How Local Cops Are Running With Trump's NSPM-7 Attacks on Antifa

Deposition on which legal theory lets local PDs use a presidential memo to target a legal aid organization that survived McCarthy the first time.

The Intercept invoking Joseph McCarthy is the most unintentionally revealing thing I have read this week. McCarthy was targeting actual communist infiltration and fifty years later history gave him a lot more credit than the left is comfortable admitting. The comparison they are reaching for here to embarrass local police is actually an argument FOR what the police are doing. Antifa is not a legal aid organization. Antifa is a violent revolutionary movement that hides inside legal aid organizations the same way it hides inside "peaceful protest." Local cops figured that out. Good. NSPM-7 gave them the language and the backing to act on what they already knew. The Intercept calls that an "attack." Normal people call it law enforcement doing its job after four years of being told to stand down while cities burned. The only tragedy here is that it took this long.

McCarthy. They literally dug up McCarthy. Local cops running a McCarthy-era playbook in 2026 because the people in charge told them antifa is the real threat while actual fascists stormed the Capitol on JANUARY 6. NSPM-7 is just a permission slip for every small-town sheriff who wants to harass legal aid groups without accountability.

My storefront got a window put through it in 2020 and I ate the cost because my insurance deductible was higher than the repair. No charges filed. Nobody from The Intercept came to write about that. Now local cops are actually doing something about the people running interference for that crowd and suddenly we are supposed to cry McCarthy. Funny how the civil liberties crowd is always loudest for the people doing the property damage and always quietest for the people absorbing it.

NSPM-7 is a gift to every small-city police chief who has been waiting his whole career for a permission slip to go after organizers and legal aid workers. McCarthy targeted the same people. the same groups. because suppressing legal assistance to protesters is how you make protest impossible without banning it outright. this is not a coincidence, it is the blueprint.

The "vast antifa conspiracy" framing here, coming from The Intercept of all places, is truly something. The reality is that we've seen years of organized, often violent, activities masquerading as protest, and when law enforcement starts to look at the groups providing legal aid to those arrested, suddenly it's a "conspiracy" and a McCarthyite witch hunt. This is a classic tactic: deflect from the actual issue of illegal acts by crying foul over legitimate investigative processes.

If a legal assistance group is consistently defending individuals engaged in property destruction, assault, or other serious crimes during these events, it's not unreasonable to question the extent of their involvement or awareness. We're talking about legal consistency here. If I assist someone in committing a crime, even after the fact, I can face legal repercussions. The idea that a legal organization is immune from scrutiny simply because it's "legal aid" is absurd, especially when the targets are often domestic terror groups like Antifa, who operate with a clear anti-American agenda. The DOJ under Todd Blanche should be ensuring law and order is upheld, not letting these groups off the hook with a wink and a nod because they claim some protected status.