A Legal Analysis of Trump’s Antifa Prosecutions
Sources
MN Indictment: https://www.justice.gov/opa/media/1446251/dl?inline
Congress.Gov. “Terrorist Material Support: An Overview of 18 U.S.C. § 2339A and § 2339B.” August 15, 2023. https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R41333.
Hennessy-Fiske, Molly. “Alleged Antifa Members Get Decades in Prison over Violent ICE Protest.” The Washington Post, June 23, 2026. https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2026/06/23/alleged-antifa-members-texas-get-maximum-sentences-ice-protest/.
Hennessy-Fiske, Molly, and Jeremy Roebuck. “They Say They Tracked ICE in Minneapolis. Now They’re Accused of an Antifa Plot.” The Washington Post, June 19, 2026. https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2026/06/19/activists-indicted-alleged-antifa-plot-say-charges-are-boosting-protest-effort/.
Leingang, Rachel. “Fifteen People Charged over Alleged Interference in Minnesota Immigration Crackdown.” US News. The Guardian, June 16, 2026. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jun/16/minnesota-immigration-enforcement-conspiracy-charges.
Levine, Sam. “Texas Anti-ICE Protesters Convicted of Terrorism Charges Sentenced to at Least 50 Years in Prison.” US News. The Guardian, June 23, 2026. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jun/23/prairieland-ice-protesters-texas-sentenced.
Levinson-Waldman. “Trump’s Version of “Domestic Terrorism” vs. the First Amendment.” The Brennan Center for Justice. Feb. 13, 2026. https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/trumps-version-domestic-terrorism-vs-first-amendment.
Mazurov, Nikita. “How Did the Feds Get Into Anti-ICE Activists’ Signal Messages?” The Intercept, June 17, 2026. https://theintercept.com/2026/06/17/signal-messages-minneapolis-ice-protests/.
“Office of Public Affairs | 15 Members of Direct Action Minnesota, a Minneapolis-Based Direct Action Group with Antifa Ties, Indicted | United States Department of Justice.” June 16, 2026. https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/15-members-direct-action-minnesota-minneapolis-based-direct-action-group-antifa-ties.
Stengle, Jamie. “8 Convicted in Texas Immigration Center Shooting and Protest Are Sentenced to Decades in Prison.” U.S. News. AP News, June 23, 2026. https://apnews.com/article/prairieland-detention-center-shooting-sentencing-1eb7a8ac32dbb637e027709ae010f374.
Williams, Reagan. “‘A Manufactured Crisis.’” Human Rights Watch, June 18, 2026. https://www.hrw.org/report/2026/06/18/a-manufactured-crisis/minnesota-communities-terrorized-by-the-federal-government.
Transcript
Hi it’s Thursday, June 25th, 2026, you’re tuned in to Why, America? I’m your lawyer friend Leeja Miller. Last week, in the regime’s ongoing crackdown focused on pummeling the resolve of the people of Minnesota, 15 activists were charged with conspiracy and other federal crimes in relation to their activities on the ground countering ICE during Operation Metro surge starting in January this year. The 95 page indictment is a masterclass in effective organizing and also provides insight into the federal government’s attempts to paint activists in Minneapolis and around the country as all part of an imaginary cohesive group called “Antifa.” This indictment is just the latest in the regime’s attempt to harass and intimidate leftist activists into silence, to punish them by forcing them into the criminal justice system, even if the charges are based on nothing. Relatedly, this week the defendants in the Pairieland Texas antifa case were handed the harshest sentences available, with one man receiving 100 years in prison for his role in a protest that happened on the 4th of July last year. There is a lot we can learn from the Minneapolis indictment and the sentencing of the protesters in Texas. This is just a preview of what is likely still to come as the Trump regime continues its human rights violations and ongoing persecution of the First Amendment rights of anyone who doesn’t fall in line.
