[[link removed]]

AMERICA’S NEW POLITICAL REALITY: TRUMP DECIDES WHICH BELIEFS ARE
“LEGAL”  
[[link removed]]


 

Thom Hartmann
December 9, 2025
Hartmann Report
[[link removed]]


*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

_ When dissent becomes an “indicator,” the First Amendment stops
being a right and starts being a risk… _

,

 

Back in September, most Americans (and the media) thought it was so
over-the-top that it had to be a joke. Turns out, it wasn’t a joke
and isn’t remotely funny.

In a bizarre directive that could have been written by the staff of
The Onion or Putin’s secret police, National Security Presidential
Memorandum-7
[[link removed]]
(NSPM-7), Donald Trump ordered the FBI, DOJ, and over 200 federal
Joint Terrorism Task Forces (coordinating FBI with local police forces
across the country) to seek out and investigate any person or group
who meet it’s “indica” (indicators) of potential domestic
terrorism.

They include, as Ken Klippenstein first reported
[[link removed]]:

“nti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, anti-Christianity, … extremism
on migration, extremism on race, extremism on gender, hostility
towards those who hold traditional American views on family, hostility
towards those who hold traditional American views on religion, and
hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on
morality.”

— HAVE YOU EVER SPOKEN ILL OF OUR COUNTRY OR ITS POLICIES,
PARTICULARLY UNDER TRUMP?— Trash-talked capitalism or praised
socialism on social media?— PUBLICLY QUESTIONED CHRISTIANITY OR
PROFESSED LOYALTY TO JUDAISM, ISLAM, HINDUISM, PAGANISM, OR ANY OTHER
NON-CHRISTIAN BELIEF SYSTEM OR RELIGION?— Embraced the trans or more
general queer community?— SPOKEN OUT IN DEFENSE OF SINGLE-PARENTING,
GAY MARRIAGE, OR SAME-SEX COUPLES ADOPTING CHILDREN?— Said things or
carried a sign that might hurt the feelings of masked ICE agents,
Trump, or Noem?

JUST IMAGINING THAT _ANY _OF THESE COULD TRIGGER FBI AGENTS KNOCKING
ON OUR DOORS WAS SO GROTESQUE A NOTION THAT WHEN THE STORY FIRST
APPEARED FOUR MONTHS AGO, IT WAS REPORTED AND THEN LARGELY DISMISSED
BY MAINSTREAM MEDIA WITHIN THE SAME DAY.

I mentioned it in an October Saturday Report
[[link removed]] and
an earlier article
[[link removed]],
but, like pretty much everybody else in the media, dismissed it as
virtue-signaling to the Trump base rather than an actual plan to set
up a Russia-style police state here in America.

I WAS WRONG.

NOW, IN A SECOND BOMBSHELL REPORT, KLIPPENSTEIN HAS OBTAINED
[[link removed]]
AND PUBLISHED A COPY OF ATTORNEY GENERAL PAM BONDI’S DECEMBER 4TH
MEMO ORDERING THE FBI TO ACTUALLY BEGIN RUSSIA-STYLE INVESTIGATIONS OF
PEOPLE AND GROUPS WHO FIT INTO THE CATEGORIES LISTED ABOVE.

Not only that, Bondi also ordered the FBI to go back as far as 5 years
in their investigations of our social media posts, protest attendance,
and other activities to find evidence of our possible adherence to
these now-forbidden views.

JUST BEING ANTI-FASCIST IS, IN BONDI’S EYES, APPARENTLY NOW A CRIME
IN AMERICA. FROM HER MEMO
[[link removed]]
TO THE FBI:

“Further, this ideology that paints legitimate government authority
and traditional, conservative viewpoints as ‘fascist’ connects a
recent string of political violence. Carvings on the bullet casings of
Charlie Kirk’s assassin’s bullets read, ‘Hey, fascist, catch’
and ‘Bella Ciao’ — an ode to antifascist movements in Italy. …
ICE agents are regularly doxed by anti-fascists, and calls to dox ICE
agents appear in the same sentence of opinion pieces calling the Trump
Administration fascist.”

At the same time, ICE is using a chunk of the massive budget the Big
Ugly Bill gave them — larger
[[link removed]] than the budget of
the FBI or any other police agency in America (or, probably, any other
police agency in the world outside of China and Russia) — to buy
tools they can use to spy on “anti-fascist” people who protest or
oppose their actions.

