More at Memo of talking pointsJosh Kovensky wrote an article about the Trump administration’s use of the antiterrorism law to target political groups it doesn’t like.
In this article, Kovensky notes: “Across the country, federal prosecutors are turning what would have been routine prosecutions into terrorism cases when they involve people who President Trump has portrayed as his political enemies. This represents a stark departure from how the Justice Department has historically used the federal Material Support for Terrorism Act. For decades, counterterrorism prosecutors have largely reserved the law – 2339A – for the types of audacious plots that cause real harm and sustainable or whose ambition constitutes the stuff of film scripts.
I spoke to Kovensky about his essay as well as the history and politics of this dangerous legal innovation.
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Damn Lord Jeet Heer is national affairs correspondent for The nation and host of the weekly Nation podcast, Time of the Monsters. He also writes the monthly column “Morbid symptoms.” The author of Art lovers: the adventures of Françoise Mouly in comics with Art Spiegelman (2013) and Sweet Lechery: reviews, essays and profiles (2014), Heer has written for numerous publications, including The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, The American perspective, The guardian, The New RepublicAnd The Boston Globe.
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