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Last year, on the evening of July 4th, a group of activists showed up outside the Prairieland Immigrant Detention Center in Texas to stage a noise protest–creating a lot of noise to gain attention to protest the detention center and show the people inside that they stood in solidarity with them. It is a form of typically non-violent direct action. The protesters all knew each other through a leftist book club as well as a leftist gun club they were affiliated with. Prior to the protest, a number of the protesters coordinated via disappearing chat messages on Signal, a popular encrypted messaging app that is commonly used by anyone concerned with surveillance or hacking, including journalists and members of the Trump administration. In those messages, the protesters coordinated wearing all black and bringing guns to the protest.
During the protest, some of the protesters engaged in property destruction–spray painting buildings and vehicles and slashing tires. When a police officer arrived at the scene and pulled his gun, one of the protesters, Benjamin Song, shot the officer in the shoulder. The officer did not die and ultimately recovered from his injuries. A couple protesters fled the scene. One person, who was not present at the protest but is married to one of the protesters, helped to move some leftist zines from one location to another in the aftermath of the incident.
The protesters were initially charged with damaging federal property, attempted murder of a federal officer, and discharging a firearm during a crime of violence. That was in July 2025. Then, Charlie Kirk was shot on September 10. By September 25th, Trump had issued two important orders relevant to what we’re discussing today. I’m plagiarizing myself a bit here but it bears repeating that this administration has a clearly stated intention to target leftists as terrorists, I’m gonna continue to yell about it. One of Trump’s 2025 orders designated “antifa” as a domestic terrorist organization–even though legal experts confirm there is no statute or legal definition of a “domestic terrorist organization” – like, that’s not a thing. And the second order is titled Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence, also known as National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 or NSPM-7 for short. Both orders laid the groundwork for what we’re seeing play out today and what we’re likely to see a lot more of going forward.
The way the Trump regime characterizes “Antifa” in the order designating it as a domestic terror organization is completely detached from reality. Actual scholars of antifa movements will tell you there is no central “organization” there is no leadership there is no one organization that calls itself “antifa.” Antifa is short for anti-fascist which, like, yeah same most of us are probably anti-fascist if we were to be asked hey are you pro or anti fascism. “Antifa” is, if anything, an ideology ascribed to by various decentralized groups of activists. And the fact of it being an ideology is deeply important, which we’ll come back to. As the Trump regime would have you believe, though, antifa is a highly organized “enterprise” intent on overthrowing the government through recruiting, training, and radicalizing young Americans to engage in violence against the state. The order then demands that “all relevant executive departments and agencies shall utilize all applicable authorities to investigate, disrupt, and dismantle any and all illegal operations–especially those involving terrorist actions–conducted by Antifa.”
Three days later, NSPM 7 drops on September 25th. This one is more substantial. It directs Trump’s entire group of national security and intelligence goons to quote “investigate, prosecute, and disrupt entities and individuals engaged in acts of political violence and intimidation designed to suppress lawful political activity or obstruct the rule of law.” This includes individuals and institutional funders and employees of organizations that aid and abet the people engaging in said criminal conduct, as well as non-governmental organizations and American citizens residing abroad that help fund and support entities that engage in or support domestic terrorism. It directs the attorney general to quote “issue specific guidance that ensures domestic terrorism priorities include politically motivated terrorist acts such as organized doxing campaigns, swatting, rioting, looting, trespass, assault, destruction of property, threats of violence, and civil disorder.” Many of those activities on the list are not on the list of domestic terrorist crimes–trespassing is usually a misdemeanor, “civil disorder” can be weaponized against any form of first amendment-protected protest–it is taking the definition of domestic terrorism and stretching it to include the types of things that they frequently accuse protesters of engaging in (trespass, destruction of property) despite the fact that according to the Brennan Center quote “under current law, a charge of material support in the domestic context requires that the person being charged have provided support for one of the specifically defined ‘federal crimes of terrorism.’ By contrast, Trump’s order directs federal authorities to investigate the provision of material support to ‘any and all illegal operations.’ This threatens to criminalize a wide range of activity” end quote including participating in protests or providing donations or services to organizations whose ideology the regime may define as “antifa.”
