Its target is not a foreign power thousands of miles away, but US citizens who disagree with the president and his hardline advisers. This domestic war’s chief weapon is a national security presidential memorandum, NSPM-7, which attempts to criminalize a laundry list of common left-wing beliefs and viewpoints.

Trump’s FBI is conducting trainings for state and local law enforcement officials on the president’s NSPM-7 directive, in order to help enlist them in the administration’s ongoing crackdown on the left, emails show. And it’s happening at the same time as Trump’s war in Iran is throttling energy prices and the global economy – creating even more discontent with his administration.

What this development means in practice is if you have criticized a corporation on social media, held a sign that demands ICE leave your city, shared a meme about alleged UnitedHealthcare CEO killer Luigi Mangione, or publicly condemned Trump’s Iran war at a local town hall, both the federal government and your local police could take note and forward along a list of your thoughtcrimes to the FBI for further review.

Unlike a standard-issue presidential directive that nudges a sector of the federal bureaucracy or realigns a federal agency towards the president’s liking, national security directives target the entire intelligence and defense apparatus, which is why they are almost always classified. NSPM-7, which was published publicly by the White House in September, makes no effort to conceal its goals.

The presidential directive is the most significant shift in domestic counter-terrorism efforts since the Patriot Act was introduced into law in the wake of 9/11. The program is sweeping in its scope, not only for the list of subversive activities it seeks to target, but also in the joint terrorism task forces it relies upon.

In an effort to confront “domestic terrorism and organized political violence,” NSPM-7 lists the following ideological indicators as targets for surveillance and counter-terror enforcement: antifascism; anti-Americanism; anti-capitalism; anti-Christianity; support for the overthrow of the United States government; what it calls extremism on migration, race, and gender; and hostility toward those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.

Each of these terms gives law enforcement an incentive to surveil and investigate anyone even approximating the ideology in the above list. Criticizing US foreign policy, condemning neo-Nazi violence, speaking out against racial and gender inequality, or even disagreeing with the president are now bases for law enforcement investigations.

Emails I obtained show Trump’s new red scare is not confined to the Department of Justice and FBI – it is also being injected into local and state police forces across the country.

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“Existing laws give the president great latitude in combating threats to national security,” Faiza Patel, the Brennan Center’s Senior director for Liberty and National Security wrote in an expert brief on the roll out of Trump’s national security directive, “NSPM-7 and the antifa executive order are an obvious abuse of this latitude, threatening to turn the full force of the federal government to rooting out a conjured-up left-wing conspiracy of political violence funded by shadowy figures… we will all be less safe as law enforcement resources are diverted from real threats to imagined ones.”

“The president’s [NPSM-7] memorandum is focused on investigating, disrupting, dismantling, and prosecuting individuals and entities engaged in organized political violence and domestic terrorism – specifically the sophisticated and organized campaigns that necessitate a new law enforcement strategy,” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson tells me, adding: “Left-wing organizations have fueled violent riots, organized attacks against law enforcement officers, coordinated illegal doxing campaigns, arranged drop points for weapons and riot materials, and more.”

Training Police on the New Red Scare

At the beginning of March, the FBI’s Office of Partner Engagement sent out an email to the Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency in Washington, DC. This agency houses one of the country’s fusion centers, which act as intelligence-sharing hubs between federal, state, and local law enforcement. (There are over 75 fusion centers in the US.)

“Presenters from the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division... will provide an overview of NSPM-7, which establishes a US government strategy to counter domestic terrorism and organized political violence and outlines measures to investigate and disrupt extremist movement,” reads the email, which was sent days after Trump launched his war in Iran.

According to a former fusion center director who spoke with me on the condition of anonymity, this NSPM-7 training will likely be replicated in the vast majority of fusion centers covering the contiguous continental United States, in addition to Alaska, Guam, and Hawaii. Those fusion centers will then pass NSPM-7 directives to the state and local police departments they include as partners.

The FBI email was sent by Leo Schmitz, the assistant director for the FBI’s Office of Partner Engagement. According to his Linkedin profile, Schmitz is the former chief of police at the Cook County Sheriff’s Department in Illinois, one of the largest sheriff’s offices in America.

According to Schmitz’s email, the FBI’s “law enforcement partner speaker series” provides insight into “operational activities, intelligence, emerging trends, and best practices.” In other words, it appears that the FBI is instructing police on who they are targeting, what they know, where police should go looking for more information, and how to carry out local investigations based on NSPM-7.

This type of explicit instruction was presaged in a December memo from (recently fired) Attorney General Pam Bondi to implement the president’s national security directive targeting Americans who oppose Trump’s MAGA movement.

“Federal law enforcement will prioritize this threat,” Bondi wrote. “Where federal crime is encountered, federal agents will act. And where domestic terrorism is encountered or suspected, law enforcement agencies shall refer such matters to the Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTFs) for the exhaustive investigation contemplated by NSPM-7.”

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While technically predating 9/11 in limited scope, the FBI’s joint terrorism task forces proliferated after the terrorist attack and created an information sharing environment that combined FBI personnel with those from other federal agencies including the DHS, DEA, and at times even the CIA and NSA. The joint terrorism task forces also include members of local and state police, creating a vertically integrated law enforcement network.

The power of joint terrorism task forces to federalize local and state police has long been cause for concern. In New York City, civil liberties advocates have warned of the risks posed by NYPD officers being deputized into the FBI through the New York joint terrorism task force, and representing themselves as federal law enforcement during enforcement actions.

Those concerns have risen to a new high as documents obtained by a non-profit, Property of the People, show dozens of NSPM-7-related investigations at joint terrorism task forces across the country.

Criminalizing Dissent

The Bondi memo, as it is known, instructs federal law enforcement to review its case files and submit to joint terrorism task forces any materials with a whiff of connection to the ideologies laid out in NSPM-7.

It also identifies laws that could be used by local and state police to target individuals for federal prosecution. Many of these appear to suggest a foundation for targeting protesters.

They include: assaulting, resisting, or impeding federal officers; obstruction during civil disorders; conspiracy to impede or injure officer; obstruction of judicial or agency proceedings; picketing or parading with intent to obstruct the administration of justice; interference with commerce by threats or violence; seditious conspiracy to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States; and obstruction or disruption in or on federal property.

The statutory definitions of domestic terrorism in the US Code do not have corresponding criminal charging statutes. This has created a practice where a domestic-extremism designation carries enormous surveillance and investigative power, while formal charges must be brought under entirely different statutes. There is a significant range of criminal behavior that meets the definition of domestic terrorism but is prosecuted via nonterrorism charges, meaning that trials may exclude any hint of the investigative resources used to make the case.

This mirrors the logic of NSPM-7. A handful of high-profile cases related to so-called left-wing terrorism have surfaced over the past year – including the trial of the Prairieland nine, the charging of four anti-capitalists in southern California, and the arrest and prosecution of a self-declared antifa member in Portland, Oregon. All three of these cases included either a threat or the carrying out of actual violence tied in some way to a left-wing ideology.

But dozens, even hundreds more cases are likely being assembled that will never disclose how the case came to be: through NSPM-7 and the targeting of left-wing beliefs. This is a major priority for the FBI, which has created a new “NSPM-7 Joint Mission Center,” as Ken Klippenstein reported Sunday.

Despite the whole-of-government approach aimed at curbing dissent, Americans have taken to the streets in droves to protest the administration’s violent, masked federal agents storming into cities from New York to Minneapolis.

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In the face of ongoing efforts to silence protesters, whether by gunning them down in cold blood, or by mobilizing the entire surveillance apparatus of the Department of Justice to spy on them, Americans continue to show up in the streets to demonstrate that their constitutional rights are alive and well.

In addition to protesting, there is another grassroots approach that has found success in the past for hitting back at the exact type of federalization of local law enforcement that NSPM-7 encourages: pressing cities and states to opt out of local partnerships with the FBI and fusion centers.

In the past decade, three municipalities have used their city councils to opt out of information sharing agreements with the FBI: Portland, San Francisco, and Oakland all terminated their agreements. The same tactic would be just as effective in compelling local law enforcement and state police to reject NSPM-7-related programming.

In 1965, as the first Marines landed in Da Nang to fight in the Vietnam war, the FBI’s Cointelpro program was swinging into full effect, surveilling and disrupting socialists, civil rights activists, and everyday American citizens who spoke out against US involvement in a conflict that was spiraling out of control.

At the time, the breadth and the scope of the FBI’s targeting of left-wing activists seemed unshakable in its power and breath. Ten years later, its architects were hauled before Senate committees, and forced to tear down the machine they had built in secret.

As a new, deeply unpopular war rages in the Middle East, Trump’s administration is expanding its war on left-wing opposition. Fortunately, thanks to public opposition, Trump has already cast out two of his secret war’s top generals – Pam Bondi and Kristi Noem – and mass discontent continues to grow.

