MUST READ: The president made it easier to add you to the terrorist watchlist.

I helped lead counterterrorism in the first Trump administration. You need to know what just happened.

In the flood of news over the last week, most observers overlooked the fact that Donald Trump just made it vastly easier for his agencies to add Americans to the terrorist watchlist — and to track them secretly, pervasively, and without due process.

Trump’s recent executive order — National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7) “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence” — is one of the most alarming government documents I’ve ever read. And I say that as someone who’s personally blocked any number of potentially illegal NSPM ideas during the first Trump administration and which, thankfully, never saw the light of day.

This order is much worse than almost any observer initially realized.

A few weeks ago, I warned that Trump was inching toward designating Antifa and other left‑leaning groups as terrorists — and using that label as a pretext to crack down on free speech. In that piece, I walked through how a president could cobble together existing powers to create a de facto “domestic terrorist” designation system without Congress ever authorizing one.

That’s exactly what has happened. Only it’s more insidious than pundits thought because it opens the floodgates for the White House and federal agencies to do more than just label “groups” as domestic terrorist organizations. It allows them, in effect, to add U.S. citizens by the thousands to the terrorist watchlist itself for minor legal infractions or none at all.

Buried inside Trump’s new order is language instructing the Attorney General to identify “domestic terrorist organizations” and submit them to Donald Trump and Stephen Miller to formal designation. That sounds bureaucratic, but it’s revolutionary. Until now, there has been no legal process for designating domestic terrorist groups the way we designate foreign terrorist outfits like ISIS or Al Qaeda. Yet Trump just created one by presidential fiat.

Why does that matter? Because it plugs directly into a vast post‑9/11 infrastructure of databases, screening systems, and covert investigative tools designed to combat foreign threats, making it easier to weaponize those same tools against domestic opponents.

Here’s what most people don’t realize. You don’t have to be tied to a foreign terrorist group to end up on the U.S. “terrorist watchlist,” formally called the Terrorist Screening Database (TSDB), maintained by the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Center. There is no statute passed by Congress that limits it to people connected to violent overseas groups like ISIS. Instead it’s based on policies set by the Executive Branch.

Until now, there hasn’t been much reason for ordinary Americans to worry about the abuse of that system against them. Why? Because the system itself had layers of oversight and was built primarily to combat overseas militant groups (which are clearly defined in the law by Congress and designated by presidents of both parties), as well homegrown extremists already under investigation for planning acts of violence.

But the Trump administration has just blown the potential criteria wide open. The new order not only empowers the administration to treat U.S. political organizations or nonprofits as terrorist cells under sweeping and ambiguous criteria — i.e. basically anyone they use legalese to decry as an extremist group — but it also permits agencies to consider an individual as a domestic terrorism suspect for even indirectly encouraging violence, or for infractions like trespassing and vandalism.

In two decades in the national-security community — from DHS and the Pentagon to Capitol Hill and the White House — I’ve never seen anything like this. The opportunities for misuse are virtually limitless. What if you graffiti an anti-Trump protest sign on a park bench at night? Well, taken literally, this order could allow federal agencies to put you on a blacklist alongside the likes of ISIS suicide bombers and al Qaeda attack plotters.

It’s Orwellian beyond belief. Under the new framework, a group that organizes protests, circulates politically charged rhetoric, or challenges federal policy could hypothetically be branded a “domestic terrorist organization,” even if it has no history of violence. And once that label is applied, the administration can investigate anyone tied to it, like donors, event attendees, volunteers, or perhaps even people who shared a supportive post online.

In effect, this appears to give federal agencies a green light to nominate vast swaths of individual Americans to the terrorist watchlist. Being nominated to the list can make it easier for your movements to be monitored; your bank accounts to be frozen or closed; to deny you jobs, visas, or security clearances; and/or to track your communications and financial transactions across agencies — often without a warrant and usually without your knowledge.

Imagine a Democratic mayor in a small Midwestern town. She organizes a peaceful rally with a guest speaker whom Trump’s DOJ later claims is tied to “Antifa.” Under Trump’s order, the mayor could theoretically be flagged as an “associate” of a “domestic terrorist,” which alone could be enough to nominate the mayor as a Known or Suspected Terrorist (KST) in the TSDB, or terrorist watchlist without even knowing it and to eventually upend her life.

Getting labeled a “KST” means the U.S. government can put you through hell. For many years since 9/11, the power of the watchlist didn’t alarm Americans. Many of us were heartened by it. We wanted Osama bin Laden and his ilk to be hunted, monitored, and brought to justice. But when you’re talking about American citizens — from philanthropists to community organizers — potentially getting thrown into the same bucket, you’re looking at something dramatically different.

As someone who’s helped build the nation’s counterterrorism architecture, I’m telling you that it’s now being primed for (potentially) unimaginable abuse. Indeed, it could become the central nervous system of Trump’s surveillance state against the political opposition. Unless insiders blow the whistle, we might not know how expansive the targeting of innocent Americans becomes for many years to come, since the terrorist watchlist itself and the processes surrounding it are kept secret.

The danger here is not confined to Trump alone. It’s about the precedent being set. If this White House can create an arbitrary “domestic terrorist” label and apply it to anyone that it doesn’t like, then any future president could do the same.

Put another way, the bureaucracy of tyranny is being built as you read this. So far, I know of only one journalist,

Ken Klippenstein

, who’s picked up on the seriousness of the situations, and I laud him for seeing the forest through the trees and getting very vocal about it.

But now the public, Congress, and the courts MUST get animated about it, too — and fast. Otherwise we run the risk of America’s terrorist watchlist becoming an American president’s personal blacklist, on steroids.

P.S. WHAT’S HAPPENING ON TREASON

Here’s what’s coming up:

1. Today / Wednesday (12noon ET) - Subscribers-Only - Weekly Wednesday Coffee - Don’t miss it. Bring your questions and a chance to win a signed book. You can join here.

2. Today / Wednesday (1:30p ET) - Democratic Governors Association (DGA) - I’m hosting the head of the DGA to talk about the two crucial races happening in just a few weeks — the New Jersey and Virginia governor’s races. These will be CRUCIAL. You can join here.

3. Thursday (6p ET) - Thom Hartmann’s & his new book - I’ll have radio host and New York Times bestselling author Thom Hartmann on to talk about his new book, The Last American President. You can join here.

4. Friday (4p ET) - Barbara Starr is back! - We had technical issues the other week, but I’m delighted to say that former CNN Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr will join me Friday to talk about everything from Portland to Trump’s meeting with military officials this week. You don’t want to miss it. You can join here.