Trump's new legal weapon for prosecuting protestors

Code Switch

NPR

Society & Culture

4.6 • 14.9K Ratings

🗓️ 14 July 2026

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This summer, protesters connected to a demonstration outside the Prairieland ICE detention center in North Texas were sentenced to as much as 100 years in prison. It's the first case prosecuted under President Trump's National Security Presidential Memorandum 7, which targets "extremism on migration, race, and gender" and classifies antifa as a domestic terrorism organization. What's striking is the evidence: zines, Signal messages, hosting a book club. This week, we talk with Guardian reporter Lex McMenamin about what this case could mean for dissent going forward.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey everyone, you're listening to Code Switch, the show about race and identity from NPR.
0:07.6	I'm B.A. Parker.
0:10.5	How was your last book club? Maybe you drank a little too much wine and argued about the latest
0:15.9	Colson Whitehead novel, or maybe you forced your friends to watch YouTube videos.
0:21.0	For a mom in Fort Worth, Texas, named Elizabeth Soto, she held her book club in a garage.
0:26.5	There, she and her buddies read niche political essays, and with a standard office printer,
0:31.7	printed out their own zines. Zines, you know, those small, self-made booklets.
0:37.5	Elizabeth and her friends made one called plant propagation for the people to encourage people to plant wildflowers.
0:44.5	They also made one called Know Your Rights, to encourage people to know their rights when it comes to legally observing ice agents.
0:51.4	Here's how reporter Lex PManumann described these folks.
0:54.8	It is a gaggle of people who like mutual aid and gardening.
1:00.8	It's folks that love to read.
1:06.3	Lex is a reporter with The Guardian.
1:08.2	They've been following Elizabeth and a group of people who were
1:10.9	arrested for their alleged connections to protest outside of the Prairie Land Ice Detention
1:15.6	Facility in Alvarado, Texas on July 4th, 2025. The majority of those protesting did so peacefully.
1:23.4	They held a nighttime noise demonstration where they shot fireworks in solidarity with detainees.
1:28.8	Some protesters split off and vandalized cars and broke a security camera.
1:33.4	One protester was armed and has been convicted of shooting a police officer after the officer drew his weapon.
1:41.1	In the year that followed, the Department of Justice brought federal charges against Elizabeth, her husband,
1:47.1	and more than a dozen others who were allegedly connected with the protest.
1:50.3	The crimes they were accused of range from the attempted murder of a law enforcement officer
	...

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