This week is a heavy hitter for the intelligence community. The IC published its annual worldwide threat assessment and leaders of U.S. intelligence agencies including the FBI, CIA, NSA, and ODNI were simultaneously ass-kissed and harangued in the stupidest possible way, first in a Senate hearing, then later in the House. Republican cheerleaders asked the same questions over and over, intended to elicit eye watering statistics from America’s spy chiefs: CIA director Radcliffe claimed a 25% increase in CIA human assets and sources. Kash Patel claimed hundreds of open investigations into Iranian-linked terror threats.

Democrats meanwhile were led around by the nose by IC leaders’ simultaneously stupid and self promoting stunts, intended to curry favor with the president. These included Kash Patel firing agents from an FBI counter intelligence team over their ties to the prior investigation of Trump, and Tulsi Gabbard’s intentional photo shoot in Georgia, where she made sure Trump saw she was hooking her heels into the FBI’s investigation of 2020 election interference.

In both of these examples, IC leaders took performative actions to ingratiate themselves with the president. Critically, neither of these performative actions are likely to have any material impact on America’s national security. Without election fraud, there will be no prosecutions that materialize from the FBI’s investigation into election fraud in Georgia. And despite Democrats’ incessant blustering about a dozen agents getting the axe over dubious violations of FBI policy, these agents represent a drop in the bucket of a vast and impenetrable system whose redundancies cost tax payers billions of dollars every year.

Democrats are taking the bait, and Republicans are laughing all the way to the bank. The stupidity prompted me to go through some documents that came into my possession in search of an example of the intelligence community’s trickle down effect.

I found what I was looking for distilled at the local level in The Empire State’s world renowned state intelligence center. This center is one of 70+ fusion centers that pockmark America’s post-9/11 landscape. They generate “intelligence”, interface with federal law enforcement (like the FBI and DHS), and then spurt their combined products across New York police departments and emergency management offices. Or perhaps “spray” is a better word for it.

This particular bulletin warns of the imminent dangers of pissing teens, or “serial pissers” targeting schools across the nation. It notes that in many cases, no real piss is used in the attacks. However, at least one serial pisser has been apprehended. Thank god.

Waiting around for these documents is an expensive and time consuming process. If you like my work, please consider a paid subscription to keep the documents flowing.

Leaked documents and the accounts of multiple Department of Homeland Security employees paint a picture of the U.S. Border Patrol being remade in the image of its former commander-at-large Gregory Bovino. As the high-visibility leader of DHS’s blitzkrieg across American cities, Bovino has been sanctioned by a federal judge, condemned by civil rights groups, and ultimately sent back to his home district of El Centro, California, after acting, to quote President Trump, like a “pretty out there kind of guy.”

Bovino’s tenure has resulted in multiple civil suits and the killing of two American citizens in Minneapolis, Alex Pretti and Renee Good. He is reportedly under investigation by Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty for numerous incidents of unlawful conduct. But he clearly believes in the righteousness of his cause. In the immediate aftermath of the shooting of a third citizen in Chicago, Marimar Martinez, Bovino praised the Border Patrol agent. “In light of your excellent service in Chicago, you have much yet left to do!!” Bovino wrote.

While Bovino’s replacement with Trump border czar Tom Homan was initially met with celebration from quiescent Democrats and their allies in the media, the reality is that an inner circle of Bovino allies continues to shape the agency’s incursion into the American heartland and its operational culture writ large. Democrats’ refusal to fund ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) without marginal oversight and reforms will likely prove futile in the face of these internal policy changes.

According to a leaked November memorandum—prior to the Border Patrol’s incursion into Minneapolis, and two months into Operation Midway Blitz in Chicago—guidance was issued across the Border Patrol to clarify how to smash suspects’ car windows and extract them from vehicles while minimizing legal liability.

“Courts evaluate the totality of the circumstances: no single factor is determinative. Your detailed articulation of the event, including prescribed threats and rationale for actions, is crucial for legal defensibility,” the memo states.

It goes on to clarify that while pulling suspects through a broken window may go too far, “breaking a window to remove the driver or passenger may ultimately become necessary … Courts favor measured and ascending uses of force when provided with clear warnings … Use only objectively reasonable and necessary force to carry out your law enforcement duties.”

Tactics like these that are now being used in cities, like lethal force and forced removal from automobiles, were developed and honed away from news cameras, across the vast deserts and canyons that make up America’s borderlands. Here too, the policy is changing. A second leaked document details the rollback of Border Patrol policy limiting use of force at the border.

A February 9th memo rescinds a 2022 noncitizen migrant entry safety guidance that once limited certain actions during interdictions on the border. The critical section of the rescindment reads: “The 2022 Non-Citizen Migrant Entry Safety Guidance imposed significant restrictions on interdiction tactics, particularly in hazardous environments, which diminished the ability of agents to respond proactively to illegal crossings. These limitations negatively impacted operational effectiveness, allowing smuggling organizations to quickly adapt and exploit weakened enforcement postures. As a result, deterrence and apprehension efforts were undermined, impeding our mission to secure the border.”

Those rollbacks allow Border Patrol agents to engage and arrest migrants in waterways, on the border fence, and amid other barriers. It also allows agents to force individuals back into waterways or onto the wall, and most importantly, it rolls back a provision barring agents from forcibly removing migrants to the Mexican side of the border.

Two DHS employees told Deeper States that these changes encourage a reckless approach at the border, feeding the increase in use of force across U.S. cities. “This is a cycle that starts at the border, enters the cities, emboldens excessive force, and then cycles back to the border when these guys finish their rotations,” one DHS employee said.

That reality and Bovino’s role in shaping it was underscored by an investigation conducted by the Project on Government Oversight, which found that the specific border region overseen by Bovino—El Centro—had the highest ratio of use-of-force incidents to assaults on agents of any of the 20 Border Patrol sectors in the nation, coming in well above the overall Border Patrol average.

“Since its establishment, DHS has operated without a legal requirement to establish and abide by basic policies, such as Use of Force policies. They have been empowered through a lack of oversight and too much latitude to violate our rights under the pretense of securing our safety,” Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-IL) told the Deeper States via text message in response to the document leak. “A Use of Force Policy should NOT be a suggestion—it should be mandated by law.” Ramirez has introduced the DHS Use of Force Oversight Act, which would statutorily require a DHS policy on use of force and de-escalation by agents.

“But let me be very clear: reforms are NOT enough,” Ramirez added. “Americans are past reform of a department that has used taxpayer dollars to execute people in broad daylight. ICE must be abolished, and DHS dismantled.”

According to the two DHS sources, special agents and officials from El Centro were key to Bovino’s efforts in Los Angeles, Chicago, and Minneapolis, thanks to their alignment with the commander’s efforts to conduct a militaristic shock-and-awe campaign. Some of those allies who traveled with Bovino from El Centro or volunteered to join his effort from other sectors were identified as Rachel McCaslin, a Border Patrol intelligence officer and assistant to Bovino; Deputy Incident Commander Kyle Harvick; Deputy Chief Patrol Agent Daniel Parra; Assistant Chief Patrol Agent David Kim; Border Patrol Agent Juan Di Bella; Supervisory Border Patrol Agent Kristopher Hewson; and Deputy Patrol Agent in Charge and national Border Patrol chaplain Jerami Cheatwood.

Depositions and discovery materials from the multitude of court cases enveloping CBP and ICE’s immigration push buoy DHS employees’ accounts of these agents and officers’ role in carrying out Bovino’s agenda. Hewson testified in November in a hearing on excessive use of force before a federal judge that tear gas was not dangerous and was by no means a weapon of last resort.

Parra was also deposed, testifying under oath that he carried out the operational component of Bovino’s strategic plan and reported directly to Bovino during Operation Midway Blitz. David Kim has sat for multiple interviews posted across social media to effusively praise the Bovino doctrine of smash-and-grab tactics, despite DHS’s widespread warnings about the dangers of its employees being doxed. That warning has similarly failed to dissuade agent Juan Di Bella from maintaining a public Instagram profile.

And while this list represents the inner circle that worked to carry out Bovino’s orders on the ground and in tactical command centers, the Trump administration has quietly replaced over a dozen field office leaders with officers from CBP and the Border Patrol. “While the previous administration rode over the Border Patrol, this administration is riding with us,” Border Patrol Chief Mike Banks said in an interview posted on the CBP website. “I think that is huge because nothing motivates agents more than knowing that if they go out there and do their job, they’re not going to be tried and prosecuted on national TV by the administration.”

U.S. defense analysts are hinting at a bizarre escalation in the ongoing “operation” in the Middle East: deploying the navy’s trained marine mammals. As the Not-A-War stretches into its third week, the regime has closed the strait of Hormuz in defiance of seemingly every U.S. cabinet member’s expectations. Iranian attacks on oil tankers have sent international exports of oil and fertilizer (among other commodities) plunging, with U.S. officials now fretting that there may be little recourse to force tankers back into their lanes on the Persian gulf.

