Director for Homeland Security & Counterterrorism @securefreedom, @claremontinst alum. D&D references, cat & dog pictures & obscure extremist lit.
Joined May 2013
- Tweets39.3K
- Following2.6K
- Followers17.5K
- Likes33.2K
Pinned Tweet
This is a tremendously important development in the @StateDept @StateDeptCT effort against Far Left Terrorism. As I testified before @SenEricSchmitt’s committee, the A/I collective provides services that allow for distributing communiques and encrypted communications.
Far-left terrorism poses a profound threat to the United States and the broader West. Today, the United States sanctioned several transnational far-left terrorist networks, including Autistici/Inventati – a major far-left tech collective whose services are used by the most active and violent Antifa cells in the United States and across the world. There will be no refuge for violent extremists who wage war on our civilization and plot to undermine law and order, destroy critical infrastructure, assault political opponents, or conspire to conceal their crimes from authorities. We will use all the tools and authorities at our disposal to fight terrorism and protect our way of life from terrorist coercion.
Kyle Shideler retweeted
Nota bene, @CIA: Espionage — HUMINT, if you will — should be about the observing, and only the observing. Why? Because the folks suitable for carrying out espionage are different in kind from the folks suitable for covert action. Strip out the “altering” and assign that to a different bunch of folks with a different set of skills. Make HUMINT HUMINT again. Thank you for your attention to this matter.
“The distinction between espionage and covert action, central to intelligence doctrine and cyber law, rests on separating observing a system from altering it.” doi.org/10.1080/08850607.202…
Kyle Shideler retweeted
NEW: A far-left Brazilian movement is teaching young Americans how to organize a revolution using militant methods—many of which may qualify as civil terrorism.
The Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra, or MST, hosted delegations of some of America’s most influential activists in hopes of giving them an inside look at the methods that have helped make MST Latin America’s largest progressive mass movement.
Those methods include invasions and mass destruction of private farmland, illegal occupations of government buildings, and violent clashes with political opponents. The American participants hope to adapt these methods for use in the United States.
Via @thestustustudio: city-journal.org/article/bra…
In November 2022, @securefreedom’s @LtColTommy issued a report warning that cyber attacks against food and agricultural sector was up over 600%.
As a reminder, CHIRLA was created as part of the Sanctuary Movement, in support of communist guerrillas. Its founder was buried with FMLN honors.
Trujillo/CHIRLA v. DHS
This case is filed in Washington D.C.
It was filed back on Sept. 2 -- long before the issue involving the list with 20,000 names ever arose.
The case seems to be about the rights of naturalized citizens to vote, and the extent to which the Trump Administration's efforts to combat illegal voting was negatively impacting the ability of non-U.S. born citizens to lawfully exercise their right to vote.
The case was filed at a time when the new media was reporting that the Admin. was trying to use a collection of information from various government data bases to build a nationwide list of eligible voters. The plaintiffs claimed that inaccurate information in those databases, particularly outdated information about naturalized citizens going back in time to when they were lawful aliens, could impart their right to vote in the Nov. elections if those inaccuracies were used to convince states to prevent them from voting.
The case originated when the Trump Admin. was still working on a new Postal Regulation that would have required states to send to USPS a list of "authorized" vote by mail participants. The plaintiffs claim any such list was going to then be combined with lists from DHS and SSA, and other databases that recorded citizenship, in order to identify registered voters who were likely ineligible because they were not citizens.
This case was filed to further hamper any efforts to check any of the "authorized vote-by-mail" lists against various kinds of citizenship records by declaring any such "matching exercise" to be unconstitutional.
I think the case lost some steam when the Supreme Court upheld a lower court injunction against the Postal Regulation going forward prior to the Nov. election.
It also took from Sept 2 when it was filed to Oct. 19 to straighten out the question of whether the case -- assigned as "related" to Judge Sooknanan -- should be randomly reassigned because the other case was already "final."