IN A REPORT TITLED “_ICE WANTS TO GO AFTER DISSENTERS AS WELL AS
IMMIGRANTS_
[[link removed]],”
THE BRENNAN CENTER FOR JUSTICE DETAILS HOW THE AGENCY HAS ACQUIRED
“A SMORGASBORD OF SPY TECHNOLOGY: SOCIAL MEDIA MONITORING SYSTEMS,
CELLPHONE LOCATION TRACKING, FACIAL RECOGNITION, REMOTE HACKING TOOLS,
AND MORE.”

They’ve reportedly acquired
[[link removed]]
devices that spoof cellphone towers, so if you’re near them your
phone will connect, thinking it’s talking to your cell carrier. Once
the connection is established, ICE and/or DHS can monitor every
communication to or from your phone and possibly even download all the
content on your phone including emails, pictures, apps, and your
browsing history.

THEY’RE TYING
[[link removed]]
INTO NATIONWIDE NETWORKS OF LICENSE-PLATE READERS, AIRPORT FACIAL
RECOGNITION SYSTEMS, AND USING FEDERAL SURVEILLANCE DRONES TO MONITOR
PEOPLE THEY CONSIDER ENEMIES OF THE AGENCY. AND THEY’RE CAREFULLY
COMBING YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA CONTENT FOR POSTS, LIKES, AND REPOSTS THEY
CONSIDER OBJECTIONABLE. AS THE BRENNAN CENTER NOTED, BONDI’S:

“Homeland Security Investigations recently signed a multimillion
dollar contract for a social media monitoring platform called Zignal
Labs that claims to ingest and analyze more than 8 billion posts a
day. The agency is also paying millions to Penlink for monitoring
tools that gather information from multiple sources, including social
media platforms, the dark web, and databases of location data.”

ICE IS ALSO ACQUIRING RUSSIAN-STYLE SPY SOFTWARE THAT CAN REMOTELY
TARGET YOUR PHONE WITHOUT YOUR REALIZING IT, INFECT IT WITH THE
EQUIVALENT OF AN “ICE VIRUS,” AND THEN HAVE YOUR PHONE SEND THEM
EVERYTHING YOU DO, SAY, HEAR, OR SEE ON AN ONGOING BASIS FOR MONTHS.

The only clue you’ll have will probably be that your battery life
seems to have dropped as your phone is pumping out to ICE your data
and everything the microphone in it picks up, all without your
knowledge or permission.

THIS PUTIN-STYLE SORT OF “SEARCH” WITHOUT A LEGAL WARRANT IS THE
SORT OF THING THAT KING GEORGE III’S OFFICERS DID AGAINST THE
COLONISTS (ALTHOUGH BACK THEN IT WAS READING THEIR MAIL, SPYING ON
THEM IN PERSON, AND KICKING IN THEIR DOORS) IN THE 1770S THAT PROVOKED
OUR NATION’S FOUNDERS TO WRITE IN THE FOURTH AMENDMENT
[[link removed]] TO OUR
CONSTITUTION:

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses,
papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall
not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause,
supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the
place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

It’s also a clear violation of the First Amendment’s
[[link removed]]
protection of our rights to “free speech” and “peaceably to
assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of
grievances.”

WHEN PUTIN ENDED DEMOCRACY IN RUSSIA, HE DEFINED THE PEOPLE WHO
PROTESTED HIS POLICIES AS DOMESTIC TERRORISTS AND HAD HIS SECRET
POLICE GO AFTER THEM IN WAYS THAT ARE SHOCKINGLY SIMILAR TO WHAT ICE
IS LAUNCHING AND BONDI IS ORDERING THE FBI TO DO.

It’s chillingly un-American.

Reach out to your elected representatives (Congress’ phone is
202-224-3121) to let them know your opinion of this new aspect of
Trump’s imperial reign, and pass this along to help wake up others.

If Congress and the courts refuse to give serious oversight and
regulation to these agencies, we may all one day soon be facing the
same neofascist brutality that killed Alexi Navalny and imprisoned (to
this day) so many of his supporters.

_Thom Hartmann is a NY Times bestselling author of 34 books in 17
languages & nation's #1 progressive radio host. Psychotherapist,
international relief worker. Politics, history, spirituality,
psychology, science, anthropology, pre-history, culture, and the
natural world._

 

* Free Speech
[[link removed]]
* Domestic Terrorism
[[link removed]]
* Donald Trump
[[link removed]]
* executive orders
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web
[[link removed]]

Submit via email
Frequently asked questions
[[link removed]]
Manage subscription
[[link removed]]
Visit xxxxxx.org
[[link removed]]

Bluesky [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 




[link removed]

To unsubscribe, click the following link:
[link removed]