Instead of addressing the military conflicts that the United States is involved in, Secretary Hegseth’s “State of the Force” speech focused on culture war nonsense. Retired Lt. Col. Amy McGrath and MS NOW’s David Rohde join Ali Velshi to discuss Hegseth’s wayward leadership and horrendous remarks.
If you go by the definition of terrorism used by the government now, this blog and I would be accused of supporting terrorism and I would be labeled a terrorist. Supoort a person’s right to be an atheist, be LGBTQ+, I support gender studies in learning, I am not a racist nor a bigot, and I am open to people living different lifestyles as suits them as long as they are not harming others. Hugs.
WASHINGTON, DC – OCTOBER 15: U.S. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche (L) gestures to U.S. President Donald Trump as he speaks during a press conference in the Oval Office of the White House on October 15, 2025 in Washington, DC. Trump and Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Kash Patel (C) provided an update on the Trump administration’s progress in reducing violent crime. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)LESS
The FBI has tapped employees from across federal law enforcement to crack down on dissent, including agents and analysts with the Internal Revenue Service, documents shared with TPM show.
They’re working at the FBI’s NSPM-7 Joint Mission Center, per records obtained through FOIA by watchdog group American Oversight.
In National Security Presidential Memorandum 7, the White House laid out a national strategy for federal law enforcement, directing it to treat beliefs like “anti-Americanism, anti-Capitalism, and anti-Christianity” and “extremism on migration, race, and gender” as indicators of domestic terrorism.
The records obtained by American Oversight include organizational charts for the NSPM-7 Joint Mission Center and a list of thirteen IRS employees — names redacted — who are detailed to work at the center. Emails obtained by American Oversight between IRS employees, including one assigned to the Tax Exempt and Government Entities division and another assigned to Criminal Investigations, also reference a “Violent Anarchist Task Force Working Group Meeting.”
The org charts, dated May 20, show that two attorneys from the DOJ’s Office of the Deputy Attorney General — the nerve center that runs the Justice Department — are a part of the Joint Mission Center.
The records reveal details of the architecture that federal law enforcement has built to implement NSPM-7 and fight “Antifa,” the loose network of anti-fascist activists that the administration has deemed a terrorist threat. The records are heavily redacted.
Against the backdrop of an administration in which the president has wielded law enforcement as a tool to target his political opponents, the disclosures suggest that the government’s financial investigators are starting to play a role in cases brought to serve partisan political ends.
NSPM-7, issued last year as the Trump administration, sought to capitalize on Charlie Kirk’s assassination as a means to justify a wide-ranging crackdown on the left, and the administration’s political opponents. It has, over the last year, turned into an onslaught against freedom of speech. In Minneapolis, federal agents with DHS cited the memo as they deployed undercover agents and aggressive financial investigative maneuvers to surveil unions, churches, and other groups protesting the administration’s occupation of the city, Operation Metro Surge, and its aftermath. In other cases, NSPM-7 has been invoked as the administration charges people for posting threats on social media.
NSPM-7 Joint Mission Center organizational chart, obtained by American Oversight via FOIA
At the DOJ, operationalizing NSPM-7 has meant the creation of Joint Task Force Vanguard. That effort is co-led by Brian W. Lynch, who prosecuted organized crime as an assistant district attorney in Ohio and then nationally as a federal prosecutor. He also marched on the Capitol on January 6, TPM first reported. Vanguard’s other co-director, Jason Kellhofer, is a longtime counterterrorism prosecutor.
The DOJ declined to comment. In the past, it’s strenuously denied that its efforts to implement NSPM-7 infringe on freedom of speech.
The role of the IRS in NSPM-7 hasn’t been fully fleshed out. Using the Trump administration’s definition of terrorism, NSPM-7 directed the IRS commissioner to ensure that no nonprofits “are directly or indirectly financing political violence or domestic terrorism.”
The IRS wields broad powers over civil society. A large proportion of advocacy and research groups are registered as nonprofits, granting the IRS the ability to scrutinize their nonprofit status.
But so far, and in spite of striking fear in the hearts of nonprofits across the country, the IRS has, as far as we know, not yet attempted to revoke a charity’s nonprofit status for political reasons. Some have argued that doing so could provoke an equal response under a future Democratic administration.
The records show that three analysts and ten agents from IRS’s Criminal Investigations have been detailed to the center. An email from December obtained by American Oversight shows a thread between Adrian Gonzalez, Director of Compliance Planning and Classification in the IRS’s Tax Exempt and Government Entities division, corresponding with an employee of Criminal Investigations under the subject line “Violent Anarchist Task Force (VATF) Working Group Meeting.”
Jarod Koopman, the new head of Criminal Investigations at the IRS, reportedly said last month that he planned to focus enforcement on nonprofits as part of a crackdown on terrorism.
The Joint Mission Center is doing much of the work of collecting information relevant to and helping enforce NSPM-7, FBI co-deputy director Chris Raia said in an interview released by the FBI earlier this month. Raia described the center as the bureau’s answer to NSPM-7, and likened it to the way the agency had “worked the Iranian threat.”