After taking 7 weeks to look at the issue, Judge Sooknanan agreed the case should be randomly assigned. It ended up assigned to Judge Boasberg.
The first issue Judge Boasberg set out to tackle was whether CHIRLA, an immigrant rights group based on LA, had standing to bring the action. "Associational standing" can be allowed if one or more of CHIRLA's members was at risk of harm in the case. When DOJ provided the list with 20,000 alleged ineligible voters, and Judge Boasberg expressed interest in knowing if any CHIRLA members were on the list. CHIRLA members are -- supposedly -- non-U.S. born citizens, i.e., naturalized citizens. If any are on the 20,000 name list, they could be at risk of having their votes segragated and potentially not counted.
That is how the CHIRLA case and the U.S. v. California case ended up getting "cross-pollinated."
I would not be surprised if no one in the Calif/LA County case knew that CHIRLA was going to use the access of one of its experts to Calif's voter list -- long denied to DOJ by Calif -- as support for a declaration in the CHIRLA case.
Kyle Shideler retweeted
Anyone planning to attend a demonstration in support of Palestine Action in the vicinity of the US Embassy on Saturday, 31 October will face arrest as part of a robust policing operation.
Expressing support for the group is an offence under the Terrorism Act following its proscription in June 2025, a decision upheld by the Court of Appeal in June 2026.
Read more: news.met.police.uk/news/met-…
Kyle Shideler retweeted
The DSA tried to enter the West Bank to attend a conference at Birzeit University to meet "Palestinian academics, students and civil society organizations."
SURELY there would be nothing sketchy about that university, right? Surely the "students" couldn't POSSIBLY be part of a Hamas student organization that got the campus raided by Israel multiple times, right?
Wrong.
washingtonexaminer.com/news/…
Very interesting piece on Palestinian network feeding French rioting.
How Anti-Israel Groups Contributed to France’s Riots algemeiner.com/2026/10/28/ho…
Same vulnerability that hackers exploited to hit France earlier this month?
“The Pentagon is treating the spate of mysterious freezer malfunctions that spoiled food at military bases across the United States in August as a suspected hack, according to four officials familiar with the matter.”
reuters.com/technology/penta…
“Militant social inheritance” sounds pretty awkward to me, but the essential point, which is that networks which demonstrate usefulness survive beyond the intentions (or even lives) of their creators is in many ways an older truer observation.
Feature Commentary: Militant Social Inheritance and the Limits of Counterterrorism Assessment in Afghanistan
Abstract: Counterterrorism in Afghanistan was often effective at degrading militant organizations and removing their leaders, but far less attentive to what outlived them. This article introduces the concept of militant social inheritance: the process by which the relational, infrastructural, and symbolic assets that an armed group accumulates—kinship ties and brokerage relationships, sanctuaries and financial channels, names and narratives—survive the group’s degradation, or a shift in the political order around it, and pass to allies, successors, or rivals. Drawing on the examples of the Haqqani network, al-Qa`ida-Taliban ties, the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, and Islamic State Khorasan Province, the article shows that these assets are transferred, lie dormant, or are repurposed on a slower clock than the one by which counterterrorism measures success. It argues that inheritance is conditional rather than automatic, and that post-operation assessment should ask not only whether an organization was degraded but what survived it and who was positioned to take it up.
ctc.westpoint.edu/feature-co…
Kyle Shideler retweeted
🚨 Today, several prominent far-left Filipino organizations held a press conference denouncing the alleged “FBI Repression of Baltimore Activists.”
Throughout this five-minute supercut, speakers repeatedly condemn FBI surveillance and counterinsurgency operations, yet never meaningfully explain what may have prompted federal authorities' interest. Here's some important context they left out...
Earlier this year, two Americans were killed in what Philippine authorities described as a firefight involving the New People's Army (NPA), a decades-old Maoist insurgency designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the United States. The military's account is disputed by organizations within the Marxist-Leninist National Democratic movement, whose activist networks have longstanding ties to the communist movement in the Philippines.
