NSPM-7: Enemies of the State
The Trump Plan to Crush Dissent
Image by Julia Sorrenti and Maria Nunes of Neta Collab
In September 2025, the Trump White House released the National Security Presidential Memorandum “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Political Violence,” most commonly known by the acronym NSPM-7. Its stated objective is to “disband and uproot networks, entities, and organizations that promote organized violence, violent intimidation, conspiracies against rights, and other efforts to disrupt the functioning of a democratic society.” In reality, it is a blueprint to neutralize the administration’s opponents and suppress dissent.
NSPM-7 seeks to empower various tentacles of the federal government to coordinate and expand surveillance, investigations and prosecutions, all in the name of stamping out “domestic terrorism” and crushing “antifa.” While this presidential action gives the government no new powers or authorities, its goal is to enhance collaboration among agencies to maximize their prosecutorial powers — creating an unprecedented impact on would-be defendants engaged in conduct the administration deems anti-American.
NSPM-7 couples this counterterrorism framework with sophisticated conspiracy charges the Justice Department prosecutes. In so doing, it enables the federal government to wield its strongest weapons against anyone it considers a threat. The Trump administration is using these powerful tools to target dissidents, protesters and civil society.
This Free Press report identifies three troubling hallmarks of the NSPM-7 framework:
- Broad Application Targeting Commonplace Activities: The NSPM-7 blueprint sets a goal of making commonplace and constitutionally protected activities — like texting among friends or sharing reading materials about constitutional rights — evidence of major terroristic crimes. This exposes untold numbers of innocent people to criminal sanctions for their beliefs and basic expressive exchanges.
- Infliction of the Most Severe Penalties: The NSPM-7 blueprint enables efficient coordination across federal agencies to go after the greatest number of people through surveillance, investigation and prosecution. The aim is to levy the heaviest charges across agencies to achieve the harshest sentences.
- A Limitless Mandate With No Guidelines or Guardrails: While the methods, severity and application of the blueprint are explicit, the framework sets no standards for application — whether physical, geographic, thematic or constitutional. As a result, nothing is off the table for NSPM-7 to sweep up and target.
In the year since Trump issued NSPM-7, the Justice Department and the White House have released additional official frameworks that expand on the original directive’s mandate. The Justice Department has initiated prosecutions, and the Department of Homeland Security has surveilled and investigated people engaged in constitutionally protected activities: protesting outside, leafleting about basic rights, texting about where immigration officials are. Congressional allies of Trump are similarly pursuing investigations of left-leaning and center-moderate organizations, foundations and individuals. And other agencies such as the Internal Revenue Service have launched financial investigations to chill civic engagement.
NSPM-7 has historical counterparts, like COINTELPRO and the Patriot Act, which have used similarly expansive national-security mandates to justify the pursuit, investigation and prosecution of a wide swath of people, beliefs and activities. The government deployed these programs to criminalize dissent and attack marginalized voices, amassing criticism and legal scrutiny from First Amendment litigators, constitutional-law scholars and intelligence experts.
The NSPM-7 framework is the latest escalation of this administration’s censorial campaign to stamp out opposition. But this blueprint isn’t merely a set of disparate threats or one-off attacks like some of the administration’s often unconstitutional attempts to whittle away at free speech and dissent.
No Kings protesters march in front of Trump Tower in Manhattan.
Timothy Karr
NSPM-7 is uniquely chilling and efficient: It treats speaking out, protesting and civic-engagement activities as evidence of terrorism. NSPM-7 is a new kind of escalation, strengthening the government’s hand to suppress whatever it considers politically or socially oppositional — and then inflicting maximum damage on that opposition.
NSPM-7 sets the stage for the administration to deploy vastly outsized and unprecedented cross-agency authorities to criminalize whatever public-engagement activities it seeks to eliminate. The midterm elections are at our doorstep; the president is eagerly pursuing election-fraud narratives, telling voters he will pay them off if they vote for Republicans — and leveraging his executive power to sway election results if he can. Already Homeland Security officials have investigated more than 150 nonprofit organizations under the guise of “election integrity.” It’s by no means outside the realm of possibility that NSPM-7 becomes the vehicle to shut down civic engagement and political expression in the months to follow.
NSPM-7 & the Making of Public Enemy No. 1
NSPM-7 is a clunky acronym for a dangerous presidential directive. Released weeks after Charlie Kirk’s assassination in 2025, this memorandum lays out the Trump administration’s strategy of labeling political activity as domestic terrorism. The goal is to unleash the government’s most potent investigative and legal countermeasures.
Guilt by Association
The Justice Department has implemented NSPM-7 in two cases involving anti-ICE protesters in Texas and Minnesota. These cases demonstrate the federal government’s seemingly limitless power to go after its domestic opponents — all in an effort to delegitimize people’s exercise of basic free speech and political rights.
Dismantling Civil Society
NSPM-7 is not limited to the courts. With government institutions falling in line, the Trump administration is harnessing congressional and agency powers to go after civil society, including the nonprofits and individuals that have been most effective in standing up to Trump’s agenda.
“Antifa” at the Polls
Trump has made clear his intentions to interfere in the midterm elections. As his administration’s efforts to undermine free and fair elections unfold, they set the stage for mass mobilization. There’s a risk that Trump officials could use NSPM-7 against nonprofits registering people to vote or against local election workers tabulating votes. The administration could even go after voters who take to the streets in protest.
Recommendations & Conclusion
NSPM-7 is not preordained. There are significant opportunities for lawmakers and civil society to prevent the normalization of NSPM-7 and roll back the national-security state that brought us here in the first place.