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The White House’s 2026 Counterterrorism Strategy, published May 6, reveals startling new details about the Trump administration’s plans to target progressives. The new memo builds on one issued last September, called the National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7) on “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence.” Organizers warn the administration’s so-called “America First” counterterrorism strategy represents a threat to human rights, civil liberties, and the ongoing struggle for democracy and are shoring up their work to protect against its directives.

“NSPM-7 is a deliberate attempt to sow fear and intimidate and silence opposition to the president’s abuses,” wrote Hina Shamsi, director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) National Security Project, in a blog post following NSPM-7’s release. But, she continued, “[as] chilling as NSPM-7 is, and painful and difficult though its implementation may well prove to be, it contains nothing that we have not seen before.”

Specifically, the memo directs the Department of Justice (DOJ), the FBI, and other national security agencies and departments to root out what it calls “domestic terrorist organizations.” But unlike foreign terrorism, for which there is an established designation the secretary of state can attach to groups headquartered outside the U.S., there is no official label or designation regime for so-called domestic terrorism. Instead, experts argue that the label serves to criminalize dissent and legitimize political opponents as law enforcement targets. The strategy hearkens back to the J. Edgar Hoover era at the FBI, when the bureau launched a secret program “to expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize” Black leaders and civil rights groups.

It also echoes a more recent past. “The memo itself draws on some of the most harmful post-9/11 national security policies that had served to target Muslim communities, but also Black, African, Arab, Middle Eastern, and South Asian communities,” Sumayyah Waheed, senior policy counsel at Muslim Advocates, told Truthout. “Those policies were characterized by mass surveillance, racial and religious profiling, and crackdowns on dissent, so our community suffered in a lot of ways. We’re seeing the same pattern repeated here with NSPM-7, but with an expansion against basically any movements or groups that the federal government disagrees with.”

The Trump administration has given some indications of who it plans to target with these memos, though their vague language casts a wide net. Days before NSPM-7 was issued, Donald Trump signed an executive order designating antifa a domestic terrorist organization, and in a........

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