In July, Baltimore activist Christina Pasion was apprehended alongside an alleged NPA officer wanted for murder. Philippine authorities have also accused her of associating with other NPA members.
Yet when directly asked what Pasion was doing in the Philippines, her brother described her work helping farmers and Indigenous communities without addressing those allegations.
For all their talk of “resistance,” “liberation,” and “counterinsurgency,” the speakers never once mentioned the New People's Army, the very insurgency at the center of the allegations they conspicuously avoided addressing.
I didn’t even have to open the article to know which charity it would be.
NEW from me
Abdul El-Sayed’s father sits on the board of a charity that was busted by the feds for funneling cash to Saddam Hussein just before the Iraq War—and whose offices were raided by both the FBI and the U.S. military
freebeacon.com/democrats/abd…
Btw, LIFE came up in El-Sayed’s 2018 governor’s run. I appointed out that El-Sayed backer Emgage Michigan’s operation was run by the Nada Al-Hanooti, whose father Muthanna was convicted in the Iraq sanctions case. Her grandfather was a high level Muslim Brother the FBI linked to 6 million in Hamas funding.
With respect to hot takes on the Pentagon’s Fortress initiative, what you are seeing is the result of a lot of policy work, not a response to some sudden threat. Look up the resiliency project by joint base San Antonio testing microgrids and community cooperation. This isn’t new or some secret plan.
Kyle Shideler retweeted
I suspect federal authorities could pursue Serita Braxton’s extradition from Spain if they wanted to learn more about Palestine Action Global.
As it happens, I have a recording of their entire webinar if investigators are interested!
SCOOP: Attempts to get around terrorism sanctions on Palestine Action by scrubbing a website and calling it "Palestine Action Global" are NOT fooling the Trump admin, a senior State Department official tells me.
"I can tell you that we have been monitoring this," the official said, adding that it's not the government's "first rodeo" in terms of terrorists trying to circumvent such bans with organizational swapping.
"Palestine Action Global" is now soliciting funds, publicly taking credit for specific crimes in Europe and the U.S., and advertising virtual trainings on how to conduct the very property damage attacks that got the group banned in two countries.
My latest for @dcexaminer:
washingtonexaminer.com/news/…
Kyle Shideler retweeted
SCOOP: Attempts to get around terrorism sanctions on Palestine Action by scrubbing a website and calling it "Palestine Action Global" are NOT fooling the Trump admin, a senior State Department official tells me.
"I can tell you that we have been monitoring this," the official said, adding that it's not the government's "first rodeo" in terms of terrorists trying to circumvent such bans with organizational swapping.
"Palestine Action Global" is now soliciting funds, publicly taking credit for specific crimes in Europe and the U.S., and advertising virtual trainings on how to conduct the very property damage attacks that got the group banned in two countries.
My latest for @dcexaminer:
washingtonexaminer.com/news/…
DEEP DIVE: A "global" affiliate of the Palestine Action movement openly encourages targeted violence against American facilities while brushing off the US government's "Specially Designated Global Terrorist" label.
Palestine Action supporters apparently revamped an old website to be "Palestine Action Global" and scrubbed evidence that it was once meant for the group's now-sanctioned British branch, my analysis found.
Now, it claims to be able to get around the sanctions while the new website brags about vandalism attacks in and outside the US, solicits funding through "secure" channels, and offers virtual trainings for vetted participants to learn its "direct action" methods.
How will this strategy shake out?
All the details for @dcexaminer:
washingtonexaminer.com/news/…
This is certainly true. It is also true that a pattern of behaviors and relationships are to be expected by those who are Brotherhood. If you map the network of people who we know were brothers (because of internal documents etc) you see certain trends, —leadership in certain organizations (MSA, etc), family and marital ties, etc. The Brotherhood in particular is an insular clandestine network, and so one expects to see the same orgs and people reappear again and again in a subject’s background.