Already, the U.S. is waving sanctions on Russian oil just to keep that light sweet crude flowing. But while missile strikes on tankers are one part of the calculation, below the surface lurks another threat: Iranian sea mines. And that’s where America’s beleaguered ranks of mammalian sea life comes into play, namely bottle nosed dolphins and sea lions used for mine sweeping.

The Navy Marine Mammal Program (NMMP) has roots stretching back to 1960, when the Navy acquired its first Pacific white-sided dolphin to study the animal's underwater maneuverability for design applications. Researchers quickly became distracted by the animals' intelligence and trainability, and over the following decades the NMMP expanded beyond dolphins, at various points training California sea lions, beluga whales, sharks, and even birds for surveillance and detection tasks.

The NMMP currently operates under the Naval Information Warfare Systems Command (NAVWAR), which is headquartered in San Diego. When marine mammal systems (dolphins and sea lions) are deployed the animals and their handlers are organized into Marine Mammal Systems (MMS) units, each consisting of trained animals, a dedicated team of Navy handlers, veterinary support personnel, and specialized transport and deployment equipment.

These units fall under the authority of ordinance disposal commands when tasked with mine countermeasure missions, ensuring coordination between the marine mammal teams and the human divers and robotic systems. While much of the NMMO is still classified, budget documents and periodic public acknowledgment by the Navy show that it remains an active Navy component.

During Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003, Navy dolphins were deployed to the port of Umm Qasr in the Persian Gulf, successfully clearing mines and enabling supply ships to enter safely. Aquatic sea life proponent and RAND institute analyst Scott Savitz has long supported the continued funding and use of Mammalian sea life for these defensive naval countermeasures, writing that:

“The highly skilled dolphins make the seas safer for naval ships and other vessels. Yet Pentagon budget cutters have been chipping away at funding for the program since last year. In the Navy’s budget request for the coming fiscal year, funding for the dolphin team has been slashed by $6.6 million—to less than $1 million (PDF).”

As far back as 2012, Navy admirals have taken to NPR to trumpet the use of dolphins in the Strait of Hormuz to counter Iranian mining. The national defense university meanwhile is exploring how to weaponize Orca whales with Musk style electrodes jammed into their brains. As America finds itself running out of ammunition, interceptor missiles, and back up plans for extracting itself from one more misstep in its forever war with the Middle East, it seems doubtful that dolphins and sea lions will make the difference. They are likely, however, to enjoy the customary pre-deployment meal of lobster and snow-crab.

Dozens of former senior national security and military officials are members of a secret society known as the Bohemian Grove, according to membership lists obtained by Deeper States.

The Bohemian Grove is an exclusive mens-only club that hosts a two-week summer retreat for the rich and powerful at a 2,700 acre compound tucked away in the redwoods of Northern California. With a $25,000 initiation fee and a decades-long membership waiting list, the hideaway was described in a 1989 Spy article as “the most exclusive frat party on earth.”

The club serves as a popular destination for national security officials and defense industry executives to fraternize and party, far from the public eye. The 2023 camp attendance list, which one club member confirmed to the San Francisco Standard as authentic, includes two former national security advisors, three former Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and two former directors of the NSA.

A 2017 roster, which lists all dues-paying members of the club, included three former directors of the CIA, among other former national security personnel. That list, reported here for the first time, was obtained by Deeper States in 2022 and confirmed by cross referencing members with previously leaked versions of the club’s membership rolls.

The grove has long served as the meeting place where critical paths in U.S. foreign policy are charted. The nucleus of the Manhattan project was formed below the northern California redwoods when Robert Oppenheimer met with the S-1 committee in 1942 and was appointed to develop the bomb the very next month. In 1988, the CIA director briefed members on the CIA’s exploits abroad. (Some of this information was apparently safe for club members but not the American public; large portions of former director William Webster’s speech are still redacted in the CIA archive.)

Former National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster has been a public critic of informal relationships within the arms industry, Congress, and the Pentagon — sometimes referred to as the “iron triangle” — because they elevate special interests over the national interest. In 2008, McMaster wrote that “leaders should understand how informal relationships between and among the ‘iron triangle’ of defence contractors, military establishments and governments can undermine the ability to think clearly about future conflict.”

As an attendee of the 2023 Bohemian Grove retreat, McMaster might know. The Bohemian Grove, whose members frequently cycle between government and industry, may well be the epitome of these informal relationships. Each club member is assigned to one of 130 separate “camps” inside the compound, which act as different fraternities for attendees to party together. “Mandalay” is seen as the most elite camp, whose members in 2023 included Henry Kissinger, Sen. Dave McCormick (R-Pa.), and Riley Bechtel, the billionaire heir of the Bechtel corporation. A visitor once said of Mandalay, “you don’t just walk in there — you are summoned.”

“Wayside Log” appears to be another watering hole for revolvers between the national security community and defense contractors. Its members include former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Richard Myers, who went on to join the boards of Northrop Grumman and United Technologies Corporation, which merged with Raytheon in 2020. Wayside Log is also home to J. Michael Myatt, a Marine Corps Major General who became an executive for Bechtel after leaving government. McMaster himself is also a member of Wayside Log. After leaving government, McMaster too joined the boards of several Pentagon contractors after his tumultuous time in Trump’s cabinet, including C3AI and Elroy Air. Turns out he isn’t that averse to the “iron triangle” after all.

A Quincy Institute study found that 80% of four-star admiral and general retirees between 2018 and 2023 accepted lucrative positions in the defense industry. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has warned that government officials cashing in on their public service can lead to questions about whether “special interests gain access to key decision makers, undermining public officials’ integrity and casting doubt on the fairness of government contracting.”

While the Bohemian Grove’s motto is “Weaving Spiders Come Not Here,” meaning leave your business outside, this rule is often ignored. More recently, Sen. McCormick wracked up over a dozen high dollar donors from fellow club members ahead of announcing his successful senate bid in 2023. And a team of high powered real estate brokers, many from the same camp, teamed up to quash affordable housing ballot measures in San Francisco.

According to Spy magazine, the practice of flagrantly flouting the Club’s only public rule has been going on since at least 1989, though likely much longer; State Department cables published by Wikileaks indicate that longtime member Kissinger — who attended the 2023 retreat just months before his death — discussed business at the retreats in the 1970s.

The Bohemian Grove also serves as a place for these buttoned-up generals turned defense executives to let loose. While the rule of not talking business is widely ignored, another unwritten rule is that “everyone drink — and that everyone drink all the time.” Longtime member and musician Peter Arnott wrote that every camp in the Grove is “competing to pour drinks down your throat” in a summer 2009 edition of the club magazine.

Deeper States reached out to many of the national security officials who are members of the Bohemian Grove, but none responded to a request for comment.

Aside from the “revolvers” between government and national security, the Bohemian Grove offers summer solace to plenty of defense contractor executives and financiers. Military tech investor Eric Schmidt, former Lockheed Martin CEO Norman Augustine, co-chairman of the defense-focused private equity firm Carlyle Group David Rubenstein, and several members of the Bechtel family all participated at the 2023 camp. Tex Schenkkan, the former director of National Security Innovation Capital, also made it to the 2023 celebration after years overseeing a DOD office that funds dual use defense/consumer startups.

In 1967 President Nixon gave a lakeside talk at the Bohemian Grove that he would later claim was instrumental to launching his bid for the presidency. Before the assembled club members comprised of moneyed elite and aristocratic four-stars, Nixon made clear that it was they, and not the American public, who were the rightful masters of America’s destiny:

“Never has a nation had more advantages to lead. Our economic superiority is enormous; our military superiority can be whatever we choose to make it. Most important, it happens that we are on the right side—the side of freedom and peace and progress against the forces of totalitarianism, reaction and war.”

Later this week I will be writing a longer post about the glorious summer I spent driving up highway 1 blowing through my covid bux getting this list and a handful of other crazy stories. For now, please check out the mini doc I made with the fine folks over at More Perfect Union and see what you can see in this list of some of the most powerful men in the world which I am publishing below.

Daniel Boguslaw Bohemain Grove List

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After a disastrous tenure in Minneapolis, and flailing attempts to assail murdered victims of his occupying force that only made the situation worse, Customs and Border Protection “commander-at-large” Gregory K. Bovino is now being ordered home with his tail between his legs. Thanks to a classic Trump reversal in the face of widespread public outcry at CBP and ICE operations in the city, border czar Tom Homan will take Bovino’s place. Bovino himself may soon retire, according to The Atlantic; even his social media accounts have been taken away.

Bovino, a border patrol officer for 30 years, previously served as a chief in the backwater sector of El Centro, California. But after taking a high-profile role as tactical commander for a mass raid in Los Angeles last June, he has become a walking avatar for Trump’s immigration blitzes in Chicago and Minneapolis. Bovino has cultivated the image of shock troop general, storming through urban centers with a four-man-deep escort cloaked in a suspiciously German trench coat. Until this week, Trump administration officials had further raised Bovino’s profile with claims that he is the target of cartel assassination attempts, a fabrication that disintegrated in federal court last week.

