Meet the House un-American activities caucus

It was just a matter of time after Attorney General Pam Bondi filed a civil suit against New York state alleging its officials were violating federal immigration laws that Congress would get in on the act.

Last week, four members of the House Republican Conference asked Bondi to target three small civil society organizations for informing the human beings in their communities about their legal rights when it comes to dealing with — or not dealing with — Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

These are tactics straight out of the darkest period of the Cold War. This is the playbook of the Eisenhower administration, the House Un-American Activities Committee, and its Senate counterpart, the Internal Security Subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee. I know because I've spent the last 10 years working on a book about domestic surveillance and political repression that includes that very period. It’s a key reason why I titled the book “The Triumph of Fear” (coming in April).

Going after politically disfavored individuals (Owen Lattimore and J. Robert Oppenheimer) or groups (Emergency Civil Liberties Committee, Methodist Federation for Social Action) was a sick, unconstitutional political game, played on a bipartisan, bicameral basis by the likes of Reps. Martin Dies (D-Texas), Richard Nixon (R-Calif.), and Sens. Pat McCarran (D-Nev.) and of course Joseph McCarthy (R-Wis.), among many others. Their witch-hunts for alleged communists or homosexuals in government and civil society terrorized not only those targeted but the entire country.

Now, a new generation of like-minded Republican zealots has arisen to claim their mantle.

In their Feb. 18, 2025, letter to Bondi, Reps. Andy Harris (R-Md.), Josh Breechen (R-Okla.), Eric Burlison (R-Mo.), and Pete Sessions (R-Texas) implored the attorney general to "continue prosecuting individuals, organizations, and elected officials who aid and abet illegal aliens in evading Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers. We are a nation of laws. Without enforcement of those laws, we will cease to be a nation."

Their full letter is worth the read, not only because it demonstrates complete contempt for the First Amendment rights of the three groups and their members, but because of the precedent they clearly seek to set — encouraging the criminalization of anyone or any group opposed to Trump's dubious mass deportation plan. They make that clear when they call out state and local elected officials in Illinois, New Jersey, and Massachusetts — states that voted against Trump for president in 2024 — for allegedly assisting "illegal aliens in their invasion of our country."

The First Amendment allows Code Pink, the Washington Immigrant Solidarity Network and the Immigration Defense Project — the groups these House Republicans want Bondi to go after — to inform people about their legal rights.

It's no surprise that Harris, Breechen, Burlison and Sessions want Bondi to target three relatively small and largely politically powerless groups — their ability to fight back, politically and legally (in terms of legal defense fees) is inherently limited.

Code Pink's politically ineffectual theatrical demonstrations have been a Washington staple for more than two decades. I still remember the group disrupting a 2007 House hearing with then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Group member Desiree Fairooz approached Rice, with fake blood on her hands while screaming “war criminal.” The stunt got lots of press coverage but did absolutely nothing to change Bush administration policy in Iraq. That's pretty much par for the course for Code Pink.

If Code Pink and the other targeted groups are out there informing their fellow humans about their legal rights, it means they're actually doing socially useful, necessary work protected by the First Amendment.

Four House GOP members are pushing Trump's Justice Department to waste taxpayer time and money pursuing those groups with politically motivated, constitutionally violative witch-hunts. That they are not instead demanding the intensification of investigations of Communist Chinese hackers laying waste to our telecommunications security underscores how far off the rails things are in America's capital.

Former CIA analyst and House senior policy advisor Patrick Eddington is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute.

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