On January 6, Donald Trump's administration published an apologia for the Trump supporters whom he incited to storm the Capitol five years earlier. The next day, Stephen Miller, in response to news that an ICE agent had shot and killed a woman in Minneapolis, lambasted the Democratic Party on X for 'inciting a violent insurrection.' The juxtaposition of the January 6 anniversary and the shooting of Renee Nicole Good in Minnesota the next day is a coincidence of timing. But the echo of language between that which the Trump administration has attacked (alleged violence against federal law-enforcement officers) and that which it has defended (actual violence against federal law-enforcement officers) is striking. President Trump's long-standing view has become official policy: His supporters are definitionally 'patriotic' and therefore entitled to take any actions on his behalf, regardless of how violent or illegal they may be. His opponents are definitionally terrorists, and therefore constitute legitimate targets of state violence. This is how an organized mass attack to overthrow the government becomes 'peaceful' and 'patriotic,' while a single woman attempting to flee ICE agents constitutes a violent attempt to overthrow the government....

National Security Presidential Memorandum/NSPM-7, issued on Sept. 25, 2025, is a presidential directive that for the first time appears to authorize preemptive law enforcement measures against Americans based not on whether they are planning to commit violence but for their political or ideological beliefs. You've probably heard a lot about President Donald Trump's many executive orders. But as an international relations scholar who has studied U.S. foreign policy decision-making and national security legislation, I recognize that presidents can take several types of executive actions without legislative involvement: executive orders, memoranda and proclamations. This seventh national security memorandum from the Trump White House pushes the limits of presidential authority by targeting individuals and groups as potential domestic terrorists based on their beliefs rather than their actions. Unlike executive orders, they are not required to be published. When these memoranda, like NSPM-7, relate to national security and military and foreign policy, they are called national security directives, although the specific name of these directives changes with each administration....

Donald Trump's Justice Department is firing some of the nation's most experienced counterterrorism prosecutors and experts, apparently for political reasons. Line prosecutors and terrorism experts across the country are watching with alarm, although many are afraid to say so publicly. On Wednesday night, the department pushed out Michael Ben'Ary, who was head of national security at the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Virginia. He lost his job, CNN reported, because a MAGA activist had falsely accused him of resisting the recent indictment of former FBI Director James Comey. (Ben'Ary was not involved in the case, the network found.) As a prosecutor, Ben'Ary took an oath 'that requires you to follow the facts and the law wherever they lead, free from fear or favor, and unhindered by political interference,' he wrote to colleagues on Friday. 'In recent months, the political leadership of the Department have violated these principles, jeopardizing our national security and making American citizens less safe.'...

In the wake of Charlie Kirk's killing, the Republican policy apparatus went immediately to work. The Heritage Foundation, which published Project 2025, and its spinoff, the Oversight Project, issued a call for the Federal Bureau of Investigation to designate 'Transgender Ideology-Inspired Violent Extremism,' or TIVE, as a domestic terrorism threat category. The push comes as President Donald Trump just signed an executive order that seeks to mobilize federal law enforcement against vaguely defined domestic terror networks. The Heritage Foundation and Oversight Project document, which defines 'transgender ideology' as 'a belief that wholly or partially rejects fundamental science about human sex being biologically determined before birth, binary, and immutable," grounds its policy recommendations in a startling claim: 'Experts estimate that 50% of all major (non-gang related) school shootings since 2015 have involved or likely involved transgender ideology.' When WIRED asked for the data behind this claim, the Oversight Project did not respond; the Heritage Foundation pointed to a tweet from one of its vice presidents, Roger Severino, claiming that '50% of major (non-gang) school shootings since 2015' involve a transgender shooter or trans-related motive. Severino also lays out what appears to be his entire dataset: eight shootings, four of which, he claims, involve 'a trans-identifying shooter and/or a likely trans-ideology related motivation.'...