But while the coverage of Bovino has largely focused on his love of tear gas and steadfast support of immigration officers who carried out the shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, he also exhibits a striking number of similarities to Colonel Steven J. Lockjaw, the fictional villain of the Oscar-nominated Paul Thomas Anderson film One Battle After Another.

A Mutual Association With Confederate Generals

In the film, Col. Lockjaw, played by Sean Penn (who received a Best Supporting Actor nomination), is promoted in rank and receives “The Bedford Forrest Medal of Honor” after a successful operation against the fictional left-wing terrorist group French 75. The medal is named after Nathan Bedford Forrest, a slave trader turned confederate general who would go on to hold the title of first grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.

Before his ascension as the face of American immigration enforcement, Bovino was himself embroiled in a discrimination suit that was ultimately settled by the Department of Homeland Security in 2022 for an undisclosed sum. The origin of the discrimination suit was Bovino’s alleged efforts to manipulate the CBP hiring process to bar the hiring of qualified Black and Latino agents into senior supervisory roles.

According to allegations in the lawsuit, brought by Jon Joyner and eventually followed by other CBP employees seeking remedy for discrimination, Bovino canceled a job posting and then surreptitiously hired a white supervisor into the role over a number of other qualified applicants. Court records show that during the hiring process, the man Bovino selected for a senior role, Christopher Bullock, wrote that Bovino was like a confederate general, set to liberate a fort from Black union soldiers.

When Bovino received the email, he immediately responded “Oh jeez, DELETE!!!!!” but did not reprimand Bullock for sending the racially charged email or inquire why he had sent it. During a deposition, Bullock testified that he sent the email to Bovino because Bovino was a “history buff” who would think the email was funny. Mr. Bullock admitted that the emails were inappropriate and agreed that someone could look at the email and find it to be racially charged.

Bovino acknowledged that the email was not appropriate and described it as “bogus,” “worthless,” and a waste of government resources, but stopped short of describing it as racially motivated. He also claimed that the email did not warrant further action, even though Bullock was later investigated and formally reprimanded for sending the message.

Secret Passwords

A running gag in One Battle After Another concerns Leonardo Dicaprio’s character’s inability to remember the secret passwords used to communicate with members of his terror cell. After years of drug use, his efforts to get through to his comrades using an operator line set up by French 75 fall flat after he biffs a password sequence multiple times.

All of this is relevant given the passwords of email accounts associated with Bovino’s name and home address. The passwords were leaked on the dark web and aggregated by multiple data breach scrapers which are available to the public. One password is the word Redbone combined with numbers. This could refer alternatively to a ’70s rock band, slang for light-skinned Black woman, or the Childish Gambino hit of the same name. Another password appears to be a misspelling of the word Sepuku, or japanese ritualized suicide.

In the film, the password sequence to unlock contact with the renegade group is a sequence from the poet Gil Scott-Heron:

Green Acres, Beverly Hillbillies, and Hooterville Junction
Will no longer be so damn relevant
And women will not care if Dick finally got down with Jane
On Search for Tomorrow
Because black people will be in the street looking for a brighter day
The revolution will not be televised

Whether Bovino’s passwords are as politically charged remains unclear. CBP did not immediately respond as to the meaning of his passwords, or whether he had taken steps to secure his personal email accounts.

Border Control On The Silver Screen

Furthering the question of whether Bovino may have borrowed tactics, his haircut, or his general attitude from Sean Penn’s character is his love of actors carrying out immigration enforcement operations onscreen. In an interview with a fellow CBP employee, Bovino said that it was the depiction of border patrol officers in a movie produced by a family member that made him want to enlist in the first place.

“I had a distant family member that was involved in the production of The Border with Jack Nicholson,” Bovino told an interview in 2021 on a CBP YouTube channel. “It was actually my great-uncle Neil Hartley, he was a producer who produced the movie, and we all know what that movie was about. So I thought maybe I’d get a little bit on the other side and take it back the other way. So it got me interested in the Border Patrol.”

Hartley was indeed a producer on The Border, along with several other films from director Tony Richardson, including the sex comedy The Hotel New Hampshire.

For those unfamiliar with the 1982 film, The Border follows an immigration officer who moves to Texas with his wife and racks up a massive credit bill furnishing their duplex. When it comes time to settle the bill, Charlie Smith (Jack Nicholson) becomes involved in a human trafficking operation, before killing its ringleader because he is selling babies, which crosses an internal red line.

On Monday, it seemed as though Bovino’s antics, which some credit for escalating violence in Minneapolis, had fallen out of favor with the president. Worried at the raging response to footage showing the unarmed killing of Alex Pretti, Trump signaled he is attempting to de-escalate, scaling back immigration efforts in the city, and sending Gregory Bovino back to El Centro, near the hilly region of the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park that serves as the backdrop for the climactic chase scene in One Battle After Another.

When reached for comment, a CBP spokesperson would not confirm whether Bovino had seen the film.

In an unseen and unheard provision slipped into the National Defense Authorization Act (a “must pass” defense bill described as essential by military contractors who “must pass” bowel obstructions of children’s hair and puppy grizzle sucked down in the basement of Joe’s Stone Crab) Congress is forcing the feds to hand deliver the terror watchlist to multiple committees next year. Here’s what that legislation looks like:

In addition, congress is requiring notification from the feds if a member or candidate for federal office is the target of an FBI investigation. They are also forcing the feds to report any changes to the federal watchlist (like adding 4000 “Antifa members”, selected under new criteria). Under Trump’s NSPM-7, tangential ties to Antifa, organized opposition to ICE, and third, fourth, or fifth ring connections to a cartel member can all be used as justification for enhances surveillance.

But while this legislation gestures towards Congress actually doing something, anything, to combat Trump’s very real resuscitation of COINTELPRO, our elected officials have proved time and time again that their main objective is scoring points against trump officials during show hearings, and not releasing information that might actually inform and motivate the general public.

I started off this morning watching a hearing before the House Homeland Security Committee, but had to shut it off and write this up given the pathetic grandstanding by Democratic officials taking pot shots at Kristy Noem before sitting down quietly to summon up lattes and finger sandwiches from doting staffers.

Unlike Rep. Robert Garcia, ranking member of the house oversight committee who has used his subpoena power to force powerful institutions to hand over documents (which have then been provided to the public) Democrats on the Homeland Security committee have all but abandoned their post.

Under the new NDAA provisions, with Terror Watchlist in hand, members of congress could take a page out of Senator Mike Gravel’s playbook, sticking it to the deep state by reading classified material into the public record, and showing constituents what it means to have a spine. All it would take is one to show just how many Americans are being added to watchlists for protected speech and organizing. It’s far more likely members will vaguely describe the watchlist information in next year’s season of congress on the hill before retiring for supper, but here are the following members set to receive the list who could theoretically read it out loud:

Jim Jordan, Jamie Raskin, Darrell Issa, Andy Biggs, Tom McClintock, Thomas Tiffany, Thomas Massie, Chip Roy, Scott Fitzgerald, Ben Cline, Lance Gooden, Jefferson Van Drew, Troy Nehls, Barry Moore, Kevin Kiley, Harriet Hageman, Laurel Lee, Wesley Hunt, Russell Fry, Glenn Grothman, Brad Knott, Mark Harris, Robert Onder, Derek Schmidt, Brandon Gill, Michael Baumgartner, Jerrold Nadler, Zoe Lofgren, Steve Cohen, Hank Johnson, Eric Swalwell, Ted Lieu, Pramila Jayapal, Luis Correa, Mary Gay Scanlon, Joe Neguse, Lucy McBath, Deborah Ross, Becca Balint, Chuy García, Sydney Kamlager-Dove, Jared Moskowitz, Daniel Goldman, Jasmine Crockett, Chuck Grassley, Dick Durbin, Lindsey Graham, John Cornyn, Mike Lee, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, Thom Tillis, John Kennedy, Marsha Blackburn, Eric Schmitt, Katie Britt, Ashley Moody, Sheldon Whitehouse, Amy Klobuchar, Chris Coons, Richard Blumenthal, Mazie Hirono, Cory Booker, Alex Padilla, Peter Welch, Adam Schiff, Rick Crawford, Jim Himes, Elise Stefanik, Trent Kelly, Darin LaHood, Brian Fitzpatrick, Austin Scott, French Hill, Dan Crenshaw, Scott Perry, Ronny Jackson, Ann Wagner, Greg Steube, Claudia Tenney, Pat Fallon, Andre Carson, Joaquin Castro, Raja Krishnamoorthi, Jason Crow, Ami Bera, Stacey Plaskett, Josh Gottheimer, Jimmy Gomez, Chrissy Houlahan, Mike Quigley, Tom Cotton, Mark Warner, James Risch, Susan Collins, Jerry Moran, James Lankford, Michael Rounds, Todd Young, Ted Budd, Ron Wyden, Martin Heinrich, Angus King, Michael Bennet, Kirsten Gillibrand, Jon Ossoff, Mark Kelly, John Thune, Charles Schumer, Roger Wicker, and Jack Reed.

