The open letter warns that as the bookselling community continues to oppose traditional book bans and legislative challenges targeting specific titles, it must now urgently prepare for the potential criminalization of workers within the trade. The document was written and signed by several prominent independent bookstores, including Firestorm Books in Asheville, North Carolina; Autumn Leaves Books in Ithaca, New York; Boneshaker Books and Moon Palace Books in Minneapolis, Minnesota; Burning Books in Buffalo, New York; Charis Books & More in Decatur, Georgia; Pilsen Community Books in Chicago, Illinois; and Word Up Community Bookshop/Librería Comunitaria in New York City.
In their communication, the booksellers argue that national industry organizations must adopt stronger, more visible stances against both local and national attempts to criminalize free expression. Emphasizing that oppressive forces thrive in an environment of isolation and silence, the bookstores are calling for collective solidarity and proactive legal and public defenses to protect industry members and their customers from potential state prosecution.
The focal point of the booksellers’ concern is NSPM-7, titled "National Security Presidential Memorandum-7: Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence." Issued on September 25, 2025, the memo attempts to justify sweeping federal action by linking disparate incidents of political protest, demonstration, and activism under an overly broad and vaguely defined umbrella of surging left-wing violence. The state’s directive characterizes these varied activities as part of a sophisticated, organized campaign orchestrated by domestic terrorists seeking to undermine democratic institutions, constitutional rights, and fundamental American liberties. However, critics and legal observers note that the memorandum presents no concrete evidence to substantiate claims of coordination, specific leadership, or overarching criminal intent.
Under the text of NSPM-7, the administration lumps these alleged assaults under its own expansive definition of anti-fascism, explicitly equating the ideology with anti-Americanism. The memorandum lists common threads animating what it defines as violent conduct, explicitly citing anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, anti-Christianity, support for the overthrow of the United States government, extremism surrounding migration, race, and gender, and hostility toward traditional views on family, religion, and morality.
Legal analysts and civil liberties advocates have pointed out that these criteria are intentionally and excessively broad. Phrases concerning traditional views on family and morality are so vague as to be virtually meaningless, providing the state with sweeping latitude to classify nearly any form of conduct, speech, or thought as a national security threat. This broad definition effectively authorizes repressive state action against virtually any dissenting voice or political group.
Crucially, the booksellers emphasize that these authoritarian measures are far from theoretical. The open letter highlights a chilling precedent set by the federal government when it targeted a group of demonstrators who participated in a peaceful protest on July 4, 2025, outside the Prairieland ICE detention facility in Texas. According to reporting by The Guardian, nine protesters were arrested under the auspices of NSPM-7. In the subsequent federal trial, a jury found eight of the nine protesters guilty of providing material support to terrorists.
During the proceedings, federal prosecutors argued that this so-called material support included ordinary activities associated with grassroots activism and community organizing. Specifically, the government claimed that owning a printing press—which defense accounts clarified was merely an office printer, a paper cutter, and basic book-binding materials used to produce anarchist zines—constituted support for terrorism. Prosecutors also pointed to the defendants’ participation in a leftist book club as evidence of illicit enterprise.
The federal government’s broad focus extended to standard digital security measures and personal items common among modern activists. According to legal documentation and media reports, the prosecution scrutinized the possession of Faraday bags designed to block wireless signals and prevent surveillance, the use of the encrypted messaging app Signal, and the wearing of all-black clothing during demonstrations. By stretching the definitions within NSPM-7, the administration successfully transformed everyday items, office supplies, and privacy tools into instruments of terror, thereby justifying the application of crushing state power and severe criminal penalties.
The judicial fallout from the Prairieland case has resulted in extraordinarily harsh sentences. The eight convicted protesters were handed prison terms ranging from 30 to 100 years, effectively amounting to life sentences. In an interview with Grace Byron for The Nation, one of the convicted protesters, Autumn Hill, detailed her experience and current circumstances. Hill, a transgender woman sentenced to 50 years in prison, is currently serving her time in a men’s facility, receiving a sentence significantly longer than those handed down to many participants in the January 6 Capitol riot.
Despite the severe circumstances and the harsh rhetoric of the administration, Hill’s public statements reflect a commitment to community values, radical love, and a desire for justice rather than the violent, antisocial ideology attributed to the defendants by the federal government. Her perspective underscores the vast chasm between the peaceful grassroots activism targeted by NSPM-7 and the administration’s inflammatory characterizations.
It is precisely this type of inflated and punitive criminal charge that has galvanized independent booksellers into action. The open letter warns that if the directive remains unchecked, the Trump administration could easily pivot to apply similar charges against members of the American Booksellers Association, leveraging the memo’s stunningly broad definition of antifa extremism to target purveyors of literature, radical history, and progressive thought.
In response to these developments, the coalition of bookstores is urging the American Booksellers Association and the American Booksellers for Free Expression to undertake a comprehensive review of the Prairieland case, its direct relationship to NSPM-7, and the profound implications these precedents hold for bookstores and their clientele. The participating bookstores maintain that these targeted attacks warrant a direct, public response from the ABFE, and they are pressing the ABA to clearly communicate its institutional intention to defend its members from politically motivated prosecution.
Scholars of American history have noted that the criminalization of political pamphlets and independent publishing runs entirely counter to the nation’s founding traditions. The United States was built upon radical ideas expressed and disseminated through short-form publications, pamphlets, and independent broadsides distributed by concerned citizens, political radicals, and artists. As historian Howard Zinn documented in Artists in Times of War, the tradition of radical pamphleteering is a foundational and essential component of American civic life and free expression.
As the legal battles surrounding NSPM-7 continue to unfold, the independent bookselling community remains steadfast in its call for solidarity, public awareness, and institutional courage. Recalling the sentiments expressed by Autumn Hill from her imprisonment, booksellers emphasize the enduring need to see justice done and to protect the foundational spaces where challenging ideas, diverse literature, and free expression are nurtured and preserved.
