\n<\/p>\n
\u201cTerrorist\u201d is the word<\/em><\/span> that the Trump administration employs to describe the victims of its most egregious acts of state violence.<\/p>\n President Donald Trump has used the word \u201cterrorist\u201d to justify the extrajudicial killings of civilians in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean. And his deputies used it to explain away the killings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good in Minneapolis by federal agents.<\/p>\n \u201cEarlier this morning, on my Orders, U.S. Military Forces conducted a kinetic strike against positively identified Tren de Aragua Narco terrorists,\u201d Trump wrote<\/a> following the initial boat strike on September 2, 2025. He said the attack \u201coccurred while the terrorists were at sea in International waters.\u201d<\/p>\n Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem said that Good and Pretti were guilty of \u201cdomestic terrorism<\/a>.\u201d And top White House adviser Stephen Miller used similar language<\/a> to describe<\/a> both.<\/p>\n These killings were conducted thousands of miles apart by different agencies in very different contexts. But the connection between them could be more than semantic.<\/p>\n Under National Security Presidential Memorandum 7, or\u00a0NSPM-7<\/a>, Trump\u2019s Justice Department is now assembling a secret \u201cdomestic terrorist organization\u201d database. It also maintains a secret list of \u201cdesignated terrorist organizations\u201d with whom the U.S. claims to be at war.<\/p>\n For months, the White House and Justice Department have failed to answer a question that becomes more relevant with every person branded a domestic terrorist, shot by federal agents, or both: Are Americans who the federal government deems to be domestic terrorists under NSPM-7 subject to extrajudicial killings like those it claims are members of designated terrorist organizations on boats at sea?<\/p>\n \u201cIf we\u2019re going to say it\u2019s OK to kill so-called terrorists in the Caribbean, for actions that have traditionally been dealt with as a criminal matter, using due process \u2014 what\u2019s to say you can\u2019t do the same in an American city?\u201d asked Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon, D-Pa., the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee\u2019s Subcommittee on Constitution and Limited Government. \u201cThat is the very scary but logical end of all these things the Trump administration is doing.\u201d<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s de facto declaration of war on dissent, NSPM-7, conflates constitutionally protected speech and political activism with \u201cdomestic terrorism\u201d \u2014 a\u00a0term that has no basis in U.S. law. That memorandum, which was issued in September, and an implementation memo released in December by Attorney General Pam Bondi, specifically targets<\/a> those that espouse what the administration defines as anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, anti-Christianity, anti-fascism, and radical gender ideologies, as well as those with \u201chostility toward those who hold traditional American views.\u201d At a minimum, the memorandum raises serious First Amendment, due process, and civil liberties concerns.<\/p>\n Bondi\u2019s December memo, \u201cImplementing National Security Presidential Memorandum-7: Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence,\u201d which the Justice Department shared with The Intercept, defines \u201cdomestic terrorism\u201d in the broadest possible terms, including \u201cdoxing\u201d and \u201cconspiracies to impede \u2026 law enforcement.\u201d<\/p>\n Federal immigration agents <\/a>consider observing<\/a>, following<\/a>, and filming their<\/a> operations a crime <\/a>under 18 U.S.C. \u00a7 111<\/a>: assaulting, resisting, or impeding <\/a>a federal officer. This is also the foremost statute in a directory of prioritized crimes listed in NSPM-7.<\/p>\n Federal officers frequently confront<\/a> and threaten<\/a> those observing, following, and filming them for \u201cimpeding<\/a>\u201d their efforts. In numerous instances<\/a>, they have unholstered<\/a> or pointed weapons<\/a> at the people<\/a> who filmed<\/a> or followed them<\/a>.<\/p>\n A recent report<\/a> by the CATO Institute notes that it is \u201ccrucial to understand that ICE and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) consider people who follow DHS and ICE agents to observe, record, or protest their operations as engaging in \u2018impeding.\u2019\u201d It goes on to note that DHS \u201chas a systematic policy of threatening people who follow ICE or DHS agents to record their activities with detentions, arrests, and violence, and agents have already chased, detained, arrested, charged, struck, and shot at people who follow them.