is not alone, according to the lawsuit. Agents “dressed in full combat gear” have “indiscriminately” tossed flash grenades and tear gas and fired guns loaded with chemical irritants and rubber bullets against demonstrators in the Chicago area, the complaint says.

//

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October 7, 2025, edition of Newsmax's Finnerty

ROB FINNERTY (HOST): OK. So I know that Kristi Noem met with that — the police chief, I think his name is Bob Day today. Were you there? Did you ask him about that?

BENNY JOHNSON: Yes. We witnessed Bob Day walk out in total and complete humiliation, profusely sweating, hanging his head low because Bob Day is fully aware of what's happened here in Portland. And it's not just this time around, it happens consistently in this city. I was here in the year 2020, when the Portland courthouse was under constant terrorist attack by the left.

This is a fallen city. And a question to Bob Day — if you're so concerned about the rule of law, why are you arresting Nick Sortor, who is a conservative influencer who is here just doing his job? Why are you violating his First Amendment rights and putting him in prison as left-wing terrorists roam the streets free? If you're so about law and order, where are all the antifa arrests, Bob Day? I think that's a very important question. I hope he answers it one of these days.

But unfortunately, this city has been conquered by antifa. And Bob Day knows it.

FINNERTY: We do too, by the way. And I just think it's always important to remind everybody, I know the audience knows this, but this is all in the name of criminal illegal aliens. That's how far from just reality and norms the Democratic Party has strayed.

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10 25

Trump and key officials from his administration were joined by a group of conservative influencers for a roundtable discussion on Antifa on Tuesday at the White House. Among those who joined the 79-year-old were Andy Ngo, Brandi Kruse, Nick Sortor, Cam Higby, Jonathan Choe, and many more.

Brandi Kruse and Andy Ngo listens at the White House on Wednesday.(AP)

At the roundtable, Trump accused Antifa - short for 'Anti-Fascist' of laying siege to federal buildings and attacking ICE agents, National Guards, and other officials charged with enforcing federal law. Kristi Noem, the Secretary of Homeland Security, was also present at the meeting. She said Antifa's agenda was to "destroy the American people."

Andy Ngo, Nick Sortor, Brandi Kruse and the other conservative activists also spoke about their experiences with the group after Trump and his officials were done speaking at the discussion.

Here's a full list of conservative influencers present at the roundtable: Nick Sortor, Cam Higby, Jonathan Choe, Andy Ngo, Katie Daviscourt, James Klug, Savanah Hernandez, Nick Shirley, Brandi Kruse and Julio Rojas.

Andy Ngo Recalls Alleged Antifa Ambush

Andy Ngo, a conservative influencer, has often gone viral for his confrontations with Antifa members. He recalled an incident when members of the Antifa group allegedly assaulted him in 2019. "I was ambushed in a mob beating... The punches came from everywhere — on my head and my face, and I was bleeding out of my eyes and ears," he said.

Trump also joined in, seemingly supporting Andy Ngo's narrative. "Andy Ngo has been repeatedly beaten by antifa thugs," Trump said, adding, "Andy is a very serious person too. Been watching him for a long time."

Nick Sortor Talks About Portland Arrest

Nick Sortor, another conservative influencer, recently claimed he was arrested in Portlandfor allegedly trying to cover the law-and-order situation in the city amid Trump's push to deploy the National Guard. "Frankly, the cities and police departments are COOPERATING with Antifa, such as Portland!" he claimed.

Trump, meanwhile, called for the prosecution of those involved in the arrest of the Sortor, including one individual Sortor claimed he saw was burning the US flag.

Also read: Trump vs Antifa: What is anti-fascist movement and who founded it? All FAQs answered

Brandi Kruse Details Change Of Perception On Trump

Brandi Kruse, a Seattle-based conservative influencer, called Antifa a "paid anarchist group," despite Reuters and ACLED describing it as a decentralized organization that is not unified. She claimed she had Trump Derangement Syndrome, but she "recovered" from it.

"Some of us have been covering Antifa for 15 years and have never had anyone in a position of authority even acknowledge their existence," she said, praising Trump.

