THEBLACKBOOK AUDIT
Investigation · Surveillance State(s) and the Criminalization of Dissent

A presidential memo made anti-capitalism and anti-Christianity terrorism “indicators.” The grant money follows.

On September 25, 2025, President Trump signed NSPM-7. Its own text lists “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity” and “extremism on migration, race, and gender” among the “common threads” of domestic terrorism, and directs the government to build grant programs paying local police to hunt it.

Section 4 of the memorandum orders the Attorney General and the Secretary of Homeland Security to designate domestic terrorism a “national priority area” and “develop appropriate grant programs to allocate funding for law enforcement partners.” Ten months later, according to internal documents obtained by journalist Ken Klippenstein, FEMA issued a July 2026 bulletin telling grant applicants to fund analysts who monitor “online behaviors and digital footprints” and teams “managing persons of concern” on a “trajectory toward domestic terrorism” — the machinery of forecasting, not evidence of a crime.

The load-bearing source is the order itself: NSPM-7 in the Federal Register (govinfo.gov PDF). The grant documents are attributed to Ken Klippenstein's reporting, and the historical anchor is the 2012 bipartisan Senate report on fusion centers.

§1 · Summary Brief

What this page is about

National Security Presidential Memorandum-7 (NSPM-7), “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence,” was signed by President Trump on September 25, 2025, three days after a separate executive order designated “Antifa” a domestic terrorist organization. It opens by citing the assassination of Charlie Kirk and asserts that US political violence “does not emerge organically” but is instead “a culmination of sophisticated, organized campaigns.” The order's own text names the “common threads” of this conduct as “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity; support for the overthrow of the United States Government; extremism on migration, race, and gender; and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality” ( Federal Register).

Beyond rhetoric, the memorandum builds machinery. It directs the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Forces to investigate the “funders” and “officers and employees” of organizations, orders the Treasury to trace “financial networks,” tells the IRS to ensure “no tax-exempt entities” finance the conduct, and — in Section 4 — orders the Attorney General and the Secretary of Homeland Security to designate domestic terrorism a “national priority area” and “develop appropriate grant programs to allocate funding for law enforcement partners.” That last clause is the funnel: it pushes the memo's viewpoint categories down to county sheriffs through grant dollars.

How that funnel is being operationalized comes from documents obtained by journalist Ken Klippenstein, not from a second primary source, and is graded accordingly on this page. A FEMA information bulletin dated July 9, 2026, titled “Implementation of National Security Presidential Memorandum-7,” reportedly instructs local authorities to prioritize domestic terrorism in grant applications and to fund training to spot “social media-based indicators,” analysts to monitor “online behaviors and digital footprints,” teams “managing persons of concern whose behavior indicates a potential trajectory toward domestic terrorism,” and “surveillance and counter-surveillance training to detect pre-operational casing.” Klippenstein reports that some form of the word “indicator” appears roughly ten times — the euphemism for acting on a forecast rather than a crime ( Ken Klippenstein).

A companion DHS Homeland Security Grant Program notice, also obtained by Klippenstein, reportedly presents a roughly $1 billion menu that requires 35 percent of funds go to terrorism prevention and 30 percent to five DHS priorities including fusion centers and border enforcement, with a coercion clause warning that “failure to meet” the spending requirements “will result in a hold on affected funds.” The exact figures are attributed and flagged for verification against the underlying notice.

None of this is unprecedented in form. In 2012, a bipartisan Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations report on the same DHS-funded fusion centers found their intelligence “oftentimes shoddy, rarely timely, sometimes endangering citizens' civil liberties,” and documented flagged reports on a Muslim group's book recommendations and a motorcycle club's “be polite to police” pamphlet. NSPM-7 points that same apparatus at a list of political viewpoints.

