ICYMI: FBI Developed Center to “Crack Down on Dissent”
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Wednesday, September 16, 2026
Washington, D.C. – New reporting from Talking Points Memo reveals that the FBI has stood up a national NSPM-7 Joint Mission Center to track dissent, including IRS agents and analysts. The reporting gives new and shocking details to the way the FBI is responding to NSPM-7’s directive that federal law enforcement should treat beliefs like “anti-Americanism,” “anti-capitalism,” and “extremism on migration, race, and gender” as indicators of domestic terrorism.
“Let’s be clear: this is government weaponization, full stop,” said Cole Leiter, Executive Director of Americans Against Government Censorship. “The administration is using the levers of government to crack down on dissent, including turning law enforcement, intelligence, and tax authorities into tools for policing political beliefs. That should alarm every American, regardless of politics. This does not make Americans more safe; it is an abuse of power that threatens core freedoms and risks chilling the work of nonprofits, advocates, and civic organizations across the country.”
Talking Points Memo: Exclusive: FBI Builds Out National NSPM-7 Center to Track Dissent, Docs Show
The FBI has tapped employees from across federal law enforcement to crack down on dissent, including agents and analysts with the Internal Revenue Service, documents shared with TPM show.
They’re working at the FBI’s NSPM-7 Joint Mission Center, per records obtained through FOIA by watchdog group American Oversight.
In National Security Presidential Memorandum 7, the White House laid out a national strategy for federal law enforcement, directing it to treat beliefs like “anti-Americanism, anti-Capitalism, and anti-Christianity” and “extremism on migration, race, and gender” as indicators of domestic terrorism.
The records obtained by American Oversight include organizational charts for the NSPM-7 Joint Mission Center and a list of thirteen IRS employees — names redacted — who are detailed to work at the center. Emails obtained by American Oversight between IRS employees, including one assigned to the Tax Exempt and Government Entities division and another assigned to Criminal Investigations, also reference a “Violent Anarchist Task Force Working Group Meeting.”
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The records reveal details of the architecture that federal law enforcement has built to implement NSPM-7 and fight “Antifa,” the loose network of anti-fascist activists that the administration has deemed a terrorist threat. The records are heavily redacted.
Against the backdrop of an administration in which the president has wielded law enforcement as a tool to target his political opponents, the disclosures suggest that the government’s financial investigators are starting to play a role in cases brought to serve partisan political ends.
NSPM-7, issued last year as the Trump administration, sought to capitalize on Charlie Kirk’s assassination as a means to justify a wide-ranging crackdown on the left, and the administration’s political opponents. It has, over the last year, turned into an onslaught against freedom of speech. In Minneapolis, federal agents with DHS cited the memo as they deployed undercover agents and aggressive financial investigative maneuvers to surveil unions, churches, and other groups protesting the administration’s occupation of the city, Operation Metro Surge, and its aftermath. In other cases, NSPM-7 has been invoked as the administration charges people for posting threats on social media.
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Jarod Koopman, the new head of Criminal Investigations at the IRS, reportedly said last month that he planned to focus enforcement on nonprofits as part of a crackdown on terrorism.
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