“I even think I got a little more attractive after I got rid of my Trump derangement syndrome,” she added, noting that since she stopped reporting negatively on Trump, she has been “happier, healthier, [and] more successful”

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October 8, 2025, edition of Fox News' The Five

JESSE WATTERS (CO-HOST): It is funny to watch Trump be a Fox News producer. We wake up in the morning and we look at the news and you see Trump is holding an antifa roundtable at the White House, and you just say thank you. Thank you, Donald Trump. This is the best. We know all of these reporters that are around this roundtable. Nick Sortor, Daviscourt, Andy Ngo. They're, like, guests on our shows. The mainstream media has probably never heard of any of these people, and this is why this is such great programming.

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AN 10 25

During Wednesday’s White House roundtable on “Antifa,” Trump Cabinet secretaries compared it to international drug cartels and vowed to dismantle it “brick by brick,” while the President described Antifa as “treasonous, probably.”

Antifa, which the President has labeled a “domestic terrorist organization,” is widely seen as a movement of people opposed to fascism and racism. It is not believed to be a formal organization. BBC News describes it as “a loosely organized, leftist movement that opposes far-right, racist and fascist groups,” and which “lacks a distinct leader, membership list or structure. In 2020, then-FBI Director Christopher Wray told Congress that Antifa was better defined as an ideology than as a formal organization.”

U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem told roundtable attendees, “One of the individuals we arrested recently in Portland was the girlfriend of one of the founders of Antifa.”

Secretary Noem said they are “hoping that as we go after her, interview her and prosecute her, we will get more and more information about the network and how we can root them out, and eliminate them from the existence of American society.”

READ MORE: ‘Full-Blown Authoritarianism’: Governor Fires Back After Trump Says He Belongs ‘in Jail’

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She also said that “this network of Antifa is just as sophisticated as MS-13, as TdA, as ISIS, as Hezbollah, as Hamas, as all of them.”

“They are just as dangerous. They have an agenda to destroy us, just like the other terrorists we’ve dealt with for many, many years. And today is the day that we have a president that won’t tolerate it, and will stand up and fight for the American people.”

Similarly, Attorney General Pam Bondi said that “fighting crime is more than just getting the bad guy off the streets. It’s breaking down the organization, brick by brick. Just like we did with cartels. We are going to take the same approach, President Trump, with Antifa, destroy the entire organization from top to bottom. We’re going to take them apart.”

“Their hatred for President Trump, and for law and order agendas, fuels their violence,” Bondi said. “We saw what’s happening in Portland and Chicago, and you saw what happened in Dallas. No longer. It is not activism, it’s anarchy. We can’t, and we will not, let masked terrorists burn our buildings, attack our law enforcement, and intimidate our communities.”

She declared that the Trump administration is “deploying the full might of the federal law enforcement to crack down on Antifa and other domestic terrorist organizations.”

READ MORE: ‘The Ground Has Shifted’: Experts Warn After Trump’s ‘Gnat’ Speech to U.S. Navy

President Trump said, “we’re going after Antifa criminals and all who fund and support their campaigns are in serious trouble, and we have a lot of records already, a lot of surprises, a lot of bad surprises — people that you would never think.”

He also asked the group to identify the “funders” of Antifa: “These are people that do not have good intention for the country, and that’s treasonous, probably.”

Critics blasted the event.

“After the US bombed multiple boats in the middle of the ocean, murdering people on grounds that they were allegedly ‘carrying drugs,’ the US Attorney General says ‘Just like we did with cartels, we’re going to take the same approach…with Antifa,'” wrote Zeteo News’ Prem Thakker.

Attorney Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the American Immigration Council observed, “Cartels have actual leadership structures, central funding, command and control, and more. ‘Antifa’ is mostly a philosophy. That the Attorney General doesn’t know the difference is quite the thing to admit!”

Bill Kristol, the director of Defending Democracy Together, wrote: “Which is more alarming? That the Homeland Security secretary might actually believe that ‘Antifa’ is as dangerous as Hezbollah or Hamas? Or that she’s willing to engage in this level of lying and demagoguery? Neither is good!”