“There are pieces of this threat that encompass our criminal division. There are pieces of this threat that encompass the cyber division. There’s pieces that, uh, encompass [counterterrorism], even [counterintelligence], believe it or not,” he said. “We took bodies from all these different divisions. We put them under one roof, so to speak.”
“And then we’ve added, of course, our partners at [Homeland Security Investigations], Department of Treasury, IRS, and we have them all sitting in the same space,” he added.
The existence of the FBI’s NSPM-7 Joint Mission Center was first revealed in a budget request to Congress in March.
Per the organizational charts, the center divides the country up into the Eastern and Western Continental United States. Each half has three “Conus” (Continental United States) subdivisions. One chart is fully redacted apart from a label that reads “embedded intel.” Another chart, titled “Ops,” refers to “Nationwide Partner Support” without additional detail made public.
The office is run by a section chief, has a unit titled “intel,” and several program analyst positions assigned to it.
The FBI and Treasury didn’t return requests for comment.
Josh Kovensky is an investigative reporter for Talking Points Memo, based in New York. He previously worked for the Kyiv Post in Ukraine, covering politics, business, and corruption there.
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Here is a video by Aron Ra who talks about this and other attacks on freedom in the US.
Corporate democratic leadership refuses to support the progressive candidates because they would rather lose the majority than upset the corporate big money. Schumer has told donors to not give money to Nixon but to instead give the money to Mississippi. Hugs
Why Is Dem Leadership Sabotaging Angie Nixon?
Why Are These People So Obsessed With Hasan Piker???
Hegseth Desperately Begs US Military To Vote GOP
Trump Uses Taxpayer Money For Corrupt Political Ad
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian speaks with Face the Nation’s Margaret Brennan about the war with the U.S., his country’s latest offer to open the Strait of Hormuz, the supreme leader’s condition and more.
This interview is increadable. The Irain sounds so reasonable and smart. While our president is issuing threats of anilation and other esculating things, this guy shows all Iran wants is to be respected and allowed to have their own government. The US and Israel have been on a campaign for decades to assassinate their leaders and testify as if they have the right to do so. Yet this guy asks, What if someone did that to you—killed your leaders, your scientists? The interviewer had no response. Due to dogma and propaganda, the people in the US hold the Iranian government to a standard we do not hold any other country to. All because Israel wants to dominate them. I found the ambassador and the president on a different network to be very sincere and forthright while our own people lie and make up reasons why we must keep attacking them. Look this guy mentions that while they were in honest open talks, and negotiations, Israel and the US bombed the negotiating team. How is that even thought to be OK? The US gets them to the table to talk and then blows up the table. And it is all to support Israel. Where is Israel’s support for this war now? They started it and then sat back and let the US taxpayer pay the entire cost. Take from that what you will. Hugs
Again the tRump administration ignores and breaks the law. tRump and crew feel that no law or rule applies to them. They feel they are above the laws that everyone else must follow. tRump is not a king or dictator yet. During the first tRump term they frequently broke the hatch act law, and this term they have done it constantly in the vein of entertaining tRump, all paid for by the tax payers. Yet if a democratic party administration did any thing near this blatant the right would lose their minds and melt down over it. Hugs
At first glance, it looks like a typical Republican campaign advertisement. As images of President Donald Trump flash across the screen, the 30-second spot says “America will never be a communist country” and boasts about the “largest tax cuts in history.”
But there’s something different near the end — a bit of text at the bottom that says “paid for by the U.S. government.”
According to AdImpact, which tracks media spending, the advertisement cost $14,000 and it ran during conservative shows on Fox News and Newsmax.
The White House said in a statement the ad is “educational and unapologetically patriotic.”
“These public service announcements are about reminding Americans to love their country and understand what makes it worth defending, at home, at our borders, and abroad,” the White House statement said.
Fox News and Newsmax did not immediately return a request for comment.
The White House did not say what agency paid for the spot, which includes background music with singers crooning “love me” over and over.
The advertisement does not say who voters should support in the midterms, but it meshes with campaign messaging from Trump and other Republicans, particularly during the party’s unusual convention in Dallas earlier this month.
Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, who is in line to chair the House Judiciary Committee if his party wins the majority in November, said in a social media post that it’s a violation of the Hatch Act for government employees to work on such a video.
“It is blatantly unethical under numerous federal ethics provisions proscribing the use of government resources for political campaigns,” Raskin wrote.
Republicans also criticized the ad.
North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis, who is not running for reelection, referenced the former right-wing Hungarian prime minister to critique the advertisement.
“It’s inappropriate. It’s not like they need a GoFundMe page to have the dollars to do that sort of ad and they could do it. But using taxpayer dollars, it feels like Viktor Orban,” he said.
Louisiana Republican Sen. John Kennedy said he hadn’t seen the ad but questioned whether it was legal.
“I don’t generally like to see politicians use public money to pay for their own campaign ads,” he said.
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Associated Press reporters Joey Cappelletti and Steven Sloan in Washington contributed to this article.
WASHINGTON, DC – OCTOBER 15: U.S. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche (L) gestures to U.S. President Donald Trump as he speaks during a press conference in the Oval Office of the White House on October 15, 2025 in Washington, DC. Trump and Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Kash Patel (C) provided an update on the Trump administration’s progress in reducing violent crime. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images) LESS
