Dear John,
Trump’s National Security Presidential Memorandum, NSPM-7 — cynically mislabeled as “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence” — is a direct attack on independent journalism and the ability of nonprofit organizations to speak freely.
By branding any criticism of the president as a potentially “terrorist” act, Trump is resurrecting the logic of the House Un-American Activities Committee — the McCarthy-era machinery that hunted artists, writers, nonprofit cultural organizations, labor education groups, and creative collectives for supposed “subversive” beliefs.
Trump’s memo uses vague, politically charged terms such as “anti-American,” “anti-capitalist,” and “anti-Christian” – direct echoes of HUAC’s red scare “un-American” terminology. In the 1940s and ‘50s, HUAC used its broad powers to interrogate actors, blacklist screenwriters, target community arts groups, and even shut down charitable and civil rights organizations.
NSPM-7 adopts the same playbook. Its “anti-American” terminology can be slapped onto nearly any creative work, editorial judgment, documentary investigation, or critical analysis the administration dislikes.
Worse, the memo hands sweeping authority to the IRS commissioner to strip nonprofits of their tax-exempt status, and to refer individuals for criminal prosecution, if the administration finds they are “directly or indirectly” financing political violence or domestic terrorism, as defined by Trump. In the McCarthy era, nonprofit arts workshops, cultural exchanges, independent publishers, and educational centers faced exactly this kind of punitive scrutiny — and many were shuttered or blacklisted into oblivion.
Tell Acting IRS Commissioner Scott Bessent, charged with carrying out Trump’s threats against nonprofits, artists, and news organizations, that free speech, a free press, and the right to protest are constitutional rights, not “domestic terrorism.”
If NSPM-7 is allowed to stand, nonprofit newsrooms, documentary filmmakers, arts organizations, community groups, and creative collectives could be dismantled for doing exactly what HUAC once tried to crush: reporting the truth, documenting public protest, encouraging public dialogue, amplifying marginalized voices, or producing challenging, politically inconvenient art.
A country where criticism of the president is treated as terrorism is not a free country. It is a country sliding back into an era where creativity is policed, journalism is punished, and dissent is extinguished.
Tell Acting IRS Commissioner Scott Bessent: Free speech is not terrorism. Do not punish nonprofit or news organizations for exercising the freedoms that define us as Americans.
Thank you for standing up for the constitutional rights that protect creativity, journalism, and democratic expression.
Robert Reich
Inequality Media Civic Action
