[title revoked for national security purposes]

On September 25th, the White House released a National Security Presidential Memorandum aimed at countering the spread of political violence and domestic terrorism that has, in their words, “dramatically increased in recent years.” 

The memorandum, commonly abbreviated to NSPM-7, was likely prompted by the assassination of Charlie Kirk at a Utah college campus in early September. The assassination has justified recent increases in US visa revocation and increases in governmental surveillance on US citizens; in reaction, Americans are voicing their concerns about the status of the First Amendment. Are our rights still guaranteed?

NSPM-7 opens with a reflection on recent cases of political violence in the US. It specifically mentions the assassination of Kirk and United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson in 2024, an attempt on Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s life, and assassination attempts directed at President Trump himself. These events, the memorandum claims, indicate increasing political violence that threatens the government.

Targeted Inconsistency

NSPM-7 noticeably neglects, however, similar cases of violence directed toward Democrats. In July of this year, Minnesota’s DFL (Democratic-Farmer-Labor) Speaker of the House Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark died after being repeatedly shot at their home in Brooklyn Park. Later that night, DFL senator John Hoffman and his wife Yvette were also shot by the same assassin at their home in Champlin, but luckily recovered after long hospital stays. It seems strange, when illustrating the prominence of political violence in this country, to not mention such tragedies. To directly detail assasination attempts on prominent conservatives occurring as far back as 2022, but not even mention recent attempts, is oddly targeted. Furthermore, after the assassination attempts on DFL senators, Trump offered little condemnation and would go on to state that he “wasn’t familiar” with the victims after declining to issue an order lowering the American flag to half-staff. When asked about the Hortmans and Hoffmans by name, Trump replied: “I’m not familiar. The who?” When asked if he was planning to call Minnesota governor Tim Walz regarding the assassination, he responded “I could be nice and call, but why waste time?” Even if considering NSPM-7 in the best light, it’s sloppy to leave out these instances of political violence. More realistically, though, NSPM-7 is purposefully tailored to nurture a narrative of left-wing violence while abetting the same acts by right-wingers. It’s—at the very least—a demonstration that this administration believes the lives of conservatives matter more than the lives of liberals.

However egregious the omission may be to those families, whose lives have been shaped by political violence, the lack of representation for Democratic victims is probably the least publicized and least meaningful issue to the memorandum’s critics.

The End of Free Speech in America?

Far more concerning to the general public are the threats to free speech clearly presented in the order. The memorandum directly identifies outbreaks of anti-Christian sentiment as the fuel for violence. However, it does nothing to address the persistent issues of antisemitism and Islamophobia aggravated by Israel/Gaza conflicts in the current social climate. It may mean to be powerful and concise—but again, it leaves large demographics out of its policy entirely. By specifying anti-Christian sentiment, the administration shows its preferred demographic.

One perspective on the mention of anti-Christian sentiment in the memorandum is an interpretation that the mention links Christianity directly with the US government. The memorandum itself claims that government officials are increasingly facing political violence because of a rise in anti-Christianity—which, if true, would have no impact on legislators who are Jewish, Muslim, or belonging to other faiths. In reality, it’s completely untrue to claim that prominent individuals of other religious persuasions haven’t also been affected by rising political violence when there exist innumerable counterexamples. One such notable example is the spike in death threats that Muslim Representatives Ilhan Omar (MN-5) and Rashida Tlaib (MI-12) have received since Hamas’ attacks on October 7th of 2023.

More generally, a concern over free speech rights has emerged from critics of NSPM-7. In the broadest sense, it’s authoritarian for the government to punish people based on their dissenting speech. In the US, it’s illegal; a violation of the Constitution. Even worse is deporting people, revoking visas, and threatening livelihoods based on legal and civil speech. 

Although, that’s exactly what NSPM-7 proposes. The order literally outlines a way to effectively punish those with beliefs opposing the current administration: in the words of the White House, NSPM-7 will discourage and prevent “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.” It characterizes these beliefs as violent in nature, even going so far as to say “These movements portray foundational American principles as ‘fascist’ to justify and encourage acts of violent revolution.” Altogether, this means that the administration is now authorized to start tracking Americans on the basis of their speech, which is an extremely dangerous precedent to set. It furthers the potential implications by implying that beliefs like anti-capitalism are inherently violent. Critically, by stating that organizations which promote such beliefs encourage violence, they fall under the definition of domestic terrorism as defined by 18 U.S.C. 2331 (5). So, while the action contains no enforcement actions other than increased surveillance by the Joint Terrorism Task Force, it logically follows that the data harvested from NSPM-7 will be actionable in the future. 

This action represents an attack on rights that Americans have taken for granted since the Founding.