Olga Lautman, a Russian intelligence expert and senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis, pointed to Bondi’s remark about cartels and asked: “Are they planning on sending missiles to American cities to carry out extrajudicial killings.”

SiriusXM host Dean Obeidallah issued this warning: “Please understand that This is Trump regime explaining how they will use the government to prosecute Democrats. Page 1 of the fascist playbook is imprison political opponents so that the fascist has one party rule.”

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October 8, 2025, edition of Newsmax's Chris Plante: The Right Squad

MERCEDES SCHLAPP (CO-HOST): Virginia, I saw this number and I was just in complete shock.

VIRGINIA ALLEN (CO-HOST): Yeah, you know, I wish I could say I was in shock, but for so long we've been hearing that Chicago is just the worst of the worst. The stories out of Chicago and the extreme gang violence, this isn't new, but the situation right now has escalated. And the bizarre thing to me, when we're seeing these protests outside ICE detention facilities, I think you essentially have two camps of people that are protesting outside these facilities that want these illegals back on the streets. You have the no borders people, the people that think, oh, we should just let everyone in. People can go wherever they want. And then we have people, I think in some ways, like Pritzker, that have bought into this lie of these are these poor, suffering people. We should let them into our country. We should keep giving them handouts. I'm not quite sure between those two camps which is worse, but I am so thankful that we finally have a president who's instituting real law and order.

SCHLAPP: Antifa is not poor and suffering. Let me just make that very clear. But, Chris, okay, we talk about this all the time with Jason here when he's like, oh, the shootings are 36% lower. OK, this year alone, 1,200 shootings in Chicago, 360 homicides. That means people are dying. People are getting shot. Right?

CHRIS PLANTE (HOST): And it's more dangerous than Afghanistan was at the peak of the war. And they say it's pretty good. We killed 900 last year. We're only going to kill 700 this year. And they think that's good. Look at our record. We're making progress.

*Also, since JB Pritzker said, come and get me, put me in cuffs, it should be pointed out that Donald Trump himself pardoned a former Illinois governor who was in prison for more crimes that he had committed. It was Rod Blagojevich, a Democrat. And Blagojevich was from Illinois, one of five recent Illinois governors who ended up in prison. So, let's go ahead and put JB Pritzker on the list. Why not? It's a time-honored tradition in Illinois.

//

On Newsmax, Benny Johnson claims Portland “has been conquered by antifa”

10/08/25 9:24 AM EDT

  1. ### Newsmax's Greg Kelly tells Donald Trump: Fox News seems “to be at war with conservatives they don't like. And they gave you a really hard time, at times, over the past, well, nine years.”

10/07/25 10:16 AM EDT

  1. ### Newsmax guest on ICE agents at the Super Bowl: “I want to see ICE agents tackling performers and bringing them off the field. Send them to Uganda with Kilmar Abrego Garcia.”

10/03/25

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an 9 25

In between his highly publicized designation of Antifa as a domestic terror organization and his indictment of former FBI Director James Comey, US President Donald Trump signed a little-reported national security memorandum that gives law enforcement new tools to target his critics.

Trump signed National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7) on Thursday. The directive, titled “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence,” focuses exclusively on “anti-fascist” or left-wing activities, and 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.”

“I don’t want to sound hyperbolic but the plain truth is that NSPM-7 is a declaration of war on anyone who does not support the Trump administration and its agenda,” journalist Ken Klippenstein wrote in a piece raising alarm about the directive on Saturday.

Klippenstein argued that the memorandum was worrying on several fronts. For one, its focus on preventing crimes before they are committed opens the door to rights violations.

“In other words, they’re targeting pre-crime, to reference Minority Report,” Klippenstein wrote.

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For another, the memorandum casts a very wide net, targeting groups, individuals, funders, and “entities” and listing several protected beliefs as “indicia” of extremism.

These include:

What’s more, the memorandum entrusts enforcement to the FBI’s over 4,000-strong Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTF), which removes the legal challenges to directing the National Guard or other military forces to quash domestic dissent.