Every load-bearing policy claim on this page is anchored to the primary NSPM-7 text, verified verbatim against the Federal Register publication and the govinfo.gov PDF. The two grant documents (the July 9, 2026 FEMA bulletin and the DHS $1 billion notice) are attributed to documents obtained by Ken Klippenstein and graded PROBABLY TRUE as independent single-source reporting that publishes the underlying documents — not asserted as independently confirmed. The fusion-center history grades to the 2012 Senate report itself.

What we are NOT saying

We are not alleging that any specific, named person has yet been surveilled, listed as a “person of concern,” or arrested under the July 9, 2026 FEMA bulletin. No such dated, sourced instance was found in this research. The documented facts are the order's text and the grant machinery it funds; whether and against whom that machinery is used is the open question this page tracks, and Claim 8 in §5 exists specifically to keep that limit visible.

We are not asserting the FEMA bulletin and DHS notice as independently confirmed. They rest, for now, on one reporter who publishes the documents. That is why the policy itself is anchored to NSPM-7, a public presidential order, and the grant documents are graded PROBABLY TRUE rather than FACT.

We are not saying the government has no stated rationale. NSPM-7 is framed as a response to real political violence — the assassination of Charlie Kirk, the 2024 killing of a healthcare executive, two attempts on Trump's own life, and a shooting at a Dallas ICE facility — and that framing is presented in full in §6. What is graded here is whether the response the order builds is aimed at violence or at viewpoints.

§2 · Thesis

A presidential order named viewpoints as terrorism indicators, then wired grant money to hunt them at the county level.

NSPM-7 does two things at once. In its findings, it converts a set of political and religious viewpoints — anti-capitalism, anti-Christianity, positions on migration, race, and gender — into “common threads” and “indicators” of domestic terrorism. In its operative sections, it directs federal agencies to investigate the funders and officers of organizations, scrutinize nonprofits through the IRS, trace financial networks through Treasury, and — critically — build grant programs that pay local law enforcement to “detect, prevent, and protect against” the threat.

The grant channel is the mechanism that matters. A memo that stays in Washington is rhetoric. A grant program that pays sheriffs to staff analysts monitoring “digital footprints” and managing “persons of concern” on a “trajectory” toward terrorism is a nationwide, decentralized pre-crime apparatus — acting on a forecast, not on evidence of a committed crime. The euphemism doing the work in both the order and the FEMA bulletin is “indicator.”

This is the federal-strategy capstone of a pattern this hub already documents downstream: the Prairieland sentences, the Rubio-Miller ministerial, the arrests of journalists covering protests. NSPM-7 is the top-level order those cases sit under, and the FEMA/DHS grants are the funding that translates it into local policing.

§3 · Timeline

1979 to July 2026: from FEMA’s founding to a grant bulletin funding “persons of concern.”

  1. 1979
    FEMA is created as an independent agency by executive order, consolidating federal emergency-preparedness and disaster-relief functions. FEMA history.
  2. March 2003
    FEMA is folded into the newly created Department of Homeland Security, and its grant and preparedness functions are increasingly braided into DHS counterterrorism programs. DHS history.
  3. October 3, 2012
    The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations releases a bipartisan report on DHS-funded state and local fusion centers, finding their intelligence “oftentimes shoddy, rarely timely, sometimes endangering citizens' civil liberties,” and that DHS could not account for how much it had spent, with estimates ranging from $289 million to $1.4 billion. Senate PSI report.
  4. September 22, 2025
    President Trump signs an executive order designating “Antifa” a domestic terrorist organization, referenced directly in the body of NSPM-7 three days later. NSPM-7 text.
  5. September 25, 2025
    President Trump signs National Security Presidential Memorandum-7, “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence,” addressed to the Secretaries of State, Treasury, and Homeland Security and the Attorney General. Section 4 directs the AG and DHS Secretary to designate domestic terrorism a national priority area and build grant programs for local law enforcement. govinfo.gov PDF.
  6. September 27, 2025
    Ken Klippenstein publishes an early analysis of NSPM-7, flagging that it identifies “anti-Christian” and “anti-American” views as indicators of radical-left violence. Ken Klippenstein.
  7. October 2025
    Civil-liberties groups publish analyses warning that NSPM-7 aims existing federal authorities at nonprofits, donors, and activists. The ACLU calls it an effort to “use ‘domestic terrorism’ to target nonprofits and activists”; the Brennan Center describes the orders as designed to “criminalize opposition.” ACLU; Brennan Center.
  8. July 9, 2026
    A FEMA information bulletin titled “Implementation of National Security Presidential Memorandum-7,” obtained by Klippenstein, reportedly instructs grant applicants to prioritize domestic terrorism and to fund monitoring of “online behaviors and digital footprints” and teams managing “persons of concern.” Attributed; single-source-with-document. Ken Klippenstein.
  9. July 2026
    A companion DHS Homeland Security Grant Program notice, also obtained by Klippenstein, reportedly sets a roughly $1 billion menu requiring 35 percent of funds go to terrorism prevention and 30 percent to five DHS priorities including fusion centers, with a clause warning that failure to meet the spending requirements will trigger a hold on affected funds. Figures attributed and flagged for verification. Ken Klippenstein.
§4 · Key Personnel