But perhaps the most damning part of NSPM-7 doesn’t require you to read beyond the intro paragraphs. Because they’re not even trying to hide that this entire directive is based around prosecuting activities of people BECAUSE they ascribe to a specific ideology. Section 1 states quote “Common threads animating this violent conduct 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 clear outcome of this is that the regime is going to prosecute and slap a “domestic terrorist” label on people based solely on their ideology. Someone trespassing and damaging property who’s a member of a group that upholds “traditional American family values,” whatever the fuck that means, might get a misdemeanor trespass charge, but someone who committed the same crimes but espouses “anti-American” ideals would be called a domestic terrorist for it.
Per the Brennan Center for Justice, the legal definition of domestic terrorism is quote “acts that are dangerous to human life, violate a state or federal law, occur primarily within the United States, and “appear to be intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population” or “influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion.” Domestic terrorism itself is not a standalone crime; instead, the statute sets out over 50 other “federal crimes of terrorism,” such as bombing a building and destroying infrastructure. However, as the definition makes clear, any federal or state crime can be used as the basis for a domestic terrorism investigation if it is “dangerous to human life” and has the required intent.”
So those orders from Trump came down at the end of September, days after the murder of Charlie Kirk. By October, the charges related to the July 4th Prairieland incident in Texas, at first bare bones traditional criminal charges, were changed. Prosecutors began describing the action as the work of an “antifa cell” and characterizing the demonstration as an “ambush.” Charges were increased to include providing material support for terrorism, as well as rioting and use of an explosive. 15 people were ultimately charged with material support for terrorism, seven pleaded guilty. The 8 remaining stood trial and they are the ones who were sentenced this week.
And it’s worth taking a second to drill down into the legal aspect of these terrorism charges because this is what the Trump regime is leaning on and will continue to try to weaponize against leftists. 18 USC sectoin 2339A outlines what constitutes providing material support to terrorists. It says whoever knowingly attempts to, conspires to, or actually provides material support or resources or conceals material support or resources, knowing or intending that support be used in preparation for or to carry out an offense identified as a federal crime of terrorism is guilty of the crime of providing material support to terrorists. There’s a long list of federal ‘crimes of terrorism.’ These include bombing a federal facility, killing someone during the course of an attack on a federal facility, killing a federal officer, and destruction of federal property. The problem is that this statute is overly broad–because it allows for someone to be found to provide support to terrorism even if the underlying act is never carried out and even if the underlying act was never intended to serve terrorist purposes. So if you aid someone in destruction of federal property, because that falls on the list of the federal crimes of terrorism, technically you could be charged with providing material support to terrorists. So the statute allows the feds to take a more run of the mill destruction of property case and add an incredibly punitive additional charge of aiding terrorism if they so choose. And the anti-terrorism statutes are so broad that they include an incredibly long list of potential offenses that can get people swept up in anti-terrorism charges in a way Congress didn’t intend when it first wrote these anti-terrorism statutes in the wake of 9/11. So we’re dealing both with malicious prosecution on the part of the Trump regime, weaponizing these statutes in ways they’ve never been used before, but we also just have anti-terrorism statutes that have been ripe for abuse since they were written, it’s a two-fold problem, and it’s something Congress could fix if they wanted to. Congress wrote the laws, they could rewrite them to clarify that they shouldn’t be used against people for their political views. Alas. A gal can dream.
And because adding the word “terrorism” to a charge means the penalties automatically become way harsher, it gives the Trump regime easy ammo to use adherence to leftist ideology as a means of throwing the word “terrorism” into the mix and getting leftists locked up for the rest of their lives, which is what happened this week. Benjamin Song got 100 years in prison, everyone else got between 30 to 70 years in prison. The charge of destruction of federal property typically comes with a max penalty of 10 years imprisonment. Because these defendants adhere to leftist ideology, they have been labeled terrorist supporters and the judges, one a Trump appointee, the other a Bush appointee, gave them the harshest possible sentences. Typically, when sentencing multiple offenses, judges will more often than not order that the defendant is to serve the sentences concurrently. So you get two counts against you, both come with 20 years, usually you’ll be sentenced to 20 years, not 40 years. But it appears that the judges in these cases chose to order that the defendants serve sequential sentences, so each sentence has to be served separately, leading to a 100 year sentence for Benjamin Song. Reminder that January 6th rioters, who were members of armed militias, planned and executed an attack on the capital, conspired to kill sitting members of Congress and the Vice President of the United States, damaged federal property, attacked, wounded, maimed, and killed federal officers, all in an attempt to coerce and intimidate the government of the United States, were all pardoned by Donald Trump. And even before their pardon, their sentences didn’t even come close to the sentences of the protesters in the Pairieland case who set off some fireworks and graffiti’d some government property. Enrique Tarrio, the leader of the proud boys, got 22 years. Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the Oath Keepers, got 18 years. And these are professed provable actual groups, unlike antifa which is not a real organization.