“For the Trump White House, the beauty of using an already existing network is that it bypasses Congressional oversight and scrutiny and even obscures federal activity to governors and legislatures at the state level,” Klippenstein wrote.

The types of activities that will be targeted are also quite broad, with the document defining “organized doxing campaigns, swatting, rioting, looting, trespass, assault, destruction of property, threats of violence, and civil disorder” as “domestic terrorist acts.”

The memorandum also targets any individual or group who might fund activity the administration deems terrorism and directs the Internal Revenue Service to “take action to ensure that no tax-exempt entities are directly or indirectly financing political violence or domestic terrorism,” which could be a means of threatening the status of nonprofits.

Finally, as Drop Site Newspointed out, the memo authorizes the attorney general to designate domestic groups as terrorist organizations for the first time in US history.

“By targeting beliefs and protest activity, the directive positions dissent itself as a potential crime,” Drop Sitewrote.

The Trump administration’s focus on violence associated with left-wing beliefs and groups is not supported by the facts. National Institute of Justice data found that right-wing violence had led to 520 deaths since 1990 compared with 78 deaths due to left-wing violence. However, the administration removed that study from the Department of Justice website shortly after Charlie Kirk was killed, The Guardianreported earlier this month.

The administration’s efforts, while accelerated, build on processes that began during the US response to the September 11 attacks, as Klippenstein explained:

A “pre-crime” endeavor, preventing attacks before they happen, is core to the post-9/11 concept of counterterrorism itself. No longer satisfied to investigate acts of terrorism after the fact to bring terrorists to justice, the Bush administration adopted preemption. Overseas, that led to aerial assassination by drones and “special operations” kill missions. Domestically, it led to a counter-terrorism campaign whose hallmark was excessive and illegal government surveillance and the use of undercover agents and “confidential human sources” to trap (and entrap) would-be terrorists.

However, the Trump administration is expanding the War-on-Terror mandate with fewer guardrails.

“Now, with Donald Trump’s directive retooling the counter-terror apparatus to go after Americans at home, this means monitoring political activity, or speech, as an investigative method to discover ‘radicalism,‘” Klippenstein said, noting that the NSPM-7 breaks with post-Watergate national security documents by failing to mention the First Amendment rights to protest and organize.

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller is already eager to make use of the document.

“We are witnessing domestic terrorist sedition against the federal government,” he wrote on social media on Friday. “The JTTF has been dispatched by the Attorney General, pursuant to NSPM-7. All necessary resources will be utilized.”

In an interview with Greg Sargent for theNew Republic, Trump ally Steve Bannon confirmed that Miller and others in the administration were preparing to go after left-liberal groups and media whose criticism of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) could be interpreted as “goading” on violence against the agency.

Referring to Miller’s comments that calling ICE authoritarian incited violence and terrorism, Bannon responded, “Stephen Miller is correct—more importantly he’s in charge.

The threats of investigations put liberal and left-leaning organizations in a tough place. On the one hand, they want to prepare as best they can. On the other, they do not want to obey in advance.

“Officials at these groups tell me they must strike a balance between being clear-eyed about how bad this could get while not letting it discourage political activity,” Sargent wrote. “That latter form of surrender is exactly what Trump and Miller want. And under no circumstances should anybody willingly hand it over to them.”

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dem dock 9 25

Trump signed a memorandum Thursday directing the federal government to investigate and dismantle “domestic terrorism networks.”

The move appears targeted at left-leaning progressive nonprofit groups, which Trump days ago vowed to dismantle, falsely claiming they fund and support political violence and terrorism in the U.S.

The memo directs the FBI’s National Joint Terrorism Task Force, the Department of Justice, the Department of the Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to go after “anti-fascist” movements in the U.S.

“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,” the memo reads.

Trump signed the memo shortly after the New York Times reported that the Department of Justice directed several U.S. attorneys offices across the country to open investigations into the Open Society Foundations, a progressive grant network founded by Democratic megadonor George Soros.