The order’s named recipients, the agencies building the grants, and the reporter who obtained the documents.

Donald Trump
President

Signed NSPM-7 on September 25, 2025, three days after the executive order designating “Antifa” a domestic terrorist organization that the memorandum cites.

Pam Bondi
US Attorney General

One of the four named recipients. Directed by Section 4 to join DHS in designating domestic terrorism a national priority area and, by Section 3, empowered to recommend groups for “domestic terrorist organization” designation.

Kristi Noem
Secretary of Homeland Security

Named recipient. Directed by Section 4 to build the grant programs that fund local law enforcement, and the official under whom FEMA — the sub-agency issuing the July 2026 bulletin — sits.

Scott Bessent
Treasury Secretary

Named recipient. Directed by Section 2 to deploy the Terrorism and Financial Intelligence office to trace “financial networks that fund domestic terrorism” and to guide banks to file Suspicious Activity Reports on suspected funders.

Marco Rubio
Secretary of State

Named recipient of the memorandum. Ten months later, he opened the State Department ministerial that recast left-wing dissent as transnational terrorism, documented separately in this hub.

FEMA
DHS grant-making sub-agency

Created independent in 1979, folded into DHS in 2003. Issued the July 9, 2026 information bulletin implementing NSPM-7 through homeland-security grant conditions, per documents obtained by Klippenstein.

Ken Klippenstein
Independent journalist

Obtained and published the FEMA July 9, 2026 bulletin and the DHS $1 billion grant notice, and wrote the early analysis of NSPM-7's “indicators” language. The two grant documents rest, for now, on his single-source reporting, which publishes the underlying documents.

Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations
Bipartisan Senate oversight, 2012

Produced the October 2012 bipartisan report finding DHS-funded fusion centers generated intelligence that was “oftentimes shoddy” and “sometimes endangering citizens' civil liberties” — the historical anchor for what a viewpoint-monitoring mandate does to the same apparatus.

Charlie Kirk
Assassinated activist, cited in the order

His September 2025 assassination opens NSPM-7's findings and is the stated precipitating event for the memorandum. The order asserts some who shared his alleged shooter's ideology “embraced and cheered” the murder.

Internal Revenue Service
Tax-exempt enforcement arm

Directed by Section 2(j) to ensure “no tax-exempt entities” finance political violence or domestic terrorism and to refer such organizations, and their officers, to the Justice Department for possible prosecution.

§5 · Graded Claims

Eight claims, from the order’s own text to the grant machinery, each graded and cited.

NSPM-7's own text lists 'anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity' and 'extremism on migration, race, and gender' among the 'common threads' of domestic terrorism.

