Chip Gibbons
Oct 03, 2025

If there was any question as to whether his Executive Order was merely bluster, Trump clarified the matter three days later when he issued National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7). Bearing Trump’s signature, NSPM-7 was clearly drafted with a deep understanding of the U.S. counterterrorism bureaucracy. It seeks to “disrupt” not just those allegedly carrying out left-wing violence, but those who fund it and those who “radicalize” and recruit individuals to partake in it. It declares domestic terrorism to be a top priority and defines domestic terrorism priorities to include “civil unrest” and “doxing.”

The memo lays out a range of responsibilities for government agencies. It tasks the Secretary of Treasury to apply powers traditionally used against money laundering and international terrorism to ferreting out the funders of so-called domestic terrorism. It instructs the IRS to make sure no “tax-exempt entities are directly or indirectly financing political violence or domestic terrorism,” and refer those that are to the Department of Justice for prosecution. It instructs the Attorney General to come up with a list of “recurrent motives” and indicators of groups that engage in supposed domestic terrorism so that resources can be directed at similar groups to “prevent potential violent activity.”