Asked what specific people or organizations the memo seeks to target, Trump named Soros, who Republicans have long claimed without evidence funds violent protests in the U.S.

“Soros is a name certainly that I keep hearing,” Trump said. “I don’t know. Soros is a name that I hear.”

Trump earlier this month asserted Soros must be “jailed” because “he’s a bad guy,” while Vice President JD Vance baselessly claimed that Soros and the Open Society Foundations pay “the salaries of terrorist sympathizers” and “promote violence and terrorism.”

The Open Society Foundations in a statement to Democracy Docket said the Trump administration’s “accusations are politically motivated attacks on civil society, meant to silence speech the administration disagrees with and undermine the First Amendment right to free speech.

“When power is abused to take away the rights of some people, it puts the rights of all people at risk,” it added.

“The Open Society Foundations unequivocally condemn terrorism and do not fund terrorism. Our activities are peaceful and lawful, and our grantees are expected to abide by human rights principles and comply with the law.”

“Our work in the United States is solely dedicated to strengthening democracy and upholding constitutional freedoms. We stand by the work we do to improve lives in the United States and across the world.”

Trump also named LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, one of the largest donors to the Democratic Party. Hoffman founded the Aphorism Foundation, a California-based private grantmaking group that focuses on noncontroversial causes such as supporting universities and hospitals.

Through a separate nonprofit, Hoffman provided financial support for writer E. Jean Carroll’s sexual assault lawsuit against Trump.

In terms of specific actions, Thursday’s memo ordered the commissioner of the IRS “to ensure that no tax-exempt entities are directly or indirectly financing political violence or domestic terrorism.”

“In addition, where applicable, the Commissioner shall ensure that the [IRS] refers such organizations, and the employees and officers of such organizations, to the Department of Justice for investigation and possible prosecution,” the memo reads.

Since returning to the White House, Trump has repeatedly threatened to strip left-leaning organizations of their tax exemptions.

Federal law bars senior executive branch officials from directing the IRS, which is currently headed by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent in an acting capacity, to audit any taxpayer or nonprofit organization.

However, the Trump administration could create pretext triggering an IRS audit through several different means.

The White House has repeatedly attempted to link the recent murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk to progressive causes and groups. The effort has heightened fears that Trump and his allies seek to exploit the killing to further attack institutions that power the political left.

The Trump administration has also specifically targeted the Ford Foundation, another progressive philanthropic organization.

Earlier this week, Trump signed a separate memo claiming to designate “antifa,” a leaderless and decentralized anti-fascist movement, as a “domestic terrorist organization.”

Trump and many of his fellow Republicans have long used antifa as a catch-all designation against protests or speech they disapprove of.

Senior White House officials Thursday claimed that large-scale nationwide protests in recent years, such as the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, were organized by unspecified organizations and amounted to terrorism.

“This is the first time in American history that there is an all-of-government effort to dismantle left-wing terrorism, to dismantle antifa, to dismantle the organizations that have been carrying out these acts of political violence and terrorism,” Stephen Miller, Trump’s homeland security advisor, said as the president signed the memo.

*“Whether it be going back to the riots that started with Black Lives Matter and all the way through to the antifa riots, the attacks on [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] officers, the doxing campaign and now the political assassinations, these are not lone isolated events,” Miller added. “This is part of an organized campaign of radical left terrorism.”

Miller recently referred to the Democratic Party as “not a political party. It is a domestic extremist organization.”

*This breaking news story has been updated with additional details throughout.

Next Up

DOJ Obeys Trump, Indicts Comey Days After Order to Pursue President’s Foes

Former FBI Director James Comey has been indicted on two criminal counts days after President Trump ordered Attorney General Pam Bondi to pursue his perceived enemies more aggressively.

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GUK 9 25

Trump issued a presidential memorandum on Thursday aimed at reining in what he has called a radical leftwing domestic “terror network” but which seemed likely to meet fierce legal pushback from critics depicting it as a licence for a broad crackdown on his political opponents.