The application of a post 9/11 terrorism logic to political groups has finally matured into a rank and ripe sluice. The surge in so-called “domestic extremism” investigations (and DVE hires) serves as confirmation that the war on terror has reached its final form as all out war on ourselves. FBI Director Kash Patel has energized this auto-immune disease where Democrats trailed off, surging FBI domestic extremism cases up 300%. But who expanded, normalized, and funded this whole craze? Both sides, it’s true.

It was one part Democrats who let the FBI and their own dim political instincts normalize the mass criminalization and surveillance of political rivals. And of course just as many parts GOP rage at the “trans agenda”, election rigging, and communist subversives. But the joint custody chickens have come home to roost, with Trump’s National Security Presidential Memo 7 instructing the sprawling domestic extremism apparatus to zero in on the administration’s perceived enemies. Those include anti-ice protesters, teenagers with mohawks, and anyone else who could be mistaken for an undesirable by their physical appearance or social media posts.

In order to make good on a new directive that seeks to stir federal law enforcement and regional minions into action, fusion centers across the country and DHS sub agencies are on a hiring spree for new Domestic Violent Extremist analysts. Among the dozens of postings from the past few months, one caught my eye. It’s a solicitation from a contractor, General Dynamics, for an analyst to work in the Orange County Intelligence Assessment Center, one of the dozens of state and regional fusion centers that muddy federal and state intelligence into a putrid indecipherable mash.

But instead of soliciting a “Domestic Violent Extremist” analyst, the solicitation (in obvious error) seeks a “Domestic Violence Extremist” analyst. I stopped for a moment and thought, what would a domestic violence analyst look for? Receipts for 36 racks of bud heavy? Men rage posting about their sports team losing? How would the terrorism framework be applied to violence against women? Violence that claims, on average, 4 times the annual victims of so-called “extremists”.

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And even then, how would the counter terror framework predict, with pre-crime, minority report clairvoyance, the complex series of variables needed to identify individual first time domestic violence offenders. Even if we shifted this framework onto a real and pressing problem (domestic violence), it would be just as incapable of solving it as an intentionally obtuse vagary (extremism) . Looking at this stupid job posting only reinforced by conviction that we should get to the bottom of our society’s problem with material changes that improve people's lives.

Instead, we fund the infinite expansion of analysts and spies to track, surveil, and impose, only to fail in their mission of preventing violence. Who knows, maybe next year we will see congressional funding for a new FBI Domestic Violence center. I somehow doubt it though.

Stay tuned for two big stories coming next week…

Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani rode to victory on a typhoon of populist energy, promising to transform the city with a rent freeze and universal childcare. But a recently leaked NYPD intelligence brief makes clear that the democratic socialist’s agenda will have to contend with something more formidable than mere political opposition: a sprawling intelligence apparatus aimed at New Yorkers of all political persuasions.

The ten page brief which you can view here reveals that the NYPD’s Intelligence Division uses the term “Politically Motivated Grievance Actors” to target residents for surveillance. One of the examples cited in the document is a social media user who described the UnitedHealth CEO assassination as “the establishment getting wrecked.”

In the wake of September 11th, the NYPD wasn’t content to rely on federal agencies for counterterrorism intelligence. Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly tapped David Cohen, a 35-year CIA veteran who had served as the agency’s Deputy Director for Operations to rebuild the Intelligence Division from scratch. A 2011 CIA inspector general report would find that four CIA officers had been embedded within the NYPD, with at least one conducting surveillance operations on U.S. soil in clear violation of the agency’s domestic mandate.

The new Intelligence Division applied the CIA’s counterinsurgency tactics developed in Iraq and Afghanistan to New York neighborhoods. They created an undercover program staffed with young officers fluent in languages from Bengali to Urdu who infiltrated mosques and Muslim communities wholesale. They deployed “rakers” to map what one officer called “the human terrain” of ethnic neighborhoods and developed confidential informant networks from Staten Island to East New York.

By 2012, an NYPD Intelligence Division chief admitted that the program had not yielded a single serviceable lead. It was officially disbanded in 2014. But as the leaked intelligence brief demonstrates, the philosophy behind it never went away.

Mamdani has already made a major concession to this system: he’s announced his intention to retain Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch. A billionaire heiress educated at Harvard, Tisch was Governor Kathy Hochul’s pick to stabilize the department amid blossoming corruption scandals. Democratic establishment figures like House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries have praised Mamdani’s decision, waving around the commitment as confirmation that much of the status quo he ran on disrupting will indeed be left intact.

But keeping Tisch may be less political calculation than recognition of past mayoral realities: the NYPD Intelligence Division doesn’t answer to mayors the way other police departments do. With dozens of overseas bureaus and intelligence capabilities oustripping every other city save for Washington D.C., the NYPD and its Intelligence Bureau operate with unique and terrifying impunity.

Mamdani’s platform calls for creating a Department of Community Safety to handle mental health and social service calls and a strengthening of the Civilian Complaint Review Board. But these reforms only concern the NYPD’s street-level operations. What about an agency that categorizes criticism of elites as “Politically Motivated Grievances” and expressions of anger at the establishment as “extremism”?

Mamdani won by meeting voters where they lived and promising reform in bodegas, subway platforms, and street corners. But inside the depths of a heavily fortified One Police Plaza, reform itself is increasingly being viewed as an extremist threat.

Somewhere in the fluorescent-lit bowels of the FBI’s Dallas Field Office a special agent sat hunched and sweaty, trying to figure out how to explain to his bosses that Dungeons and Dragons nerds pose a threat to national security. Or rather, people pretending to be LARPers pose a threat to national security.

A leaked FBI intelligence bulletin represents a new frontier in the War on Terror’s endless mission creep: “Some Online Extremists Likely Will Claim to Be Role-Playing To Obfuscate Extremist Activities.” Let that wash over you like the horse-meat grey water in a Budget Inn bathtub in Quantico.

The FBI, that venerable institution that once hunted bank robbers, communists, and spies, has now dedicated analysts to stalking dungeon masters and comic con evangelists. Most importantly the feds have created an analytical framework wherein pretending to be an extremist is evidence that you’re an extremist pretending to pretend to be an extremist.

Let’s break down the FBI’s logic here:

Scenario A: You post “extremist” content online. The FBI investigates you. You tell them you were just LARPing (Live Action Role-Playing) and just kidding around, engaging in some edgelord behavior. The FBI’s response? That’s exactly what a real extremist trying to cover their tracks would say. GUILTY!

Scenario B: You post “extremist” content online and you mean it. GUILTY!

Scenario C: You’re into dressing up like characters from Lord of The Rings, Back To The Future, Star Trek Next Generation (but NOT Star Trek Voyager), anime girls, anime men, anime animals, bender from Futurama, or Spiderman. GUILTY!

The FBI acknowledges that “there are significant difficulties distinguishing true LARPers—individuals interested only in online role-playing extremists—from actual extremists, as these individuals are well-versed in the tenets and vernacular of various extremist ideologies.”

However the report does offer one useful distinction for investigators: actual role-players “very often will include systemized components, such as a rule system or a character sheet, as well as a means to visibly designate between in-character and out-of-character action.” Wow, that’s helpful!

Somewhere, in that Dallas basement, our FBI analyst is updating his spreadsheet, rolling a 32 sided die to decide which comic book characters to search for next, and jotting down your name, address, and +2 potion heal when war party includes mage AND archer.

The FBI’s growing list of domestic threats has mutated in recent years to include every conceivable affiliation of Americans across the political spectrum: right-wing violent extremists, left-wing violent extremists, black identity extremists, and animal rights extremists. The current administration has even added nihilistic violent extremists—those who “believe in nothing”—to the laundry list. The Biden administration, for its part, aided in this exercise by vastly overstating the threat posed by Trump-aligned conservatives in the wake of January 6th. But neither Democratic nor Republican administrations have ever grandstanded about another significant threat group that the FBI secretly monitors on U.S. soil: Israeli Based Organized Crime Syndicates, or “IBOCS”.

Leaked FBI records and court filings detail widespread money laundering, taxpayer theft, and drug smuggling enterprises operated in the U.S. by Israeli citizens connected or belonging to Israeli crime groups. Despite the trickle of prosecutions over the past 25 years, the FBI has never publicly disclosed the fact that it has designated resources allocated to investigating these criminal organizations.

A 2020 FBI intelligence report from the “Blue Leaks” hack conducted by the hacker group Anonymous and archived by the nonprofit DDoSecrets describes IBOCS operating in Nevada and Florida embezzling money from the Paycheck Protection Program. IBOCS “have defrauded US Government relief programs and manipulated tax documents since at least 2015 to reduce tax liability and conceal money laundering activities, as well as have access to companies and agents, which are necessary to process PPP loan applications” the report found.

The report also lists instances of IBOCS committing both disaster relief and tax fraud, and notes that IBOCS are involved in money laundering, extortion, illegal gambling, fraud, and narcotics trafficking in Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, and New York, according to FBI investigations.