Each of these defendants I’m sure will appeal their sentences as they are, at the very least, absurdly overly harsh for the underlying activity. I imagine they’ll also throw in malicious prosecution claims as well, so it’s unclear how long any of these protesters will have to spend behind bars, but the damage has largely been done. Just imagine for a second how many obstacles you would face if you had to move through life as a CONVICTED TERRORIST. Even if that conviction is eventually overturned, that’s a stain you can’t get away from. Every background check, every attempt at finding a job, at finding a house to rent, at getting a loan, at traveling or leaving the country, will have you flagged as a potential terrorist. And that’s really the point in all of this–to make an example of these protesters to scare the shit out of anyone who might dare to engage in not only any kind of protest activity or direct action, for fear of becoming associated with any potential “crimes of terrorism” that anyone commits at the same protest, but also it silences dissent beyond just protests. These people were members of the same book club, they were members of the same gun club, they were legally carrying firearms that night in the great state of Texas. It dissuades anyone with a leftist ideology from engaging in groups that espouse similar ideas for fear of becoming labelled as a member of a terrorist organization. It is truly a full scale assault on the left’s freedom of speech and freedom of association, and the regime is betting it only needs a few wins to successfully scare people into silence.
Now that it has secured that victory in Texas (for now), the regime is returning its gaze to Minnesota, where it continues to attempt to make an example out of protesters and activists there. On June 11th, the Trump administration indicted 15 activists in Minnesota for various activities countering ICE presence in the Twin Cities over the winter. The activists are members of various direct action groups and organizations in the Twin Cities, including Direct Action MN or DAMN, the Black Cat Workers Collective, and others. In the indictment, the government is clearly attempting to make these activists out to be sophisticated operatives in a highly technical multi-layered network of organizations. Not to say these organizers aren’t sophisticated, of course, but the way the government tells it, the grassroots, organic activities of people on the ground in Minnesota this winter were not the result of a community coming together and supporting each other in real time but instead a highly coordinated antifa plot to attack the government. In the indictment, they say the following about antifa, quote “Many self-proclaimed “antifascist” or “antifa” groups in the United States exist at the local level, in small units called affinity groups. Antifa groups frequently blend anarchist and communist views. BCWC is a Minneapolis-based Antifa affinity group committed to militant class struggle, community self-defense, and revolution. Militant class struggle includes disrupting rallies, digital campaigning, community organizing, and physical confrontation, often justified as collective self-defense. BCWC members are intricately involved in the planning and execution of direct actions. The Ray Rainbolt Memorial Shooting Club is another Minneapolis-based Antifa affinity group dedicated to “community self-defense.”” Wait but I thought the Supreme Court decided the 2nd amendment applies to self defense now. I’m confused. Is it really about self defense or is it about self defense for a very specific subset of the population and everyone else is fair game for getting shot at but not allowed to also practice self defense? Interesting.
Really this indictment, which I’ve listed in my sources in the description as always, is a great little guide for other cities in the US to use when ICE invariably comes kicking down their doors. It describes the Signal group chats and the quote unquote “databases” aka spreadsheets that activists used to keep track of ICE agents and vehicle license plates in the Minneapolis area. Which, for the record, was partially just necessary for the people keeping watch to know which vehicles were ICE and which weren’t. When everything feels like a constant threat it’s hard not to look at an idling vehicle with tinted windows and assume something nefarious is afoot. More than once in Minneapolis this winter innocent people got accused of being ICE because everyone was on high alert. A database that keeps track of license plates helps to mitigate against that. This is also a great example of the idea that the government is supposed to have unlimited freedom to surveil us but the second we start watching back it’s now a crime. The database was collecting publicly available information. It was publicly available because the government was publicly in the streets doing nefarious shit for everyone to see. These activists were just documenting that, which is not a crime.
