Can anyone name one thing that Trump has done to protect people’s civil liberties from government encroachment? Everything goes the other way. From John and Nisha Whitehead at rutherford.org:
“When they came in the middle of the night, they terrorized the families that were living there. There were children who were without clothing, they were zip tied, taken outside at 3 o’clock in the morning. A senior resident, an American citizen with no warrants, was taken outside and handcuffed for three hours. Doors were blown off their hinges, walls were broken through, immigration agents coming from Black Hawk helicopters … This is America.”—Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson
When the government can label anyone or anything an enemy in order to wage war, we are all in danger.
That danger is no longer theoretical.
In the same breath that the administration touts lethal military strikes against Venezuelan boats in Caribbean waters, federal agents are conducting coordinated militarized raids on homes in Chicago, rappelling down on apartment buildings from Black Hawk helicopters, dragging families out of their homes, separating children from their parents, and using zip ties to immobilize them—even citizens.
The message—spoken and unspoken—is that the government is on a war footing everywhere: abroad, at sea, and now at our front doors.
This “everywhere war” depends on a simple redefinition: call it a war, and the target becomes a combatant. Call the city a battlespace, and its residents become suspects.
What the White House is doing overseas to vessels it deems part of a terrorist network (without any credible proof or due process), it is now mimicking at home with door-kicking raids, mass surveillance, and ideological watchlists.
With the stroke of a pen, President Trump continues to set aside the constitutional safeguards meant to restrain exactly this kind of mission creep, handing himself and his agencies sweeping authority to disregard the very principles on which this nation was founded—principles intended to serve as constitutional safeguards against tyranny, corruption, abuse and overreach put in place by America’s founding fathers.
Take National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7), for example.
NSPM-7 directs a government-wide campaign to “investigate,” “disrupt,” and “dismantle” so-called domestic threats, ordering agencies to pool their data, resources, and operations in service of this agenda.
What makes NSPM-7 so dangerous is not only its declared purpose but its breadth and secrecy. There are no clearly defined standards, no meaningful transparency, and no external oversight. The public is told only that the government will protect them—by watching them.
Yet the danger is not only in what the government hides, but in what it chooses to see.
Even more troubling is the way “threats” are defined.
What is being sold as a campaign to disrupt left-wing conspiracies has expanded to include ideology, rhetoric, and belief.
Clearly, this is not just another surveillance program.