Prompted by journalists, Trump suggested that George Soros, the billionaire Hungarian-born philanthropist who funds the Open Society Foundations, could be in his sights. He also identified Reid Hoffman, a billionaire venture capitalist, adding: “I hear about him. Maybe it could be him. It could be a lot of people.”

Earlier, the Open Society Foundations had hit back at reports that the justice department was planning to target the group and criticized the Trump administration for “politically motivated attacks on civil society”.

Hina Shamsi of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said in a statement: “After one of the most harrowing weeks for our first amendment rights, the president is invoking political violence, which we all condemn, as an excuse to target non-profits and activists with the false and stigmatizing label of ‘domestic terrorism’. This is a shameful and dangerous move.”

At a signing ceremony in the Oval Office, the memorandum was presented as aimed at “establishing a comprehensive strategy to investigate, disrupt and dismantle all stages of organized political violence and domestic terrorism”.

It was said to be part of an administration-wide response that would include the FBI’s joint terrorism taskforces, the Department of Justice and the Department of Treasury.

The ACLU said in a statement that joint terrorism task forces “already have a long history of investigations that wrongly target protestors, communities of color, and those engaged in dissent”.

Surrounded by members of his cabinet, Trump said the goal was to target “the funders of a lot of these groups”, some of whom he claimed to know. But he was vague when asked which groups he meant or who the funders were.

“These are anarchists and agitators, professional anarchists and agitators, and they get hired by wealthy people, some of whom I know, I guess, probably know,” he said. “You wouldn’t know at dinner with them. Everything’s nice, and then you find out that they funded millions of dollars to these lunatics.”

Daniel Richman, a professor at Columbia Law School and former federal prosecutor, said the memorandum itself probably doesn’t carry much legal weight. “You can’t by executive order create new crimes. This does not create new crimes. This says you will use the Terrorism Task Force to go after things they would usually go after,” Richman said.

But, he added: “The concern is that this administration has made clear it is only interested in pursuing politically oriented terrorism that disagrees with its political agenda.”

The Trump administration does not need to create new crimes in order to do this, he said. Laws already on the books “have and continue to provide the ability to go after ideological opponents”.

Though the memorandum may not hold up in court, “I fear how far they are going to take this,” said Jason Charter, a former activist who faced charges during Trump’s first term in connection with efforts to tear down the Andrew Jackson statue in front of the White House. “Antifa is antifascism, and antifascism is a very widely shared thing, and being against fascism should not be illegal.”

“It’s trying to slap terrorism charges on people doing protected activities under the Bill of Rights,” Charter said.

The memorandum comes amid a rightwing clamor for retribution in the wake of the 10 September murder of the far-right pundit Charlie Kirk, which Trump and his supporters have blamed on an organized leftwing network, despite early indications that the suspect acted alone.

It also followed Wednesday’s deadly attack on a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) facility in Dallas that killed one detainee and injured two others. One of the bullets used in the attack was inscribed with the message “anti-Ice”.

The memorandum lumps together a series of apparently unrelated episodes, including a foiled 2022 assassination attempt on the supreme court justice Brett Kavanaugh, the murder of the CEO of United Healthcare in Manhattan last December, last year’s two failed attempts on Trump’s life, and unrest on the streets of Los Angeles and Portland, Oregon.

Stephen Miller, the influential White House deputy chief of staff – who has been vocal in the administration’s previous calls for a crackdown – called the initiative “historical and significant”.

“This is the first time in American history that there is an all-of-government effort to dismantle leftwing terrorism, to dismantle antifa, to dismantle the organizations that have been carrying out these acts of political violence and terrorism,” Miller said. The joint terrorism taskforce, a unit inside the FBI, would be “the hub” of the effort, he added.

He said “an entire system of feeder organisations” were funding “harassment, doxing, intimidation and, ultimately, attempted assassinations” of public officials.

“It is all carefully planned, executed and thought through,” said Miller. “It is terrorism on our soil. We are going to use the entire force of the federal government to uproot these organizations, root and branch.”

Trump and his allies have portrayed political violence as a phenomenon primarily associated with the left, overlooking recent incidents in which Democrats have been targeted by people who are believed to be rightwing extremists or incidents in which the perpetrator’s motives are unclear.