Okay so the indictment lays out really clearly how these activists allegedly organized their movement, it’s a great way to learn their tactics if you’re interested. But then it goes into a play by play moment by moment retelling of the Signal messages that the defendants were sending to each other and the actions they were taking on the day of January 23rd to create a dramatic retelling of what was essentially a couple people blocking the road near the Federal Whipple Building where ICE was headquartered in the Twin Cities. Then again on March 1st, they provide a dramatic retelling of what amounted to a few blocked roads and some “projectiles” thrown at ICE officers.
But the way the indictment tells it they are really trying to play this up as like a nefarious military style operation. It is also important to note they were able to access all these Signal chats despite the fact that Signal is supposed to be encrypted. So despite the defendants’ best efforts their messages to each other were discoverable by the federal government. We’ll go over best practices when using Signal in a minute. The indictment also goes into detail about meetings and what happened in those meetings, which I imagine means that someone who was present at those meetings eventually told the feds about them. Again this was despite organizers best efforts of vetting attendees and collecting all devices before every meeting.
The indictment is 95 pages long and long story short a lot of the government’s argument rests on the speech of the activists. They point to activists self-identifying as antifa, to activists chatting with each other about how non-violence isn’t effective, to activists self-identifying as anarchists, to activists participating in an anarchist speaking tour to spread the lessons learned in Minneapolis to other cities around the country, and they’re using that speech and those associations as proof that these defendants are members of a terrorist cell.
What’s important to note however is that there is no accusation in this initial indictment of terrorism or aiding terrorists, like there were in the Texas trial. However the way this indictment is written indicates to me that they are attempting to set it up so that later terrorism or aid to terrorism charges may be added, if they find enough evidence which they likely don’t have now and they’ve learned their lesson from recent attempted charges against activists that they need to at least attempt to be more thorough when bringing charges.
As it currently stands, the official crime that most of the defendants have been charged with is under 18 USC 372, conspiracy to impede or injure an officer, which makes it a crime for two or more people to conspire to use force, intimidation, or threat to prevent an officer from lawfully discharging their duties. The crime comes with a maximum imprisonment of six years. A couple ndividual defendants are also charged additionally with solicitation to commit a crime of violence, interstate threats, interstate stalking, assault on a federal officer, and destruction of government property. And remember how I said there is a list of federal crimes of terrorism that can be used to get at a charge of providing aid to terrorists? Well there is one count on this 95 page indictment that falls under the federal crime of terrorism and that is count seven, 18 USC 1361, destruction of government property. That count is against only one defendant William Morgan. Now is that destruction of government property count going to eventually result in aid to terrorism charges? I don’t know, but I’m keeping my eye on that because it would be WILD if it did. And largely I think what’s protecting these defendants for now from terrorism charges, despite being linked to Antifa, is the fact that there were no guns involved and they didn’t seriously injure any ICE agents. In Texas, the gun and the shooting of the officer is what escalated the case. Here we’re talking about some road blockades, a lot of talk about being antifa and anarchist, trainings in the use of shields and other direct action trainings, the creation of physical shields out of plastic barrels, and the extensive coordination between these individuals. None of that, in and of itself, is a crime. Most of it is protected, at least in theory, by the First Amendment. Yes, you get to go into the town square and cry I AM ANTIFA I AM AN ANARCHIST and that is your protected right as an American. You get to do that. Professing anarchist beliefs while wearing an Antifa sweatshirt is protected activity.
Also, the activists are accused of harassing and intimidating federal officers, throwing rocks and ice and setting up blockades, meanwhile these officers are armed to the teeth and literally murdering people in the streets.
