Jun. 26, 2026, 5:11 PM EDT<\/time><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

A new lawsuit seeks to shake loose information about a protester database possibly being used by the Trump administration<\/a> to log and monitor critics of the government<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Legal advocacy group Democracy Forward is supporting<\/a> digital outlet The Intercept in a lawsuit<\/a> that asks a federal judge to compel the administration to release documents related to any such database.<\/p>\n

The lawsuit comes as Donald Trump’s administration — while it contends with the president’s historic unpopularity<\/a> — has sought to quash dissent, in a crackdown that has seen federal agents use lethal force against protesters<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The lawsuit cites several instances in which agents either openly talked about a database for tracking protesters or alluded to such a database existing. The evidence includes comments like those in the video below<\/a>in which a protester was photographed by an agent and then told that she would be going into a “nice little database” and was now “considered a domestic terrorist.”<\/p>\n

The suit, which was filed Wednesday, says the federal government hasn’t complied with The Intercept’s Freedom of Information Act requests regarding the Trump administration’s collection of information on protesters, as required by law.<\/p>\n

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🚨 HOLY SMOKES: ICE agents in Maine just photographed a civilian’s face and name and said they’re putting it in a database.<\/p>\n
When the woman asked why, the agent’s response was basically: “Now you’re considered a domestic terrorist.”<\/p>\n
This is intimidation. Not law enforcement. pic.twitter.com\/68dEiVd2wa<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n
— Brian Allen (@allenanalysis) January 23, 2026<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n
“It’s not illegal to monitor the activity of immigration agents inside your community,” Ben Muessig, editor-in-chief of The Intercept, said in a news release<\/a>. “What is illegal is the U.S. government’s secret list of activists — and its refusal to turn over information about that database to the American public.”<\/p>\n
In a more recent example of the government’s efforts to intimidate critics, two U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents reportedly pulled up on an election worker this week in Syracuse, New York, and threatened her with prosecution<\/a> over a social media post calling for the indictment of Jonathan Ross, the ICE agent who fatally shot protester Renée Good in Minneapolis.<\/p>\n
The Trump administration has made abundantly clear its intent to brand liberals as terrorists<\/a> in order to weaponize the federal government against them. A prime example of this is its perverse “counterterrorism” directive, known as NSPM-7<\/a>that can be used to target people who express “anti-Americanism,” “anti-capitalism” and “anti-Christianity.” The administration also has signed contracts<\/a> with tech companies that have developed technology that repressive governments have used to spy on critics and quash dissent.<\/p>\n
And all of these machinations — effectively cosigned by the country’s extremely vengeful president<\/a> — fuel concerns about what sort of database the federal government might be keeping to track its critics, and what it intends to do with information it collects.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n
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