New Orleans       There’s no question that Trump and his administration, virtually from the top much of the way down just do not like protest or protestors.  The whole gang and their larger tribe from Congress to statehouses are lightning quick to label the least resistance as domestic terrorism, deep conspiracy, or Trump’s personal favorite, the illusive antifa.  This is true in general and specifically when it comes to their obsession with heavy-handed mass deportation of anyone who looks like any immigrant.  It’s ironic to read about Trump’s nominee to replace the inept, narcissist South Dakota’s former governor Kristi Noem with the Oklahoma Senator who in his hearing is having to walk back his kneejerk claim that the Minneapolis nurse and citizen observer murdered by ICE was a terrorist.

The administration may be trying to hide their hands while throwing the rocks now for a lower profile, but a review of Justice Department efforts to criminalize protest and protestors is chilling from recent reports.  The justification they are claiming is Trump’s directive from National Security Presidential Memo 7 or NSPM-7, which attempted to expand the definition of terrorism to minor governmental annoyances like “revealing the personal details of agents or getting in the way of immigration enforcement.”  The Times quotes a mad dog coordinator of this effort “hounding” prosecutors for cases and promising headlines “blasting out” prosecutors’ work.

Whether by luck or from incompetence and overreach, most of their efforts have failed, but the worm could turn.  Without any legal justification, agents are arresting protestors randomly and then trying to get them to agree to turn over their phones and submit to DNA cheek swabs without warrants.  First Amendment, who cares?  What is that?

The one Texas case brought against alleged antifa folks was undercut when the government’s cooperating witnesses swore under oath they didn’t belong to or have any knowledge of antifa.  In another case brought in Illinois, government lawyers had to back off claims that several had sought to interfere with immigration efforts when video showed their vehicle had been turned into demonstrators by an ICE agent himself.  An acting US attorney in Washington State resigned rather than sign an indictment against nine protestors “who were later charged with impeding federal agents driving immigrants to a court hearing in Tacoma,” which he felt was simple First Amendment activity.  Later the charges were dropped “in a sweetheart” deal to misdemeanors and less if they stayed out of trouble.

Try and try again seems to be the Justice Department’s motto for this witch hunt. They are reportedly “close to reaching an agreement with the IRS to investigate nonprofit organizations known as 501c(3)s…” who are organizations engaged in charitable work of one type or another.  There are tens of thousands of such organizations, including many with whom I work. Talk about a fishing expedition!  Homeland Security Task Force Group 4 is also throwing out a line in this deep pool to go after “organizations involved in illegal activities during protests.”  This is outside normal procedure of investigating specific crimes rather than individuals and their organizations.  This was the case in the administration’s arrest of 39 protestors, including Don Lemon, the broadcast journalist, for a demonstration in a Minneapolis church, as well the way they have gone after a pro-immigrant group in Ventura County, California.  Somehow prosectors got an indictment in Minnesota from a grand jury.  Lawyers claimed “In the United States of America, we do not prosecute journalists for doing their job.  That happens in Russia, China, Iran and other authoritarian regimes.  And yet the government sold this unconstitutional mess to the grand jury.”

These days under these polices and directives run by the Justice Department and other agencies, we can make the claims to be different under our constitution, but in practice and philosophy, the United States in Trump time is becoming little different than these other regimes.