When the defendants are interviewed, the idea that this is some close knit group of highly coordinated activists falls apart. One of the defendants says she’s not a member of any of the named groups. The very nature of the movement in Minneapolis is decentralized, so the extent to which any of the named defendants even really know each other is questionable. And the defendants do not all ascribe to the same ideology. But the federal government is, once again, using the blanket term “antifa” as a crutch to try to create some sort of cohesive nefarious plot they can point to as proof that this is all a huge dangerous leftist conspiracy, when the reality on the ground was people doing what they could to counter state violence and human rights abuses and protect their neighbors.
That being said, intimidating, harassing, and impeding a federal officer from doing their job are technically federal crimes. These defendants, if they did what is alleged in this indictment, might have violated federal law. And I imagine for some of them that’s kind of the point. They’re anarchists, not idiots. They probably knew that they were breaking laws going into this, or they should have. And I think this is an important point that gets lost in all the outrage and the fearmongering about the feds going after activists in Minneapolis right now–in many ways, the law is functioning as intended.
And that is frankly a much more IMPORTANT conversation to be having than “oh god Trump’s coming for the activists now.” The reality is that the United States government has always gone after the anarchists and the radical leftists. This is nothing new. And that is kind of the role of the anarchist. To point to the state and its laws and say “I don’t agree with this and I won’t abide by this.” And in violating the laws as written and then facing prosecution and persecution for it, as these activists are doing, they are forcing attention onto the issue, the larger issue of state sanctioned violence, and how the state has a monopoly on that violence, and how the laws, as written, make it a federal crime to follow an ICE officer, to step in when an ICE officer is doing something you don’t agree with, when they are actively committing human rights violations. Though there is a legal argument to be made here that actually the ICE officers weren’t lawfully executing their duties at the time when these defendants intervened, that ICE officers were actually acting illegally as they forcibly arrested people without warrants and violated everyone’s civil rights. So it’s a two pronged discussion.
On the one hand, we can operate within the existing legal framework and say hey actually per the existing legal framework these ICE officers were violating the law in the way they were discharging their duties. The law as written, not based on what the President wants the law to say but the way it’s actually written, does not permit these ICE agents to be acting the way that they were in Minneapolis this winter. Therefore, these activists are not guilty of impeding a federal officer from lawfully carrying out their duties. The officer was acting outside their role because they were acting outside the law.
On the other hand, we have to take a step back and look at the existing legal framework as a whole and ask whether it is legitimate. Just because something is written into the law doesn’t mean it’s right. I hope if you’ve been consuming my content for a while that is abundantly clear. As I was studying law, obtaining my law degree, getting my law license, the one thing that was repeatedly drilled home for me is that the law and our entire legal system was written by and for white wealthy men. Period, full stop. Literally everyone else has been fighting to be included in it ever since. And so we cannot take the written law as gospel. We can’t just stop the discussion at “well, they broke the law, so they’re bad and they deserve what’s coming for them.” The discussion has to continue from there… what does the law say? Is that really what we want the laws of our country to do? To criminalize people for holding their officers, whose paycheck we pay, accountable for their actions? To criminalize people for ensuring that the activities of our government are monitored and accounted for? To criminalize people for protecting their neighbors? Is that really how we want this system to function? And by engaging in these more confrontational tactics, by developing sophisticated systems for organizing on the ground, by knowingly breaking the law and facing the consequences for it, these activists are shining a light on the system at large. The problem is that the people need the critical thinking capacity to be able to take a step back and see the larger picture that is being painted for them by an indictment like this.
This is not a product of Kash Patel or of MAGA and the Heritage Foundation and the Trump regime’s particular brand of fascism. I think it is certainly happening faster and more sloppily because of the current regime's tactics, but this indictment truly is the product of a larger system that places the rights and safety and freedom of the state to engage in violence FAR above the right of the people to oppose said violence. That is by design and that is largely how it has always been. And we have to step back and recognize that in order to engage in larger discussions about whether that’s how we want our government to function. I argue we should not want our government to function that way, that the state wages far too much violence against its people, that state violence is presupposed as legitimate by far too many people especially in the United States. The number of people whose entire discussion of this incident would stop with “well, they broke the law and they got what’s coming to them” is FAR too high in this country. The one gift that the Trump regime has given us is that it has radicalized a huge number of people. And I don’t mean radicalized like the defendants in this indictment, though there are a fair few people who have become radicalized in that way because of the Trump regime, I mean radicalized solely in the act of questioning the legitimacy of their government. That is a radical act in itself if you have been raised within the United States, taught in its educational systems, and bought into the idea that the US is the land of the free, if you really genuinely pledged your allegiance to that flag every day in grade school. It is a radical act to be forced to question whether the violence of the state is legitimate. And now that Trump is breaking down the systems we’ve taken for granted for so long, many many more of us are more willing to question the entire apparatus, to look to alternative systems, to check under the hood and think hey why is this functioning the way that it is, has it always been this broken? Has it always been this easily exploitable.
