I am not a constitutional lawyer. But even as a civics-educated American who learned the Bill of Rights in eighth grade, I know that the government is not supposed to track me for what I believe.
Right now, the White House is doing exactly that.
The NSPM-7 Joint Mission Center is an FBI-led operation staffed by personnel from several federal agencies. Its stated purpose is to “proactively” identify Americans suspected of domestic terrorism — before any crime has been committed. This is not a fringe proposal buried in bureaucratic language. It is part of the largest budget request Trump sent to Congress in years.
Investigative journalist Ken Klippenstein obtained and published it. The mainstream press has largely ignored it. That’s not an oversight. That’s a pattern.
Just look at all the belief indicators they are tracking?
Anti-Americanism, Anti-Capitalism, Anti-Christianity… the list goes on and on. How many of those things apply to you? Because most of them apply to me. I write about race. I write about gender. I have spent years being openly hostile to what this government considers “traditional American views on family and morality.” And I don’t feel I‘m being unreasonable. But, by the framework the FBI is currently operating under, I am a data point worth watching. Am I being watched right now, who knows… maybe, probably, I don’t know and I don’t care.
I swear to god, Idiocracy is a documentary.
Criticizing your country is not the same as hating it. It is, in fact, the oldest American tradition there is. The founders did it. The abolitionists did it. The suffragettes did it. Every civil rights leader who ever lived did it. NSPM-7 transforms ordinary acts of civic responsibility and advocacy into potential evidence of disloyalty, flagging criticism of systemic inequality as "anti-American" even when that criticism comes from a place of wanting the country to do better. Wanting America to be better is not anti-American. It's the whole point.
Questioning an economic system is not a violent act. It is an intellectual one. Economists do it. Theologians do it. The Church has a centuries-long body of literature doing it. The fact that you believe unchecked capitalism causes harm — especially to the poor, to workers, to people in the path of American military and economic interests, is not an indicator of terrorism. It is a moral position held by hundreds of millions of people worldwide.
It’s important to be precise about what we’re talking about regarding faith and religion, because NSPM-7 is not. Christianity is not just a faith. It is also an institution. One with a 2,000-year record of wielding political, economic, and social power. Those are two different things, and conflating them is exactly what this directive wants you to do.
You can love the Sermon on the Mount and still have something to say about the Crusades. You can believe in grace and still have something to say about the Catholic Church’s decades of protected child abuse. You can hold a deep and personal faith and still have something to say about evangelical leaders who blessed a president who caged children, mocked the disabled, and bragged about sexual assault. Criticizing the institution is not the same as attacking the belief. Anyone telling you otherwise is trying to shut you up. Period.
Advocates for economic justice, just immigration policy, and DEI, risk being labeled a threat under this framework and so does anyone who has ever written a single critical word about how the church has wielded power. That includes theologians. Historians. Survivors. Journalists. Essayists and people who simply left and had the audacity to say why. These people are targets under NSPM-7.
Interfaith Alliance, an organization that exists specifically to protect religious freedom for everyone, signed onto a letter with over 3,700 nonprofits condemning NSPM-7. An organization dedicated to defending faith communities recognized that this directive is not protecting religion. It is weaponizing it.
Critiquing an institution that has, by its own documented record, caused enormous harm is not extremism. It is not radicalism. It is not an indicator of violence. It is honesty. And in a functioning democracy, honesty about power is not only permitted, it is required.
If speaking the truth about what institutions have done makes you an indicator, then every historian, every survivor advocate, every person who ever sat across from a therapist and said “the church hurt me” is now a subject of interest to the FBI. That is not a free country. That is a country afraid of its own people asking questions.
Don’t stop asking.
I think it’s imperative that creators shine light on this and write and talk about this initiative as much as they can. This is our first form of resistance. You don’t have to be arrested to be silenced. You just have to start wondering if someone is watching. That wondering—that moment of hesitation before you hit publish, before you say the true thing out loud—is the first victory they’re looking for. It’s also the easiest one to hand them without realizing you’ve done it.
What you can do right now is keep writing, keep speaking out, and if you still have faith in your congressional representatives, specifically the ones on judiciary and intelligence oversight committees, push for hearings and demand transparency. Make them go on record. Thirty one members of congress have already raised concerns. They need to hear that the public is also paying attention. Get loud.
Support the organizations already doing this legal work—the ACLU, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Brennan Center for Justice. Demand that your representatives request the full NSPM-7 documentation and budget justification.
Share Klippenstein’s reporting. This program has received almost no mainstream coverage. That’s by design, not an oversight.
And know your rights. You are not required to speak to federal agents with out an attorney present.
Keep writing your Substack. Say the true things. Refuse to lower your voices. There are more of us, than them. If this country has taught me anything over my 40+ years, it’s that whoever is the loudest, wins.
Keep fighting the good fight America. We can do this. Fuck fascism.
I'm so tired of wanting to punch people on a daily basis. I just am.
Pre crime isn't a thing - how many times do we have to go through this? It's just one more control mechanism that people are going to destroy. Remain forever ungovernable under their terms.