A coalition of hundreds of former senior national security and law enforcement officials is expressing “deep alarm” in condemning President Donald Trump’s executive order designating Antifa as a domestic terrorist organization, and calling it “a signal that the foundations of American democracy itself are under threat.”
The group likens the order to “pre-crime,” a concept from the film “Minority Report” in which people are arrested for crimes they have not yet committed — where thought itself, ahead of action, becomes criminalized.
The Steady State, a group that includes more than 330 former ambassadors, inspectors general, flag officers, defense and Homeland Security officials, and senior intelligence officers, warns that the Trump executive order is “dangerously broad,” as it calls “for scrutiny of ‘networks’ and ‘organizations’ that may ‘foment political violence,’ and even of ‘potential’ crimes.”
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“This pre-crime approach,” The Steady State explained, “invites surveillance and targeting based not on evidence of criminal acts but on associations, ideologies, or mere suspicion. American history teaches that such preventive policing sweeps up bystanders, political opponents, and peaceful activists, eroding due process and equal protection.”
The signatories also express concern over the “troubling” use of vague ideological “indicia,” including, as the memo stated, “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity; extremism on migration, race, and gender; and hostility toward those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.”
The group says that these “undefined categories give sweeping discretion to enforcers. Advocacy for LGBTQ rights, criticism of government policy, or support for progressive reforms could easily be miscast as falling within them—even though such advocacy is protected by the Constitution.”
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The Trump memo specifically offers as an example: “Charlie Kirk’s alleged assassin engraved the bullets used in the murder with so-called ‘anti-fascist’ rhetoric.”
The Steady State explained that the U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI “may investigate crimes—arson, conspiracy, violence—but not constitutionally protected views or associations. The President’s order erases that distinction, treating a diffuse, decentralized ideology—anti-fascism—as if it were a formal organization subject to designation and criminalization. No federal statute grants the president authority to designate domestic groups or movements as terrorist organizations.”
The group’s members include Richard Danzig, the 71st Secretary of the Navy under President Bill Clinton; Asha Rangappa, a former FBI Special Agent; Alexander Vershbow, a former U.S. Ambassador to NATO, Russia, and South Korea and a former Assistant Secretary of Defense; and Edward “Ned” Price, a former State Department official.
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