As far back as 2009, leaked State Department cables obtained by WikiLeaks detail one of the reasons why criminals belonging to or associated with Israeli crime families and syndicates have been able to operate inside America with ease: The State Department is not authorized to block their visas. The cables warn of the Israeli mafia taking on a growing role in the American trade of ecstasy, and of the loophole which prevents U.S. embassies from automatically denying Israeli crime figures travel documents.

While the State Department has formalized powers in its foreign affairs manual to restrict visas for Chinese Triads, Japanese Yakuza, the Italian mafia, the Hells Angels biker gangs, Outlaws, Bandidos, and Mongols and two dozen Latin American gangs including Tren de Agua, Israeli organized crime groups remain absent more than a decade after the State Department cable first warned of the Israeli mafia loophole.

“Given the volume of travel and trade between the United States and Israel, it is not surprising that Israeli OC [organized crime] has also gained a foothold in America,” one cable reads. “The consular section has revoked several visas for those who have been convicted of crimes in Israel, but many OC figures have no prior criminal convictions and carry no visa ineligibilities. As a result, many hold valid nonimmigrant visas to the United States and have traveled freely or attempted to travel for a variety of purposes.”

A former FBI special agent who worked on investigations involving IBOCS told The American Conservative, “There is real Israeli organized crime in this country, and there is a formalized FBI program for investigating these groups,” adding that “they look for the success of other criminals and then try to build a better model on those.”

He also said, “Once you move beyond that and your target becomes more sophisticated, they are presumed to be intelligence operatives and operatives of the Israeli government and then that gets moved highside in the national security division.”

A sentencing letter for an international narcotics smuggling case prosecuted in the Southern District of New York hints at this reality, referencing the IBOCS designation in connection to an international ecstasy smuggling conspiracy:

“The defendant engaged in internationally laundering narcotics proceeds as part of an Israel-based organized crime syndicate. In addition to his demonstrated ability to launder drug money across borders, he also possessed ample global connections in the narcotics trade and access to narcotics themselves.”

A second former FBI agent pointed to the recent west coast indictment of “a suspected high-level member of an Israeli transnational organized crime group” running an illegal poker game in Hollywood. “Its no secret that politics inevitably shapes enforcement priorities,” the agent said, explaining why the bureau has never highlighted its IBOCS enforcement. “This has not been a popular thing to wave around in the press, which is why you see a steady stream of prosecutions related to Israeli crime figures without the same discussion of organization that you might have with cartels or gangs.”

So politically unpopular is criticism of illegal activities by Israelis that repeated espionage efforts have been swept under the rug, or at the very least, restricted from public view. In 2019, POLITICO reported that intelligence officials suspected that Israel was behind the placement of cellphone surveillance devices planted around the White House and in other locations in Washington D.C. According to the report, the Israelis were not sanctioned with a formal reprimand from the State Department.

Another potential reason for the lack of visibility on IBOCS is the changing face of Israeli politics and the increasing proximity of organized crime figures to the ruling Likud party. Ten Likud officials chose to spend the Jewish holiday of Sukkot with convicted mobster Rafi Chaim-Kedoshim this year. In the past, members of Israel’s mafia families elected to parliament on the Likud line have attempted to use their positions to quash investigations in organized crime.

The FBI did not respond to The American Conservative’s request for comment about the current status of the Bureau’s IBOCS investigations.

The FBI is investigating true crime fans through digital surveillance of forums and online communities, according to an FBI alert obtained by Anonymous, archived by the nonprofit DDOSecrets, and published here for the first time. The FBI’s justification for the report, which was sent to fusion centers across the country, is “to raise law enforcement, school, and public safety officials’ awareness of an evolving threat involving violent perpetrators who use the True Crime Community (TCC).”

Per the FBI’s definition, the true crime community comprises people discussing the true crime genre and those interested in mass murderers, serial killers, and active shooters. If you’ve ever watched Silence of the Lambs, Pulp Fiction, or The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, that could include you.

I can understand the FBI’s concern with forums celebrating and encouraging school shootings, but that’s not where the report draws the line. Instead, it suggests that the entire true crime genre, a multi-billion-dollar industry, is a potential vector for domestic threats.

“Violent perpetrators on TCC forums have engaged in or have made plans to engage in similar violent activities. Online platforms such as Tumblr, Facebook, Skype, Instagram, and YouTube have also been used to unite TCC members and have provided easy accessibility to a wider audience,” the report reads.

The FBI provides three examples of mass shooters who were allegedly card-carrying members of the true crime community before committing murders, but names only two of the so-called TCC groups: “Potential School Shooters 2.0” and “Cho Seung Hui fanclub.” Both groups clearly reference school shooters, not the true crime genre as a whole. At one point, the bureau attempts to underscore this distinction in its report, writing:

“The FBI does not consider non-violent participation in TCC forums as an indicator of criminal activity. While some TCC users discuss violent crimes and violent offenders, most of the content exchanged is protected speech under the First Amendment.”

However, the very next line instructs local and state law enforcement to report any affiliation with “True Crime” or the “True Crime Community” to the FBI in the course of an investigation. And there’s the FBI’s classic rub: by engineering a threat vector that just so happens to include a massive group of people (the True Crime subreddit alone counts over 3 million members), the bureau is able to use the violent crimes of a few psychopaths to justify dragnet surveillance of an entire population.

One of the most lucrative gigs for retired FBI agents is writing books detailing the most gruesome cases of their careers. In fact, the streaming platform Paramount has a seven-season series called FBI True, which “goes behind-the-scenes with real agents telling true stories of their most dangerous and infamous cases.” Each episode has upwards of 20 million streams.

But while it’s fair game for former FBI agents to cash in on the true crime genre, when it comes to the general public talking about podcasts and movies online, anyone, even YOU, could be a threat.

You can read the full report below.

Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District of Columbia’s 88-year-old congressional delegate, has more than one no-show job, according to her most recent financial disclosure. We contacted the half dozen boards she claims to sit on at elite institutions, and found that three of them hadn’t heard from her in years, and two of them don’t exist anymore.

Norton’s AWOL status comes on the heels of a genuinely disturbing report by NBC4 confirming what both Washington insiders and sentient beings have been saying for months: Norton is suffering from dementia. According to a police report obtained by NBC4, a pack of scammers dressed as HVAC repairmen walked into her house and walked out $4,400 richer for services they never performed. The report also notes that Norton has a caretaker with power of attorney, who reported the fraud to Norton’s credit card company.

Norton was once a genuine force of nature in DC politics and a celebrated civil rights warrior who marched on Washington in 1963. Sixty years later, her financial disclosures list positions that haven’t existed for years, suggesting that her staff has been resubmitting portions of her ethics forms on autopilot. Her office did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Two congressional sources who spoke with Deeper States confirm that Holmes Norton is largely absent from committee meetings and planning sessions. The same is true of the committees and boards Norton lists on her disclosures.

These include the executive committee of the Yale Law School Association, the board of trustees for Antioch College, the lawyers committee for civil rights, the advisory boards at the Women’s Law & Public Policy Fellowship Program at Georgetown, the Women and Politics Institute at American University, and the Sewall Belmont House.

We reached out to each of these boards to ask what exactly Norton does in these roles. After repeated attempts, not a single one could confirm Norton’s attendance. Norton was a founding member of the Georgetown Women’s Law & Public Policy Fellowship Program and as a board member used to regularly host the program’s fellows for lunch-ins on Capitol Hill. But according to a spokesperson, she hasn’t done so since 2019. American University seemed genuinely confused by our inquiry. “The Women & Politics Institute no longer has an advisory board,” they wrote.

The steward of Sewall-Belmont House delivered a similar response, relaying that the site’s ownership was transferred to the National Park Service in 2016, and that the Park Service was not aware of the museum having an advisory board. They also relayed they had no record that Norton was currently involved with the operations of the site in any capacity.

When the Trump administration decided to send troops into the nation’s capital to harass and intimidate its residents, Norton was almost entirely absent, save for a generic statement condemning the occupation.

In the weeks after the federal siege, congressional Republicans held a series of hearings to publicly berate DC officials about crime and public safety. The hearings held by the Oversight Committee that Norton sits on should have been her moment. Instead, Norton took a back seat, struggling through a prepared statement. According to sources close to the city council, Norton’s “halting” performance sparked immediate discussions in city hall about organizing a unified effort to force her into retirement.

Since the deployment of the National Guard to Washington, two city council members have announced primary challenges against Norton for the upcoming midterm election: Robert White, the current at-large council member who challenged Bowser for mayor in 2022, and Brooke Pinto, the Ward 2 council member.

Meanwhile, Norton has not only refused to resign but told reporters she intends to run again for re-election at the age of 90. Her staff, meanwhile, maintains she still hasn’t made up her mind, which is probably true in the most literal sense possible.