\u201d<\/p>\n Before their killings, both Pretti and Good had been observing<\/a> agents\u2019 activities. In the wake of Good\u2019s death, the Justice Department opened an investigation of Good\u2019s widow for allegedly \u201cinterfering<\/a>\u201d with an ICE operation \u2014 apparently for filming the shooting.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n NSPM-7 alleges vast \u201corganized structures, networks, entities, organizations, [and] funding sources\u201d support leftist <\/a>\u201ccriminal and terroristic conspiracies.\u201d It adds, \u201cThese campaigns are coordinated and perpetrated by actors who have developed a comprehensive strategy to achieve specific policy goals through radicalization and violent intimidation.\u201d<\/p>\n The Trump administration has framed the Minneapolis protests and a larger movement in Minnesota and beyond in the same terms as NSPM-7, painting it as a \u201cRadical Left Movement of Violence and Hate<\/a>\u201d coordinated by a vast network of \u201chighly paid professional agitators and anarchists<\/a>,\u201d as well as \u201cinsurrectionists<\/a>\u201d supported by corrupt <\/a>Democratic lawmakers and officials or \u201csanctuary politicians<\/a>\u201d who are inciting violence<\/a> against federal officers.<\/p>\n Trump endorsed<\/a> Vice President JD Vance\u2019s\u00a0baseless claim\u00a0that Good was part of a \u201cbroader left-wing network<\/a>\u201d that sometimes uses \u201cdomestic terror techniques\u201d to \u201cattack, to dox, to assault and to make it impossible for our ICE officers to do their job.\u201d Miller suggested Pretti was one of an unknown number of militants operating in Minneapolis. \u201cA would-be assassin tried to murder federal law enforcement and the official Democrat account sides with the terrorists,\u201d he\u00a0wrote<\/a>\u00a0on X on Saturday, referring to comments by a Democratic party account calling for ICE to withdraw from Minneapolis.<\/p>\n Trump initially described Pretti as a \u201cgunman<\/a>,\u201d although the ICU nurse never drew his licensed handgun<\/a> before being executed at point blank range by federal agents. After briefly softening his tone on Pretti, Trump called him an \u201cAgitator and, perhaps, insurrectionist\u201d in a Friday Truth Social post<\/a>.<\/p>\n Miller bills<\/a>\u00a0NSPM-7 as the first \u201call-of-government effort to dismantle left-wing terrorism,\u201d which he calls a sophisticated, well-funded network supported by an \u201centire system of feeder organizations that provide money, resources, weapons.\u201d Bondi\u2019s implementation memo also offers a fictitious apocalyptic vision of urban America which the Trump administration has employed to justify its\u00a0domestic military occupations<\/a>, including \u201cmass rioting and destruction in our cities\u201d and \u201cviolent efforts to shut down immigration enforcement.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cEvery accusation is a confession with this administration.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n \u201cThis political violence is not a series of isolated incidents and does not emerge organically,\u201d Scanlon told The Intercept, quoting from a section of NSPM-7 that details a supposed coordinated effort by antifascists <\/a>and other administration enemies. But Scanlon framed it in terms of the Trump administration\u2019s own authoritarian campaign. \u201cThe paragraph describing how political violence takes root and becomes more widespread basically describes the Trump era. Every accusation is a confession with this administration. You talk about targeted intimidation and radicalization and threats and violence designed to silence opposing speech \u2014 it\u2019s all there, and we\u2019re seeing it unfold.\u201d<\/p>\n Federal immigration officers have shot at least 13 people since September, killing at least five, including Pretti and Good, according to data compiled<\/a> by The Trace.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat the Trump Administration is doing in Minnesota is a testing ground for a paramilitary police state across the country,\u201d said<\/a> Rep. April McClain Delaney, D-Md., on January 25. \u201cMasked DHS agents are now operating in Minnesota neighborhoods with impunity \u2014 terrorizing families and neighborhoods, slandering the victims with lies, silencing dissent, seizing and detaining protesters, eroding basic civil liberties and killing American citizens.