FACT

Quoted verbatim from the primary NSPM-7 text, verified against the Federal Register publication and the govinfo.gov PDF. This is the load-bearing, alarming fact: the order converts political and religious viewpoints into 'common threads' of terroristic activity.

Common threads animating this violent conduct include anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity; support for the overthrow of the United States Government; extremism on migration, race, and gender; and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.

Section 4 of NSPM-7 directs the Attorney General and DHS Secretary to designate domestic terrorism a 'national priority area' and build grant programs paying local law enforcement.

FACT

Quoted verbatim from Section 4 of the primary text. This is the funnel that pushes the order's viewpoint categories down to local police through grant dollars, and the legal basis the FEMA/DHS documents implement.

The Attorney General and the Secretary of Homeland Security shall designate domestic terrorism a national priority area and develop appropriate grant programs to allocate funding for law enforcement partners to detect, prevent, and protect against threats arising from this area.

NSPM-7 opens by citing the assassination of Charlie Kirk and asserts that US political violence 'does not emerge organically' but is the product of 'sophisticated, organized campaigns.'

FACT

Verbatim from Section 1 of the primary text. This is the order's own theory of the case: that dissent-linked violence is centrally coordinated, justifying investigation of 'networks, entities, and organizations' and their funders rather than only individual perpetrators.

This political violence is not a series of isolated incidents and does not emerge organically. Instead, it is a culmination of sophisticated, organized campaigns of targeted intimidation, radicalization, threats, and violence.

NSPM-7 directs the IRS to ensure no tax-exempt entity finances the conduct, the Treasury to trace 'financial networks,' and the JTTFs to investigate organizations' 'funders' and 'officers and employees.'

FACT

Each directive is quoted or paraphrased directly from Sections 2(c), 2(i), and 2(j) of the primary text. Together they extend the order beyond individual violence to the funding and organizational structure of nonprofits and advocacy groups.

A FEMA information bulletin dated July 9, 2026 instructs grant applicants to fund monitoring of 'online behaviors and digital footprints' and teams 'managing persons of concern' on a 'trajectory toward domestic terrorism.'

PROBABLY TRUE

Reported by Ken Klippenstein, who obtained and published the eight-page bulletin. This is independent single-source reporting that publishes the underlying document, not independently confirmed against a second primary. The policy it implements is anchored to NSPM-7 §4 (FACT, above); the bulletin's specific language is attributed.

A companion DHS Homeland Security Grant Program notice sets a roughly $1 billion menu requiring 35% for terrorism prevention and 30% for five DHS priorities, with a clause holding funds for non-compliance.

PROBABLY TRUE

Also obtained and reported by Klippenstein. The dollar figure and percentages are attributed to the underlying notice and flagged for verification against the primary document; the coercion clause tying continued funding to spending on the priority areas is the mechanism that makes the grant menu effectively mandatory for participating jurisdictions.

Failure to meet NPA spending requirements will result in a hold on affected funds until compliance issues are resolved.

A 2012 bipartisan Senate report found the same DHS-funded fusion centers produced intelligence 'oftentimes shoddy, rarely timely, sometimes endangering citizens' civil liberties.'

FACT

Quoted from the October 2012 Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations staff report. Of 610 fusion-center reports reviewed, the subcommittee found 188 were never published, and flagged items included a Muslim group's book recommendations and a motorcycle club's 'be polite to police' pamphlet. This is the historical anchor: the apparatus now receiving a viewpoint-monitoring mandate has a documented civil-liberties record.

A specific, named person has already been surveilled, listed as a 'person of concern,' or arrested under the July 9, 2026 FEMA bulletin's pre-crime provisions.

PURE SPECULATION

No dated, sourced instance of a named individual being targeted specifically under the FEMA bulletin was found in this research. The bulletin is newly issued and funds capacity; whether and against whom that capacity is used is the open, unresolved question. This claim is stated and graded down precisely so no reader mistakes the funded machinery for a documented targeting. Related enforcement against dissent (the Prairieland defendants, the journalists) flows from NSPM-7 and adjacent orders, not from this specific bulletin.

