Monitoring democratic institutions through public records
Executive Actions — Week of Sep 29, 2025
Tracking presidential actions and new regulations. Government actions that bypass normal legislative or regulatory processes, concentrate decision-making authority, or expand executive power beyond established norms.
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On September 30, the White House published a presidential memorandum titled Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence. The memorandum responds to a series of real and serious violent incidents — including the assassination of Charlie Kirk, a shooting at an ICE facility in Dallas, and multiple assassination attempts during the 2024 campaign — by directing the FBI and federal task forces to investigate the networks, organizations, and funders behind politically motivated violence.
The concern is not the investigation of violence itself, but how broadly the memorandum defines who gets investigated. The directive identifies "anti-fascism" as an umbrella ideology and then defines it to include "anti-capitalism," certain views on gender, and opposition to "traditional American views on family, religion, and morality." It instructs investigators to look into not just people who commit violent acts but also organization employees and donors. This might matter because directing federal counterterrorism investigations based on broad ideological categories — rather than specific criminal conduct — could affect First Amendment protections for political speech and association, which exist to prevent the government from targeting citizens for their beliefs.
Alternative explanations to consider: The most likely benign reading is that the government is responding to a real spike in political violence, and the broad language is political framing rather than an operational instruction — actual investigations would still need to meet existing legal standards for evidence and suspicion. It's also worth noting that previous administrations have issued similar counterterrorism directives with broad definitional language. However, the explicit instruction to investigate funders and organizational personnel of an ideologically defined movement goes further than typical counterterrorism guidance.
Limitations: This analysis is based on the published text of the memorandum. Whether its broad language leads to investigations of protected political activity — or remains constrained by existing legal safeguards — cannot be determined from the document alone.