Al Jazeera on the “domestic terrorism” label:

Kristi Noem has described the actions of Renee Nicole Good, a Minneapolis woman killed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer on Wednesday, as “domestic terrorism”.

Noem said Good refused to obey orders to get out of her car, “weaponise[d] her vehicle” and “attempted to run” over an officer. Minnesota officials disputed Noem’s account, citing videos showing Good trying to drive away.

There were no “orders to get out of her car” – there was one guy who shouted at her to get out of her car but there was a whole lot of shouting going on, and it must have been very difficult to know which shouts were official and which were just dudes shouting in testosteroney rage.

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, a member of the state’s Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, said on Thursday on the CNN news channel that Noem’s statement is “an abuse of the term” “domestic terrorism”.

Just a tad.

Trump’s administration has turned to the phrase in recent months, including in an October immigration enforcement-related shooting. In September, the administration issued a memo calling on law enforcement to prioritise threats including “violent efforts to shut down immigration enforcement”, saying “domestic terrorists” were using violence to advance “extreme views in favour of mass migration and open borders”. Experts said it violates free speech laws.

Also what about Trump’s endless violent threats?

Federal agencies have their own definitions of “domestic terrorism”.

According to a 2020 memo, the FBI, citing a specific section of the US Code, defines “domestic terrorism” as acts dangerous to human life that violate federal or state criminal laws and appear intended to intimidate or coerce civilians; influence government policy by intimidation or coercion; or affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination or kidnapping.

Does not describe a couple of women talking to/taunting a man in police/military gear. Not even close.

After conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s murder, Trump issued a September 25 memo ordering the attorney general to expand “domestic terrorism” priorities to include “politically motivated terrorist acts such as organised doxing campaigns, swatting, rioting, looting, trespass, assault, destruction of property, threats of violence, and civil disorder”.

Trump signed an executive order a few days before designating antifa, a broad, loosely affiliated coalition of left-wing activists, as a “domestic terrorist” organisation.

US Attorney General Pam Bondi told federal prosecutors and law enforcement agencies to compile a list of groups “engaged in acts that may constitute domestic terrorism”.

Legal experts have raised alarms about the memo’s potential infringements on the First Amendment.

“Both the order and the memo are ungrounded in fact and law,” Faiza Patel, the director of liberty and national security at the Brennan Center for Justice, wrote. “Acting on them would violate free speech rights, potentially threatening any person or group holding any one of a broad array of disfavored views with investigation and prosecution.”

It’s almost as if Trump and his enablers are the ones terrorizing us.

Experts have also pointed to the memo’s focus on left-wing violence. It does not mention the politically motivated assassination of Minnesota state Representative Melissa Hortman, a member of the state’s Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, months before.

“When a policy directive targets one ideological family and leaves others to the footnotes, it sheds any pretense of neutrality,” Thomas E Brzozowski, former Department of Justice counsel for domestic terrorism, wrote on December 12.

It’s another one of those pronoun things – no not that kind, the other kind, the one from Yes Minister. I’m an impassioned activist, she is a domestic terrorist.