§6 · Record vs Narrative

The order is framed as stopping assassinations. Its text funds monitoring of beliefs and “digital footprints.”

Narrative: the government presents NSPM-7 as a necessary response to real, escalating political violence. Its own Section 1 cites the assassination of Charlie Kirk, the 2024 killing of a healthcare executive, the 2022 assassination attempt against Justice Kavanaugh, two attempts on Trump's life, a shooting at a Dallas ICE facility, and over $2 billion in riot-related property damage. Record: those events are real and are stated here in full. What the order then builds, however, reaches past the violent acts to the “funders,” “officers,” and viewpoints of organizations, and pays local police to monitor “indicators” before any crime ( Federal Register).

Narrative: officials describe the strategy as targeting organized terrorist networks, not opinion. Record: the order's own list of “common threads” is a list of viewpoints — anti-capitalism, anti-Christianity, positions on migration, race, and gender — not a list of violent acts. The FEMA bulletin, per Klippenstein, operationalizes this by funding analysts to monitor “online behaviors and digital footprints,” language that describes speech and association rather than conduct ( Ken Klippenstein).

Narrative: fusion centers and homeland-security grants are presented as proven counterterrorism infrastructure. Record: the last time Congress looked closely, a bipartisan Senate subcommittee found the same fusion centers produced intelligence “oftentimes shoddy, rarely timely, sometimes endangering citizens' civil liberties,” flagging reports on a Muslim group's reading list and a motorcycle club's courtesy pamphlet. The apparatus has a documented history of sweeping in protected activity ( Senate PSI).

Narrative: the grant programs are voluntary funding opportunities for willing jurisdictions. Record: the DHS notice Klippenstein obtained reportedly conditions continued funding on meeting the priority-area spending requirements, warning that failure “will result in a hold on affected funds.” For a local department dependent on federal homeland-security dollars, a spending mandate backed by a funding hold is a directive, not a menu. This figure and clause are attributed to the obtained notice and flagged for verification.

§7 · Why It Matters Now

This is the federal order the hub’s dissent cases sit under, and the grant money that pushes it local.

The Surveillance State(s) hub documents how enforcement power expands when a government relabels dissent as an existential security threat. NSPM-7 is the capstone document of that pattern in its current, US-federal form: a public presidential order that names viewpoints as terrorism indicators and directs the whole apparatus — FBI task forces, Treasury, the IRS, and DHS grant programs — to act on them.

What makes it different from a speech is the grant channel. The hub's other criminalization-of-dissent cases — the Prairieland defendants sentenced to a combined 562 years, the Rubio-Miller ministerial that convened 65 nations, the arrests of journalists covering ICE and protests — are downstream enforcement. NSPM-7 §4 and the FEMA/DHS grants are the funding mechanism that translates the order into the daily work of county sheriffs and fusion-center analysts, monitoring “digital footprints” for “indicators.”

The surveillance-tech layer is where this becomes concrete. Analysts cannot monitor millions of “digital footprints” by hand; the fusion centers, automated license-plate networks like Flock Safety, and data-integration platforms are the tooling a viewpoint-based pre-crime mandate would run on — the same data layer this hub tracks in its work on Unit 8200 and commercial surveillance.

This page's job is to hold the line between what is documented — the order's text and the grant machinery it funds — and what is not yet documented: any specific person targeted under the July 2026 bulletin. It grades the machinery honestly and tracks whether the gap between funded capacity and named enforcement closes.

§8 · FAQ

Questions worth taking seriously

Does NSPM-7 actually name viewpoints, or is that a critic's characterization?

It names them in its own text. The order states that the “common threads animating this violent conduct include anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity … extremism on migration, race, and gender; and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.” That is a direct quote from the Federal Register publication, not a paraphrase ( Federal Register).

Are the FEMA bulletin and DHS grant figures confirmed?

