“Progressive Prosecutors” are Invoking “Terrorism” to Expand State Power and Advance Their Political Ambitions

Indeed, just as the former iteration of the ACLU predicted two decades ago, the 15-year-old school shooting suspect was charged (as an adult) with four counts of first degree murder, in addition to several other felonies — i.e., more than enough to lock him up for life without dubiously bringing “terrorism” into the mix. What is the purpose, then, of Karen McDonald electing to tack on a “terrorism” charge as derived from a statute allegedly passed to fight Al Qaeda after 9/11?

Some clues can be found in the ensuing media commentary. “She campaigned on a progressive prosecutor’s platform,” hailed Barbara McQuade, a former prosecutor and current MSNBC pundit, of McDonald. McQuade expressed her hope that McDonald’s decision to bring terrorism charges could become “a new way of looking at gun violence that will become the norm in the future.” It’s instructive that being a “progressive prosecutor” in this day and age apparently entails inventing new uses for “terrorism” statutes enacted during the frenzied aftermath of 9/11, while also bolstering the consensus belief within elite American liberalism that “gun violence” — however broadly construed — is such a dire problem as to be fundamentally “terroristic.”

McDonald did style herself as a “progressive prosecutor” when she ran for the Oakland County job in 2020, successfully primarying the incumbent Democrat in an unusually audacious move. This self-affixed label may have led some to mistakenly assume that McDonald would seek to limit the punitive powers of the state. Fat chance! Instead she’s moved to vigorously expand such powers, naturally in the direction of more stringently punishing offenses regarded as infringements on contemporary “progressivism.” One common “progressive” view is that gun ownership should be more strictly regulated in the US — a view McDonald has herself espoused at the very press conferences she’s held in relation to the school shooting. Notably, McDonald has also admitted that when she was running for office, she “campaigned on ‘treat kids like kids,’ and I believe that.” Meaning, back in 2020 she was campaigning on more leniency for minors in the criminal justice system. But despite this professed “belief,” McDonald opted to not only charge this 15-year-old suspect as an adult, but to slam him with the “novel” terrorism charge as well.

McQuade, the MSNBC pundit, said of McDonald’s terrorism charge: “We may now see, at least, consideration by prosecutors for seeking these charges, because it is important, I think, to recognize the trauma that has been inflicted upon a community.”

So there you have it: here again we see the endlessly elastic jargon of “trauma” cited to justify expansions in punitive state power. Of course, no one would deny that kids subjected to a school shooting could have legitimately undergone something like “trauma” — it’s a horrific experience. And of course their families and friends could have also undergone emotional turmoil. But, sorry: there’s just no necessary link between the experience of “trauma” in this sense, and the purported need for the state to invent new criminal penalties under the auspices of “terrorism.” Without the use of the “terrorism” law, would the state of Michigan lack for methods to charge and imprison a suspected school shooter? Of course not. The point is to amplify the emotional impact of the crime — by conflating the genuine “terror” that was no doubt felt by victims, and the statutory definition of “terrorism” that was put into place as a knee-jerk reaction to 9/11.