Recently, Defending Rights and Dissent (DRAD) released a report analysing the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) monitoring of constitutionally protected speech. The report identified the White House’s National Security Presidential Memorandum 7, also known as NSPM-7, as a major escalation in President Donald Trump’s crackdown on dissent and highlighted how the loose rules governing the FBI combine to make repression much more attainable. With attacks on speech becoming more common, these revelations add to broader social anxiety.
The report shows how court decisions, dubious legal interpretations by the administration, and claims that the FBI may preemptively monitor speech on the grounds that it looks to prevent terrorism make the First Amendment’s protections essentially meaningless. It also analyzes in detail how the FBI’s current rules steer the intelligence agency towards political surveillance.
“With NSPM-7, Trump and Miller have made clear they plan to exploit the broad counterterrorism authorities of the executive branch to unleash this machinery of repression upon their domestic political opponents,” said the report’s author and DRAD’s policy director, Chip Gibbons. “Unless Congress acts now, they will get away with it.”
While we have seen how various government agencies, such as the Department of State and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), have been weaponized against those expressing dissent over broad human rights violations, the FBI’s role warrants a broader discussion. Given the decades-long history of surveilling political movements, the report shows that the FBI has been empowered to continue its legacy of monitoring constitutionally protected activities.
“NSPM-7 requires no new laws, no new agencies, because well before Trump ever returned to power, the FBI and its enablers have amassed for itself the power to spy on pure political speech,” said Gibbons. “And we know through our own work with the Freedom of Information Act, such surveillance is all too common.”
The premise of NSPM-7 is that left-wing political movements criticizing the President, his cabinet, or his MAGA movement are inherently responsible for political violence, ignoring how right-wing violence far outpaces all others. The memo treats political speech as a precursor to terrorism, singling out certain speech for targeting. NSPM-7 acts as a blueprint for weaponizing a counterterrorism pretext against any domestic political opposition.
“With the FBI, Trump and Miller were gifted the perfect weapon to use against its enemies. It is no wonder the FBI and its Joint Terrorism Task Forces are the centerpiece of NSPM-7,” said Gibbons.
The views listed in NSPM-7 as promoting violence 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.” The memo mimics previous counterterrorism documents not just by making basic protest a criminal act, but also by making clear that the administration’s goal is not merely prosecution but prevention and disruption.
The NSPM-7 also calls for the creation of a national strategy to target dissent and calls on the Attorney General to identify “any behaviors, fact patterns, recurrent motivations, or other indicia common to organizations and entities that coordinate these acts in order to direct efforts to identify and prevent potential violent activity,” based on the ideologies listed by the White House as motivating left-wing violence. The NSPM-7 ignores the growth in right-wing violence over the last three decades.
The DRAD report concludes by calling on Congress to enact a series of reforms, saying, “The FBI should not be basing its authority off of a patchwork of statutes, executive orders, and administrative authorities. Instead, its authorities must be clearly delineated by Congress, including what the FBI investigates and when it can open an investigation.”
Some of the recommendations include “creating a statutory charter limiting the FBI’s investigative authorities, strengthening protections for political speech and organizing, and requiring a warrant for foreign intelligence searches.”
Read the Full DRAD Report
Disclosure: Arturo is a recently elected board member of Defending Rights and Dissent. He had no part in creating the “Can the FBI Spy on the First Amendment?” report.
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