Postingon his Truth Social network on Wednesday, Trump clearly tied the Ice facility attack to the Democrats and their criticism of his immigration crackdown in a manner resembling his response to Kirk’s killing.

“This violence is the result of the radical left Democrats constantly demonizing law enforcement, calling for ICE to be demolished, and comparing ICE Officers to “Nazis,” he wrote. “The continuing violence from Radical Left Terrorists, in the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, must be stopped. ICE Officers, and other Brave Members of Law Enforcement, are under grave threat.”

But authorities on Thursday said that they did not find evidence that the suspect was a member of “any specific group or entity, nor did he mention any specific government agency other than Ice”.

In the wake of Kirk’s killing, Trump issued an executive order designating antifa, a loose network of groups that has been involved in confrontations with the far right, as a “domestic terrorist organization”.

The new memorandum states: “This political violence is not a series of isolated incidents and does not emerge organically. Instead, it is a culmination of sophisticated, organized campaigns of targeted intimidation, radicalization, threats, and violence designed to silence opposing speech, limit political activity, change or direct policy outcomes, and prevent the functioning of a democratic society.

“A new law enforcement strategy that investigates all participants in these criminal and terroristic conspiracies – including the organized structures, networks, entities, organizations, funding sources, and predicate actions behind them – is required.”

“Intimidation tactics against those standing up for human rights and civil liberties are sadly not new in the history of this country,” Shamsi, the director of the ACLU’s national security project, said. “In an earlier era, civil rights movement leaders were also labeled security threats and investigated, monitored, threatened, and even arrested.”

*Lauren Gambino contributed reporting

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In their quest for retribution for the slaying of far-right podcaster Charlie Kirk, MAGA is "dragging their allies in government down a rabbit hole of online conspiracy theories," according to an Axiosreport.

Following the FBI's failure to connect Kirk's killer to any left-wing movement or ideology, MAGA, says Axios, is "hungry for a crackdown."

The problem is, Axios says, "its enemy is ill-defined, and its definition of success is wholly unclear. A lack of answers from the Trump administration could leave vast swathes of the base deeply disappointed."

In their desperation for someone or something to point their fingers at, "theories about sprawling 'leftist' networks, accomplices at the scene of Kirk's slaying in Utah, or overseas involvement are being treated as live leads — even in the absence of hard evidence," Axios explains.

One of those conspiracy theories is that Kirk's alleged assassin Tyler Robinson didn't act alone, despite any evidence of any accomplice(s). Another focuses on Robinson'stext messages with his roommate and alleged partner and friends, which conspiracy theorists allege were staged to clear others of any connection to knowledge of the shooting before it happened.

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Experts told NBC News that "the Trump administration appears to be using Kirk’s assassination as an excuse to crack down on left-wing people and groups."

"You've got to get to the bottom of these groups, you've got to get to the bottom of antifa, you've got to see if there's any connections to Butler," said "War Room" host and President Donald Trump's first term chief White House strategist Steve Bannon, referring to the 2024 assassination attempt Trump in Pennsylvania.'

"We've got a whole lot of work to do, and no, I'm not buying the script that was in thetext messages," he added.

Axios says that Trump's recent crackdown on the nonexistent antifa — a portmanteau for "Anti Fascist" — is also driving the conspiracy theories, despite the fact that experts say Robinson was anything but an anti-fascist even if he did write "Hey fascist! Catch!" on a bullet casing.

"Robinson is not a central-casting, rabble-rousing, far-left activist. He sounds about as far as you can get from antifa. He drove a Dodge Challenger, for goodness' sake,"quippedthe Daily Beast's David Gardner in an op-ed.

Another suggestion Axios calls "baseless" is that Israel was involved in Kirk's killing, leading to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to release avideodebunking it, calling it a "monstrous lie." VID]

"Conspiracy theories are an inevitable part of any assassination," Axios says. "But with MAGA's grip on the Trump administration, unproven speculation is being elevated into official policy."

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