The Democratic Party’s leadership has been utterly silent on this slow-motion disaster, unwilling to intervene with Norton in anyway. In the meantime, ICE continues to bludgeon its way from Silver Spring to Anacostia as the government shutdown stretches towards the one month mark. As Democrats juggle the dual imperatives of not endorsing the only Democrat in the NYC mayor’s race, and propping up the animated corpse of Janet Mills in Maine, Washington D.C. is, for the first time, an afterthought.

The government’s case against Luigi Mangione was always going to be a show for the ages. And we haven’t even hit intermission. But thanks to a series of unforced errors by the Trump administration capped off by a presidential memorandum that treats Mangione’s guilty verdict as an established fact, the prosecution’s production is looking more and more like a record-setting flop.

On October 16, Mangione’s attorney Karen Friedman Agnifilo filed a ten-page letter cataloging how the DOJ and White House have turned Mangione’s case into political theater. The most damaging exhibit is National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7) which cites the “2024 assassination of a senior healthcare executive” as a core element of a nationwide crackdown on dissent. Obviously this is in reference to Mangione’s case.

.Just nine days before Trump signed NSPM-7, a New York State Supreme Court judge dismissed terrorism charges against Mangione finding there was “no evidence presented of a desire to terrorize the public, inspire widespread fear, engage in a broader campaign of violence, or to conspire with organized terrorist groups.” The federal indictment doesn’t charge terrorism either. Yet the President is holding up this case as an example of domestic terrorism requiring a national security response.

That becomes a major problem for the prosecution given the pattern of Trump screaming jump, and the suits at DOJ asking how high. Lawyers and their subordinates are prohibited from making public statements that could prejudice a defendant’s right to a fair trial. Judge Garnett made this explicit back in April, directing the government to inform Attorney General Pam Bondi and “any of her subordinates at Main Justice” about these restrictions. The government confirmed they’d done so.

Then they proceeded to violate the rule repeatedly.

According to Agnifilo’s brief, Bondi herself appeared on Fox News to charge: “If there was ever a death case, this is one...this guy is charged with hunting down a CEO, a father of two, a married man, hunting him down and executing him.” DOJ employees reposted statements from Trump calling Mangione someone who “shot someone in the back as clear as you are looking at me...He looked like a pure assassin...instantly dead...this is a sickness.”

The government’s response was that the referenced DOJ employees weren’t “associated with this matter”, a clear cut lie given that the Attorney General is the only person in the entire federal government authorized to seek the death penalty. (She personally directed the Southern District of New York to seek Mangione’s execution).

But the accusations by Mangione’s attorney push past jury tampering and into the realm of collusion. According to a Wall Street Journal article cited in Agnifilo’s filing, the insurance company more than doubled its lobbying spending to $7.7 million in the first half of 2025, hiring Trump mega-donors and former DOJ employees. This army of lobbyists arranged meetings with senior Justice Department as the company saw $63 billion in market value wiped off the map, and a criminal investigation into Medicare billing issues drawing ever nearer.

Agnifilo is now asking for discovery about these meetings to determine whether UnitedHealth’s lobbying precipitated the coordinated government campaign to publicly vilify Mangione.

“If the sanctity of a death penalty prosecution means anything it means that government personnel seeking to execute someone cannot purposely, repeatedly and brazenly violate Court Rules and a Judge’s Order to gain an unfair advantage so it can have a better chance at killing the defendant.” Agnifilo wrote.

The Trump administration wanted to use Mangione as a poster boy for left-wing violence and as justification for a harsh crackdown on domestic terrorism. They wanted the political benefit without worrying about boring details like the right to a fair trial and the written law of the land.

They may soon discover those boring details actually matter. And in trying to make Mangione an example, they likely have given him the best possible defense: that his prosecution is being driven by politics. In a system that still occasionally remembers its supposed to enact justice, that might just be enough.

This article originally appeared in The New Republic, Here.

Fifteen minutes east of Senator Bernie Sanders’s headquarters in Burlington, Vermont, sit the nerve centers of Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s national efforts to target immigrants for deportation. Two of ICE’s three main targeting facilities, in addition to its tip line, are located in the hamlet of Williston, which has seen mounting protests in recent weeks over plans to hire round-the-clock analysts to aid the Trump administration’s deportation goals.

The targeting centers are fueling an unprecedented immigration crackdown across the country, one that has drawn widespread condemnation from politicians and citizens alike. Harrowing videos have captured masked ICE officers arresting U.S. citizens, shooting at clergy, and threatening first responders with lethal force. And while ICE has abandoned some of its focused targeting practices in favor of broad sweeps, the targeting that remains is driven by two offices in Williston.

One of these facilities is the National Criminal Analysis and Targeting Center, or NCATC, which serves as the nexus for intelligence that is sent to ICE’s 25 enforcement and removal operations, or ERO, field offices across the country. The intelligence packaged by the NCATC for ERO “door kickers” includes biographical information, criminal history, immigration history, custody data, immigration benefit information, naturalization information, and vehicle and insurance data. Thanks to a memorandum of understanding signed in April by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, it now also includes IRS data, the legality of which is being contested in court.

Per ICE’s own documentation, the NCATC routinely queries data sets containing vast numbers of U.S. citizens. In addition to data owned and maintained by the government, the NCATC also sends queries, “on a weekly basis,” to commercial data brokers hunting for information on targets the government can’t collect itself. This month, dozens of protesters gathered outside the NCATC to protest the center’s plan to hire some dozen open-source intelligence analysts to work round the clock scouring social media for information to use further targeting immigrants for deportation.

But these hires pale in comparison to the 100 new employees that the Homeland Security Investigations, or HSI, Williston tip line plans to hire, according to a federal solicitation posted at the beginning of the month. While HSI special agents previously worked high-profile drug and human smuggling cases, the Trump administration has increasingly pulled HSI special agents into the dragnet of mass immigration enforcement on targets who have not been accused of major crimes. With 100 new staffers, the HSI tip line is ramping up to take any and all tips, no matter how small.

According to the October 1 HSI solicitation, the 90 call center analysts and 10 supervisors will not only take calls reporting alleged immigration violations but also report other alleged criminal or civil infractions to other agencies. Call center employees are also charged with investigating the allegations that come in through the tip line, will conduct research in Department of Homeland Security and commercial or open-source databases, and “if possible, corroborate their potential involvement in alleged criminal activity.”

Of particular note to Vermonters is the fact that there is no requirement for these new hires to actually live in Vermont: “The place of performance for this task order is Remote. Remote work is authorized and can be performed using Government Furnished Equipment (GFE). Contractor personnel shall be responsible for retrieving GFE from ICE,” the solicitation reads.

A second leg of DHS’s targeting triad, ICE’s Law Enforcement Support Center, or LESC, is co-located in Williston, serving as ICE’s national point of contact for federal, state, and local law enforcement. A local police interaction in any state can trigger a query to the LESC, where information is identified and packaged as a lead that is then forwarded to the NCATC for further investigation.

At a September speech in McAllen, Texas, on his Fight the Oligarchy tour, Senator Bernie Sanders told the assembled crowd that “we got to figure out a way to stop ICE from what they are doing as soon as possible.” But when pressed for information about what, if anything, Vermont’s elected leaders are doing to stop ICE’s nerve center outside of Burlington, Sanders did not respond to The New Republic’s request for comment.

Other members of Vermont’s congressional delegation did.

“DHS’s reported plans to expand intelligence gathering operations at the National Criminal Analysis and Targeting Center in Williston cannot become a backdoor for mass surveillance of Vermonters or U.S. residents,” a spokesperson for Senator Peter Welch wrote in a statement.

“Senator Welch has been and will continue to work to hold the Trump Administration accountable when its mass deportation agenda violates federal law or hurts Vermonters. These plans appear to be in an initial phase and our office is actively working to gather more information.”

Rebecaa Balint, Vermont’s sole U.S. representative, told TNR, “The idea of expanding NCATC to blindly comb social media brings up serious constitutional and privacy concerns. We cannot let the Trump administration use immigration to veil their creation of a surveillance state. My office is working to investigate as this develops.”

Despite Vermont electeds’ concerns about the increase in NCATC staffing, they have failed to take concrete action to limit ICE’s ability to conduct national targeting operations from one of the most liberal states in the country. So far, no one has called for the elimination of state and local law enforcement collaboration with joint task forces involving DHS, worked to evict ICE’s targeting operations from Vermont, or obtained and released information on ICE’s internal targeting protocols.

Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security continues to consolidate control of federal law enforcement beyond immigration through Homeland Security Task Forces authorized by Executive Order 14159, signed by President Trump in January. Part of the order creates an archipelago of task forces across the country to envelop state and local agencies, in addition to the FBI and DEA under the control of DHS, the most subservient and reckless of the federal agencies.

National Security Presidential Memorandum 7, signed by Trump at the end of last month, further emboldens these task forces to pursue anyone opposing his administration’s migration policy, in addition to anyone holding so-called “anti-American” sentiments. The order will likely double the federal terrorism watchlist, and states explicitly that opposition to ICE agents is part of the directive’s impetus for cracking down on dissent.