And it’s a dangerous trap, I think, to blame every bad thing that’s happening on the Trump regime. Some of what the Trump regime is doing is happening within the confines of the existing law and customs and norms. And to blame it solely on Trump and MAGA as a bad man and a bad movement that perverted the course of justice is to ignore the centuries of injustice that have baked that injustice into the fabric of this nation. It threatens an outcome where Trump dies, hopefully soon, and people think ah well everything’s over, it can go back to the way it was and everything will be fine. Thanks to Trump, more and more people are realizing that the way it was clearly wasn’t working either.
So what can we learn from this indictment? First of all, read it carefully as it’s a great blueprint for organizers who want to replicate what was being done on the ground in Minnesota, and reach out to the organizations named in the indictment to find solidarity and additional training so you’re ready when the feds come knocking down your door next. But also there is a larger takeaway that leftist and anarchist activists have been teaching the general populace for centuries, and that is to question the government you live under and the laws that it has written, to question the violence of the state and why we consider it more legitimate than violence or property damage committed with the aim of protecting neighbors, and have a larger conversation about what we actually want our government to criminalize. Is it the people setting up road blocks to protect their neighbors? Or is it the people covering their faces and abducting people from their homes in the name of the state?
And because Trump is committing atrocities at a greater speed and in broad daylight than past administrations, that means people are protesting more, which is leading to more indictments as a means for the state to intimidate the people into acquiescence. And that is going to continue to happen. In Washington, three people have been convicted of conspiracy charges over anti-ICE protests there. Six people in Chicago were charged with conspiracy for their protest at an ICE facility. Those charges were dropped due to prosecutorial misconduct. Nearly 40 people face ongoing charges related to their protest at a church in St. Paul. Meanwhile not a single ICE officer has been held accountable to date for their activities in Minneapolis or elsewhere, including for the literal murder of Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
Okay what can you do? Keep an eye on these ongoing prosecutions, read this indictment. If you feel compelled, join a local activist group. Even if you’re not an anarchist, it is likely that the ongoing activity of the Trump administration has opened your eyes to the injustices of the state, and there is a lot of work to do to counter the state that doesn’t necessarily involve taking up arms. If you are using Signal chat to communicate, this indictment is proof that that isn’t an ironclad security protocol. There were clearly leaks that allowed the federal government access to information about meetings, chat groups, and the activities of these activists. If you are using Signal, there are some additional best practices you need to use to ensure your conversations are actually private. Set the messages to disappear as quickly as possible. It is also important to regularly delete entire group chats, because even after a message disappears, evidence is still left behind of who you were communicating with, even if the contents are gone. You also want to delete records of calls in addition to the messages. Note that sometimes Signal integrates its call history with the overall call history on your phone. If you go into Signal and tap on your profile picture, click on settings, then privacy, and disable “show calls in recents” in order to disable this feature. Just scroll through all your settings in Signal, you probably want to also disable share contacts with ios and use phone contact photos. Make sure all push notifications are turned off for Signal, as those push notifications can be stored elsewhere in your iphone, and never use your real name in group chats. All of this will help keep the chats you’re having actually private, but there is no guarantee that the government won’t get someone else’s device who hasn’t done all of this, or that there won’t be someone attending meetings who will later give information to the government. So this type of activism is definitely something you have to be informed comes with a level of risk. But there are some common sense things you can do to keep yourself safe. The point of all of these lawsuits is to intimidate people out of showing up, protesting, and speaking out, so ultimately the goal is to not let them win.
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