Using the internet is not a RICO predicate

Vice President Vance joined the daily White House press briefing on Thursday in order to talk about a new Justice Department position focused on fraud. But the details of that announcement (think Ronald Reagan’s dishonest “welfare queens” claims aimed at immigrants and updated for the social-media age) got buried by reporters’ questions about the killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis the day prior.

At the top of the briefing, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt had set the tone.

“The deadly incident that took place in Minnesota yesterday,” she said soon after walking to the lectern, “occurred as a result of a larger, sinister, left-wing movement that has spread across our country where our brave men and women of federal law enforcement are under organized attack.”

Vance similarly accused Good of being involved in an effort broader than herself. In short order, one of the reporters in the room called him on it.

“You just suggested that this woman who was killed was part of a ‘broader, left-wing network,'” the question began. But since it came from Fox News’s Peter Doocy, what followed wasn’t, “What’s your evidence for that.” It was, instead, “Who do you think is behind this ‘broader, left-wing network’?”

Vance tried to offer evidence anyway. Surely there was some undergirding organization, he said. After all, “when somebody throws a brick at an ICE agent or somebody tries to run over an ICE agent, who paid for the brick?”

A red brick costs 64 cents. From whose deep pockets was that fortune drawn?

Vance extended the idea to Good herself.

“How did she get there? How did she learn about this?” he said. “There’s an entire network — and frankly, some of the media are participating in it — that is trying to incite violence against our law enforcement officers.”

We’ve seen this before. When protests against Israel’s military campaign in Gaza emerged in 2024, the right scrambled to insist that there was some well-funded, interlacing organization behind it. (Then, the indescribably expensive thing protesters could somehow access was $20 tents.) The right often acts as though anyone who disagrees with their politics are brainwashed, deranged into action against their true interests by some nebulous conspiracy.

At this point, though, the charges from the administration are consistently narrow. It’s not just that there’s a “broad left-wing network.” It’s that grassroots organizing over the internet itself comprises that network. If you read a story that prompts you to want to protest ICE, if you see that activists are using whistles to alert community members to the presence of immigration officials, if you scramble to a local school to record immigration actions: Bad news. You’re part of this nefarious conspiracy.

In September, after the killing of Charlie Kirk, President Trump and his allies attempted to tie the shooting to an organized left-wing effort. Trump signed an executive order, National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7), that directed federal agencies to uproot “sophisticated, organized campaigns of targeted intimidation, radicalization, threats, and violence” that ply their trade “through a variety of fora, including anonymous chat forums, in-person meetings, social media, and even educational institutions.”

NPSM-7 is titled “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence” — precisely the allegations leveled against Good by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and others.

The ACLU and others have written about how this directive threatens free speech. We see how that works in the Good killing. Beyond the lies being told about Good’s intent, we see how Vance and Leavitt (and countless others online) loop her into a broad conspiracy simply by virtue of being in that place and apparently expressing opposition to ICE’s actions. Since her death, right-wing media has documented Good’s involvement in grassroots “ICE Watch” efforts. But this is effectively a post hoc rationalization for her killing — after Noem and others had already rushed to identify her as a domestic terrorist.

There is a difference between a community and a terrorist organization. There is a difference between gathering information online and being indoctrinated. There is a difference between seeking to get involved and being a conspirator.

We should not assume that the administration and its allies are blurring those differences because they misunderstand them. We should assume, instead, that they are blurring them in order to increase the cost of engaging in the innocuous activities of grass-roots organizing.

Photo: A protest outside the White House this week. (Geoff Livingston/Flickr)