As Democrats continue to “sound the alarm” about the Department of Homeland Security and ICE, vanishingly little is being done in the People’s Republic of Vermont to halt the flow of targeting intelligence to masked agents trampling on civil rights and chilling free speech across the country. For now, the most liberal state in the union will remain ground zero for an incredibly illiberal intelligence operation.

The bastards finally did it. They’ve merged the six most hated letters in the American alphabet: IRS + ICE. The new “CRIES” collaboration joins the IRS’s vast database of tax payer information with ICE’s increasingly war-weary effort to deport every abuela, farm hand, and protester this side of the Rio Grande.

Despite this MOU being signed in April, not a single news site has posted the un-redacted version of an agreement which gives ICE access to the last known location of every IRS registrant in the country. These documents exist publicly in federal court records, so I figured I’d shoot them out for you to read for yourself.

Multiple civil rights groups and immigrant advocacy organizations are contesting this special relationship on the grounds that it violates IRS provisions limiting what the agency can share with outside agencies. But as the case winds its way through the courts, the IRS fire hose is set to max and the Tax Man is shooting treasury data into the hungry mouths of every ICE yahoo from Boston to Baja.

For the discerning reader, be sure to scope the indemnification clause which gives Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent a pass should ICE agents end up “mistakenly” kicking down the door of a U.S. Senator or high powered business exec who wants to file suit.

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/26186288-govuscourtsmad28966911/

Immigration and Customs Enforcement has officially pushed back life-saving medical training for its Texas officers because they’re too busy ramping up deportations, according to procurement documents I reviewed. If an ICE agent collapses during a raid, his colleagues better hope a zoomer lifeguard is on hand, but even then, the odds aren’t great

The contract modification extends the performance period for “Basic Life Support, Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation, and Automated External Defibrillator training” due to what the contract clinically describes as “government delay caused by increased ERO operations tempo.” ERO stands for Enforcement and Removal Operations, the ICE division that actually does the door kicking.

The timing is rich given Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s non-stop wail about ICE agents fending off attacks from American’s who want them out of their fucking neighborhoods. Noem has been making the rounds warning about dangers to federal immigration officers, painting them as embattled heroes facing constant threats. Stephen Miller, for his part, has attempted to get parachuters to skydive into Portland in an effort to protect ICE agents.

But when it comes to protecting agents by teaching them how to save each other’s lives, the agency hasn’t found the time. ICE’s track record with medical care in detention is already abysmal with multiple investigations every year documenting deaths in custody, inadequate medical screening, and delayed treatment for serious conditions. Now ICE officers may face a similar face at the hands of ill-equipped colleagues.

One might ask what exactly constitutes an “increased operations tempo” that’s so overwhelming ICE can’t spare a day for basic medical training. Or one that can keep “EVERYDAY HERO CPR LLC” from teaching its class. ICE isn’t the hero we need, but it may just be the hero we don’t deserve.

A few months ago I wrote for The American Prospect about the Trump admin mobilizing Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTFs) to ram the federal government into every small town in America. At the time, these nifty post-9/11 contraptions were being cattle prodded into immigration enforcement. But under NSPM-7, the JTTF model and its national NJTTF office are set to carry out investigations into speech and protest that while constitutionally protected, DISGUST the president.

It’s an incredible moment, given that politicians are today speaking out for the first time about NSPM-7, while simultaneously ignoring the fact that their states and districts have the power to terminate this special arrangment with the feds. I cannot find a single instance of an elected official ever criticizing the JTTF model. If I’m wrong, please let me know in the comments. I’d love to speak with that elected.

The Prospect piece about JTTFs is a primer on their history and also a roadmap for their dismantlement. Three different cities have terminated the MOUs that authorize the FBI to bigfoot state and local agencies. If you’re looking for a way to get involved politically that has more impact then a pussy hat rally, take a look at what a few local activists managed to achieve in cities across America:

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One day after President Trump’s inauguration, acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove sent a memorandum to the Department of Justice activating a much-maligned network of spies that civil liberties advocates have pilloried for the grave threat it poses to basic constitutional rights.

Bove directed the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Forces to coordinate with the Department of Homeland Security, as well as state and local governments, “to assist in the execution of President Trump’s immigration-related initiatives.” This series of interconnected task forces, expanded in the wake of 9/11, seeds local and state law enforcement with the powers (and paranoia) of federal agencies.

The directive also ordered multiple federal agencies, including the Drug Enforcement Administration; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms; U.S. Marshals Service; and the Bureau of Prisons to “review their files for identifying information and/or biometric data relating to non-citizens located illegally in the United States.”

It remains to be seen how this directive has been applied to assist in the abduction of foreign students, Venezuelan green card holders, and others snatched off the streets by immigration officials. But the intelligence underlying those abductions could only come from a few sources, and one of them is the Joint Terrorism Task Forces.

In celebration of the very first Joint Terrorism Task Force, or JTTF, founded 45 years ago in 1980, FBI field offices across the country released glowing assessments of the program. So did the FBI’s new director. “The JTTF model clearly demonstrates the power of law enforcement cooperation at all levels,” said FBI Director Kash Patel. “Preventing terrorism is a no-fail mission. Only by working together, can we keep the nation safe.”

But since their inception, JTTFs have been criticized for overriding the standard operating procedures of local law enforcement, and incentivizing cops on the street to act less like members of the community they are policing, and more like federal agents parachuting in to communities they know nothing about to stop the next attack.

JTTF surveillance in the years after 9/11 and during Trump’s first administration was disastrous. Task forces spent their days infiltrating mosques, cultivating unreliable human sources, surveilling activists exercising First Amendment speech rights in the Occupy and environmental movements, and even working hand in hand with former CIA officers to streamline intelligence-gathering operations. During the first Trump administration, it was the Portland, Oregon, JTTF that then-Attorney General Bill Barr activated to monitor, surveil, and in at least one case, pull activists off the street in unmarked cars.

But despite the overwhelming power of federal agencies to marshal the combined power of biometric, digital, and human collection methods to target immigrants, protesters, and judges, municipalities have demonstrated not only that their constituents are willing to see the federal collaboration with local police diminished, but also that the fears of missing the next terrorist attack by refusing to cooperate with federal authorities are largely unfounded.

Since the birth of the JTTFs, three local governments have voted to terminate police force agreements with the FBI to participate in information-sharing. The city councils of Portland, San Francisco, and Oakland all took votes to terminate the memoranda of understanding granting the FBI access to local police, and waiving the state laws that would otherwise safeguard residents.

In 2018, as Portland was gearing up to leave the JTTF, retired FBI special agent and fellow at the Brennan Center Mike German testified before the Portland City Council on why repealing the JTTF was essential to protecting residents’ civil liberties.

“After the 9/11 attacks, the Justice Department and Congress altered the FBI’s authorities significantly, giving it power to conduct electronic surveillance, gather intelligence, and investigate people and organizations it does not suspect of engaging in criminal activity,” German told the council. “As a result, Portland police officers assigned to the JTTF would find it extremely difficult, if not impossible to comply with Oregon law while conducting routine operations under the FBI’s current counterterrorism authorities and practices. Moreover, the FBI exercises these expanded powers in nearly complete secrecy, giving overseers, the public, and victims of abuse few opportunities to challenge them for legality or effectiveness.”

Thanks to the FBI’s role leading counterterrorism operations in the wake of 9/11, the Bureau is able to access the NSA’s collection of international communications, and can query these databases without warrants, even during criminal investigations. Thanks to the JTTF, German told the assembled city councilors, “Portland police officers assigned to the JTTF have routine access to most of these data bases when conducting counterterrorism investigations or intelligence-gathering activities.”

While the FBI has used JTTFs in the past to investigate citizens whose activities generally do not conform with the status quo—environmentalists upset with the state of climate change, socialists upset with the state of capitalism, or Muslims perfectly content with the state of things who just want to worship in peace—the Trump administration has blown past these so-called “threat groups.”

Now, the Justice Department is issuing guidance left and right that explodes threat categories and makes clear that enforcement priorities include any citizen who steps out of line. The new federal law enforcement orientation sees any deviation from the policy platform of Donald Trump as a potential act of terrorism and subversion. This includes people who peaceably protest in front of a Tesla dealership, or who write op-eds in favor of Palestinian rights.

As Sebastian Gorka, Donald Trump’s counterterrorism “czar,” told the press last month, “We have people who love America, like the president, like his Cabinet, like the directors of his agencies, who want to protect Americans, and then there is the other side, that is on the side of the cartel members, on the side of the illegal aliens, on the side of the terrorists.

“You have to ask yourself, are they technically aiding and abetting them?” Gorka added. “Because aiding and abetting criminals and terrorists is a crime in federal statute.”

The push to turn the average dissenting American citizen into a terrorist is accelerating every day. And while the JTTF network represents just one of dozens of partnerships between local, state, and federal law enforcement, terminating the relationship between city police and federal authorities on the JTTFs is a simple way to block the federal government from overriding state laws.