They rest on documents obtained and published by journalist Ken Klippenstein. He is credible and reproduces the underlying documents, but this is independent single-source reporting, not yet corroborated by a second primary. That is why this page anchors the policy to NSPM-7 itself — a public presidential order — and grades the two grant documents PROBABLY TRUE rather than FACT. The specific dollar figure and percentages are flagged for verification against the underlying notice.

Has anyone actually been surveilled or arrested under the FEMA bulletin?

No dated, sourced instance of a named individual being targeted specifically under the July 9, 2026 FEMA bulletin was found in this research. The documented facts are the order's text and the grant capacity it funds. Whether that capacity is used, and against whom, is the open question this page tracks; Claim 8 in §5 states this limit explicitly.

What is the government's stated justification?

NSPM-7 is framed as a response to a documented rise in political violence: the assassination of Charlie Kirk, the 2024 killing of a healthcare executive, the 2022 attempt against Justice Kavanaugh, two attempts on President Trump's life, a shooting at a Dallas ICE facility, and riot-related property damage. Those events are real and are presented in full in §6. The critique graded on this page is not that political violence is imaginary, but that the response the order builds reaches past violent acts to viewpoints, funders, and pre-crime monitoring.

Why does the 2012 fusion-center report matter here?

Because NSPM-7 routes new money and a viewpoint-monitoring mandate through the same DHS-funded fusion-center apparatus that a bipartisan Senate subcommittee already examined in 2012 and found wanting — intelligence “oftentimes shoddy” and “sometimes endangering citizens' civil liberties,” with flagged reports on a reading list and a courtesy pamphlet. The history establishes what this apparatus tends to do when pointed at protected activity, before any new directive.
§9 · Standing Invitation

If you are named on this page

If you are named on this page, or are a party materially affected by the claims made here, and you wish to respond, correct the record, or add context, use the Contact page. Responses are published verbatim alongside the original claim, with the sender identified and the date of receipt. The channel stays open for the life of the page.

This site aggregates and grades a record that other outlets and primary sources have already put on the record. Every FACT-graded claim above is sourced to court filings, government reports, sworn whistleblower disclosures, published investigative journalism, or named-source statements. The citations are the accountability mechanism; this section is how you get on the record too.

§10 · Sources

The order itself, the obtained grant documents, and the fusion-center record.

Every claim on this page grades to one of FACT · PROBABLY TRUE · SOME SMOKE · PURE SPECULATION · FALSE / MISLEADING. The load-bearing policy claims are anchored to the primary NSPM-7 text; the two grant documents are attributed to single-source reporting that publishes the documents and graded accordingly. The grade badge hedges. The prose does not.

Saved document screenshots (receipt candidates)
  • FEMA bulletin “indicators” excerpt — saved from Klippenstein's reporting; canonical receipt remains the underlying bulletin PDF if obtainable.
  • DHS $1B Homeland Security Grant Program notice excerpt — figures pending verification against the primary notice.
  • NSPM-7 order excerpt — superseded here by the Federal Register / govinfo.gov primary, which is cited directly above.

Full method: Methodology. Home hub: Surveillance State(s).

Last updated July 29, 2026. NSPM-7 verified verbatim against the Federal Register and govinfo.gov primary text; the FEMA and DHS grant documents are attributed to Ken Klippenstein's single-source reporting pending a second primary. If a link 404s or a date is wrong, tell us and we will fix it publicly.

▦ Ledger gaps

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This entry is graded on what’s on the public record. These are the blanks we know about. If you can source one, you’re rebuilding the ledger with us.

  • OpenHas any specific person yet been targeted, investigated, or added to a "persons of concern" list under the July 2026 FEMA bulletin's "digital footprints" monitoring guidance?Help fill this →
  • OpenHow much of the ~$1 billion DHS domestic-terrorism grant has actually been obligated to local departments, and with what reporting or civil-liberties conditions attached?Help fill this →

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