The Manhattan Institute helped kill DEI. Now it’s time for the protests

Right-wing thought The tank responsible for the rise of New York City’s zero-tolerance policy in the 1990s and the Trump administration’s policy Scorched Earth Campaign against Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs. It is behind state-level legislative efforts to classify minor protest-related crimes as “civilian terrorism.”

The Manhattan Institute, co-founded in 1978 by former CIA Director William Casey, is in the midst of a yearlong campaign to pass nationwide legislation that would reclassify minor crimes such as vandalism, blocking a road, or trespassing during a protest, as felonies punishable by 18 months in prison.

The Manhattan Institute’s push to criminalize nonviolent disobedience as a form of terrorism comes amid broader efforts by the Trump administration to suppress these practices. Leftist organizationsand social causes and movements, reframing acts of nonviolent civil disobedience as potential crimes.

“Today’s left-wing agitators engage in random acts of chaos aimed at disturbing and disrupting as many civilians as possible, hoping to pressure them to get the government to change course. This tactic is reasonably described as a form of terrorism, although the activists are not murderers like Al-Qaeda or Hamas – they do not use weapons, bombs, or threaten unpredictable bloodshed. Instead, they engage in terrorist acts.” Civil terrorism“,” books Tal Fortgang is a legal policy fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a recent New York University law graduate criticize Students demonstrate against Israel The war on Gaza Because of “hatred of Jews.”

Furtgang, who has spent his career in right-wing think tanks, appears to be the main proponent of the “civilian terrorism” theory, starting with a February 2025 Wall Street Journal op-ed that argued that acts of nonviolent insurrection like the road blockade were something far more sinister. Recently, he wrote A piece In City Journal, the Manhattan Institute’s in-house magazine, it takes aim at the anti-war protest network’s “central role in organizing and advocating for an act of civil terrorism on behalf of Venezuela, Iran, and China (which) is sufficient reason to believe that its actions may be illegal under laws such as the Foreign Agents Registration Act.”

In response to WIRED’s questions, Fortgang claims that he focuses on anti-war, pro-Palestinian, and Black Lives Matter activists in his writings justifying the new “civilian terrorism” theory “because they constitute the overwhelming majority of groups engaging in this behavior.” When asked why states should escalate protest-related crimes from misdemeanors to felonies, he wrote: “When hundreds of people gather to commit disorderly conduct together, we are dealing with something entirely different. This is what I call civil terrorism: the commission of minor crimes on a large scale to intimidate or coerce a population to adopt certain policies.”

Two pieces of state-level legislation, written by the billionaire-backed Manhattan Institute, are taking steps to realize Fortgang’s vision. Passed the Utah Legislature H.B. 331 Earlier this year, Gov. Spencer Cox signed it into law on March 24. There was little resistance in the Utah House and Senate, where only two members voted “no” during the entire course of HB 331. In addition to increasing penalties for “aggravated disorderly conduct” during protests and creating a new crime for “unlawfully promoting foreign organizations,” Utah law also prohibits civilians from wearing masks at protests, the Salt Lake Tribune reported. criticize Because of the obvious contradiction between allowing local cops and federal immigration agents to go undercover.

In Arizona, where the state House and governor are divided between Republicans and Democrats, the Manhattan Institute Model legislation It is currently awaiting a vote in the state Senate, after receiving approval from the House in early March by a 31-21 vote. Arizona Democrats have vowed to block the bill, while Gov. Katie Hobbs vetoed a similar bill last year that would have made blocking a road a crime.