Historical Precedent

In many respects, NSPM-7 mirrors regulations that were systematically executed in the World War I era through the Espionage Act and the Sedition Act. In 1918, Congress criminalized any utterances of “disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language” about the government of the United States. Federal officials banned anti-war publications and speakers, with the courts initially upholding such prosecutions. In Schenck v. United States, the Supreme Court affirmed the act as constitutional and allowed restrictions on speech if it posed “clear and present danger.” 

These historical trends offer new insight to evaluating this modern memorandum. The Espionage and Sedition Acts facilitated surveillance that extended far beyond the targets of spies and largely impacted socialists, immigrants, and ideological dissenters. The laws, through the Palmer Raids, captured and/or deported suspected radicals, often by illegal methods of warrantless arrests and banishment without due process. The raids failed to uncover true conspiracies and the majority of the arrests were dropped. In the fact that NSPM-7 instructs agencies to construct surveillance networks and withhold funding from nonconformers under the claim of national security, it is hard to disregard the similarities it shares with the policy of the late 1910s, which was arguably one of the most repressive periods for American democracy.

The overreach of the Wilson administration set a model and resurged half a century later when the Nixon administration established the Interagency Committee on Domestic Terrorism in 1970.  Although it was meant to counter “extremist” threats, the initiative, in practice, allowed spying on journalists and anti-Vietnam War protestors. Further, while it was tasked with the prevention of terrorist acts, operations often monitored and disrupted lawful political dissent. Federal agencies collected intelligence of civil rights leaders and student advocates. FBI and CIA reports have revealed that the committee targeted coalitions like the Black Panthers and the Socialist Workers Party.  By 1976, Congress dissolved the committee, terming it “a grave threat to democracy.”

While the majority of the earlier restrictions on speech were ultimately amended or dismantled, the Espionage Act still remains largely intact and has influenced decades of controversial rulings. Notably, in 1971, Daniel Ellsberg was charged under the very act for exposing the government’s deception in Vietnam through the Pentagon Papers. Four decades later, in 2010, Chelsea Manning was convicted under the same act when she leaked classified documents regarding the violations of the U.S. Military Rules of Engagement in Iraq and Afghanistan. Edward Snowden was charged with the same for revealing illegal surveillance of U.S. citizens by the Bush administration. Despite the fact that none of these individuals had spied on behalf of foreign authorities, they were incriminated for disclosing what the public had a distinct right to know: that the United States government had waged wars under false pretenses during Vietnam War, concealed civilian death in Iraq, and possessed a surveillance network for the people of their own country. This history is not looked upon well today, and the times in which the federal government restricted Americans’ free speech weren’t great times for quality of life in America. 

A New Precedent

NSPM-7 marks the first time in over 50 years that a presidential memorandum has invoked domestic political violence as a national security concern—the first since Nixon’s directive. Like its predecessor, the memorandum expands the definition of a security threat to ideological expressions beyond acts of violence. Nixon’s precedent of violation in civil liberties for national security authorities has opened the door for the administration to target political opponents rather than criminals. Expressions of “anti-Americanism” and “anti-capitalism” continue to be cited as indications of threat, which have been responded to with arrests and deportations.

In this case though, anti-Americanism doesn’t mean what most think it does. It doesn’t mean burning a US flag (although per Texas v. Johnson it still constitutes free speech). It doesn’t really mean traditional forms of anti-American speech either; it’s been used as a justification to suppress protests for Palestinian liberation. It’s not as if obscenity, violence, true threats, and fighting words (ALL types of speech prohibited by the First Amendment) don’t exist in the US right now. But, conveniently, it’s difficult to find a Trump administration document which cares to define what that ‘Anti-American’ and ‘anti-capitalism’ speech means. There are no concrete definitions. Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, an American Immigration Council expert, refers to the Trump administration’s persecution of ‘anti-Americans’ in the same vein as communist persecution under McCarthyism. 

It seems the Trump administration has a maliciously short memory. Instead of reevaluating the secrecy laws that penalized disclosure and the exercise of free speech, NSPM-7 reimagines it for the modern era. By classifying speech as subject to surveillance under the guise of national security, it allows the administration to subvert critics and whistleblowers and is starkly reminiscent of historical censorship acts. The very terms “anti-American,” “anti-capitalist,” and “disloyal” have simply been shifted to define modern opposition. In Ellsberg’s age, the potential threats to national security were officials and diplomats; in Trump’s, it may simply be American citizens.

The Trump administration, in the absence of any outside threats to float Trump’s historically low popularity, has turned the apparatus of the state on the American people. NSPM-7, written in the name of unity, serves as a reminder that the discord that it seeks to dispel is the very foundation of the nation it claims to defend.