\u201d<\/p>\n At the same<\/span> time shootings by immigration agents have ramped up at home, the Trump administration has been killing civilians<\/a> in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean. The U.S. military has carried out 36 known attacks, destroying 37 boats, since September,\u00a0killing at least<\/a> 126 civilians. The most recent attack occurred in the Pacific Ocean on January 23, killing three people. The administration insists the attacks are permitted because the U.S. is engaged in \u201cnon-international armed conflict<\/a>\u201d with \u201cdesignated terrorist organizations<\/a>\u201d it refuses to name.\u00a0Experts<\/a>, current and former government officials, and lawmakers<\/a>\u00a0say these killings are outright\u00a0murders<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThis administration has asserted the prerogative to kill people outside the law, solely on the basis of the president labeling them terrorists. And there are no obvious limits to this license to kill,\u201d said Brian Finucane, a former State Department lawyer who is a specialist in counterterrorism issues and the laws of war. \u201cThe president has wielded that authority in the Caribbean and the Pacific and could wield it domestically. Indeed, the fact that they invoked domestic terrorism to justify the killings of Rene Good and Alex Pretti suggests they already might have.\u201d<\/p>\n Since October,\u00a0The Intercept\u00a0has been\u00a0asking if the White House<\/a>\u00a0would rule out conducting summary executions<\/a> of members of the list \u201cof any such groups or entities\u201d designated as \u201cdomestic terrorist organization[s]\u201d under NSPM-7, without a response. Return receipts also show that Justice Department spokesperson Natalie Baldassarre has repeatedly read The Intercept\u2019s questions on this subject over months but has failed to offer an answer.<\/p>\n Faiza Patel, the senior director of the Brennan Center for Justice\u2019s liberty and national security program, told The Intercept that while it wasn\u2019t possible to directly link NSPM-7 to the killings of Good and Pretti, the memorandum\u2019s rhetoric about what constitutes domestic terrorism \u201cis reflected in senior officials\u2019 statements and it seems that DHS agents on the ground view any opposition to their actions as warranting extreme and even lethal force.\u201d<\/p>\n Federal agents from ICE and Homeland Security Investigations assigned to Minneapolis received a memo earlier in January asking them to collect identifying information on \u201cagitators, protestors, etc.,\u201d CNN reported<\/a> Tuesday. Last week, a masked immigration agent\u00a0warned<\/a>\u00a0a woman filming their activities in Portland, Maine, that her information would be entered into a \u201cnice little database\u201d that would label her a \u201cdomestic terrorist.\u201d Tom Homan, Trump\u2019s border czar and Border Patrol commander-at-large Gregory Bovino\u2019s replacement<\/a>, also mentioned the database<\/a> the same month on Fox News. \u201cWe\u2019re going to create a database,\u201d he said, noting that it would include those \u201carrested for interference, impeding and assault.\u201d Journalist Ken Klippenstein recently reported on<\/a> more than a dozen \u201csecret and obscure watchlists\u201d being used to track protesters and supposed \u201cdomestic terrorists.\u201d<\/p>\n DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin says her department does not administer the secret database. \u201cThere is NO database of \u2018domestic terrorists\u2019 run by DHS,\u201d she told The Intercept by email. \u201cWe do of course monitor and investigate and refer all threats, assaults and obstruction of our officers to the appropriate law enforcement.\u201d DHS\u2019s Office of Intelligence and Analysis does admit<\/a> that it \u201cnominated over 4,600 people to the terrorist watchlist\u201d in the last year and says ICE arrested more than 1,400 \u201cknown or suspected terrorists.\u201d<\/p>\n NSPM-7 directs Bondi to compile a list \u201cof any such groups or entities\u201d to be designated as \u201cdomestic terrorist organization[s],\u201d and Bondi has ordered the FBI to \u201ccompile a list of groups or entities engaging in acts that may constitute domestic terrorism,\u201d according to the December 4 memo.\u00a0Last fall, FBI Director Kash Patel told senators<\/a> that there were \u201c1,700 domestic terrorism investigations\u201d and that it represented \u201ca 300% increase in cases opened this year alone versus the same time last year.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n When asked if Good or Pretti were on any domestic terrorism list, watchlist, or under surveillance by federal authorities, a bureau spokesperson said: \u201cThe FBI has no comment.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n\n