Newsletter: September 2026

Defending Rights & Dissent Protest Appears in DHS AI Search for Minnesota 15 Defendant

The Department of Homeland Security used Clearview AI facial recognition technology to search the internet for images of ‘Minnesota 15’ defendant Isaac Sant. In addition to false positive matches, the search results included photos of a 2018 Defending Rights & Dissent petition delivery in support of J20 protesters, featuring our Policy Director Chip Gibbons as well as U.S. Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning. 

The results were a disturbing example of how the Trump administration views free speech. The 2018 event had no connection to the investigation into Sant; it was pure freedom of expression. Gibbons said in a statement about appearing in the DHS search: “I already had concerns with the [Minnesota 15] charges being an attempt by the Trump admin to criminalize dissent, and if this is the type of evidence they’re gathering, those concerns are certainly heightened.”

DRAD Panel: Independent Media & the New McCarthyism

Defending Rights & Dissent hosted a panel discussion last month on the Trump administration’s latest attacks on independent journalists, contextualizing them within Trump’s wider crackdown on activism and dissent. The panel, featuring Chip Gibbons, Freedom of the Press Foundation Advocacy Director Seth Stern, and ADC President Jenin Younes, reviewed recent incidents including subpoenas for nonprofit news outlet BreakThrough News as well as border patrol agents detaining and seizing the devices of Younes’ client and Grayzone editor Max Blumenthal. 

These attacks show that Trump’s war on opposing viewpoints makes no exception for a free press – instead, the administration treats critical reporting as political activism, and even potential “domestic extremism.” 

Defending Rights & Dissent is leading the fight to protect journalists and the First Amendment, and we’re exposing Trump’s plan to crackdown on dissent. 

Watch the full panel discussion here, hosted by The Dissenter founder Kevin Gosztola.

Opposing Trump’s Lawless Regime: Boat Strikes, Sanctions, and Surveillance

Defending Rights & Dissent is stepping up to defend civil liberties and the rule of law in the face of escalating attacks. 

When the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control announced it imposed sanctions on groups including UK-based direct action group Palestine Action, which organizes nonviolent protests in opposition to Israel’s genocide in Gaza, we responded with a statement condemning the move as a threat to free speech. 

The sanctions are “not only are retaliation against the sanctioned for holding political views the Trump administration dislikes, but they severely curtail and criminalize U.S. citizens ability to engage in otherwise lawful associations with these groups.”

We also learned last month that four days after Customs & Border Patrol agents in Minnesota shot and killed Alex Pretti in January, DHS opened an investigation – but not into the agents who shot Pretti. 

Instead, DHS began investigating major labor unions like SEIU and CWA, the environmental group the Sunrise Movement, the Democratic Socialists of America, and an activist collective called Direct Action Minnesota, all for allegedly providing support to activists in Minneapolis and St. Paul, where tens of thousands turned out to protest ICE raids this winter.

Defending Rights & Dissent condemned the extremely broad inquiry as a “disturbing, invasive, and utterly unjustifiable attack on freedom of expression and political dissent.

Finally, September 2 marked one year of the Trump administration’s illegal and immoral campaign of extrajudicial killings in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific, largely targeting small boats with airstrikes.

Defending Rights & Dissent joined more than 40 civil society groups in urging Congress to halt the strikes, defund the campaign, and investigate and hold accountable any individuals responsible.