The Trump administration is living in a state of perpetual terror, both foreign and domestic.
Alex PrettiandRenee Good, the two people killed by federal agents in separate incidents in Minneapolis this month, were both labeled "domestic terrorists" by the likes of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and top White House aide Stephen Miller.
Video of both killings hascomplicated the administration's versionof events.
But the idea that federal government officials view protest as domestic terrorism pervades President Donald Trump's second term.
"We have a nice little database, and now you're considered a domestic terrorist," a masked agent tells an ICE observer in another video from this year, this one filmed inPortland, Maine.
DHS tried to correct the agent with a statement to CNN: "There is no database of domestic terrorists run by DHS."
That raises another question: Is there a database run by someone else?
'Radical Left Terrorism'
The "terrorism" language was slightly different, but the message was exactly the same last September when Trump announced he would be dispatching federal resources to Portland, Oregon, to, as the official White House statement said, "Crush Violent Radical Left Terrorism…"
The move invited further protests in Portland, but courts ultimately rejected Trump's plan to deploy the National Guard to Portland and other cities.
Anti-Tesla terrorism
Earlier in Trump's term, it wasvandals who targeted Tesla dealershipswho were branded as domestic terrorists by the administration.
In each case, either Trump or his aides have suggested the "terrorists" are underwritten by an organized cabal, but they have never provided evidence.
Narco-terrorism
The administration has creatively used the word "terrorism" in foreign affairs as well.
Alleged drug boats are destroyed as part of Trump's war on "narco-terrorists." The extrajudicial killing of people on the boats seeks to blend his national security duties with the justice system in a way that many experts doubt is legal.
Former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was snatched by US Special Forces in part to bring him into the US justice system. He and his wife now sit in jail in New York awaiting trial for, among other things, allegedly engaging in anarco-terrorist conspiracywith drug cartels, according to the State Department, which had a $50 million bounty for his capture.
Far from rejecting anyone with ties to Maduro, however, the US is now working with his former vice president, Delcy Rodríguez.
A now-ubiquitous accusation
Sen. Cory Booker, the New Jersey Democrat, told Secretary of State Marco Rubioduring a hearingon Capitol Hill Tuesday that the administration is losing its credibility with the word terrorism.
"I don't trust this administration and the way they use terms like 'terrorist,'" Booker said. "I've seen them calling American citizens 'domestic terrorists,' who are people trying to peacefully protest."
The Trump administration does continue to use the word in a way that will feel more conventional to most Americans. When Trump ordered air strikes inNigeria on Christmas Day, he said it was to protect Christians in that country from Islamic terrorists.
Diluting the term
Applying the "terror" term all over the map weakens it, according to Juliette Kayyem, a former DHS official and CNN senior national security analyst.
"They are using the term terrorist to basically define any group of people who criticize them," she said of Trump's administration.
There is aspecific definitionof terrorism in US law. It includes things that endanger life violate laws in order to "intimidate or coerce" the civilian population or government.
A legal definition, but also a social one
Even Todd Blanche, the No. 2 official in Trump's Department of Justice, said the legal term does not seem to apply to someone like Pretti.
"I don't think anybody thinks that they were comparing what happened on Saturday to the legal definition of domestic terrorism," Blanche said Monday on Fox News. "What we saw was a very violent altercation, and we — I am not going to prejudge the facts."
In addition to the legal definition, the word is important socially and politically, Kayyem said.
"It is a way to mark a certain activity as immoral and illegitimate, and we want to reserve that for people who are real terrorists, who target civilian populations for violence or the threat of violence."
If anyone who disagrees with the administration becomes a terrorist of some kind, that flies in the face of the First Amendment, which is supposed to protect freedom of speech and peaceable assembly.
There are clearly dangerous threats in the US
The top lawmaker in the Minnesota House, Democrat Melissa Hortman, was killed alongside her husband by a gunman last year. The conservative activist Charlie Kirk was assassinated on a college campus in Utah. Neither shooting has been attributed to an organized group, but both suggest an era of political violence.
Rep. Ilhan Omar, the Minneapolis-area Democrat who is a frequent target of conspiracy theories and insults by Trump — who has said she and other Somali Americans are "garbage" — had what is now believed to beapple cider vinegarsprayed on her at an event Tuesday night. Omar was unhurt in the incident.
At the event Tuesday, she too nodded at the concept of terror — referencing ICE agents who have become a major presence and sparked violence in her city.According to CNN's report, Omar condemned federal immigration agents' "terrorizing" tactics and "reckless and lawless" actions, as she told attendees that the Trump administration's immigration crackdown in the Twin Cities is antithetical to "the America we love."
Kayyem fears a legacy of this political era is that the threat of violence "becomes an extension of political disagreement."
It's hard not to see that fear taking hold in shouting matches that break out at town halls held by the increasingly rare lawmakers who take questions in public from constituents in public.
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