In a blow to constitutional rights, a U.S. Court of Appeals in Florida Aug. 5 upheld the government’s use of the notorious Foreign Agents Registration Act, adopted in 1938 as part of the U.S. rulers’ drive to enter the second imperialist world war. The court confirmed the conviction of African People’s Socialist Party Chairman Omali Yeshitela, African People’s Solidarity Committee Chairwoman Penny Hess, Uhuru Solidarity Movement Chair Jesse Nevel, and Augustus Romain Jr., a leader of the Black Hammer Party.
The defendants had filed the appeal after a lower court decision in 2024 found them not guilty of being unregistered Russian agents, but, in a contradictory ruling, found them guilty of conspiring to act as agents of Moscow. In front of a courtroom packed with supporters of the APSP and of free speech, all four were then sentenced to three years probation and 300 hours of community service. They had faced a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
FBI raided APSP offices
Acting under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, FBI agents backed by local police had carried out predawn raids on the offices and homes of leaders and supporters of the African People’s Socialist Party in St. Petersburg, Florida, and St. Louis, July 29, 2022. Armed with automatic weapons, they used battering rams to break down the doors and handcuffed those there at gunpoint, while agents seized laptops, financial records, office equipment and files.
Prosecutors claimed the group’s political activities were being directed by Moscow — since its members openly back Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, met with Russian political figures, published articles, organized virtual conferences and made public statements in support of Moscow’s political opinions. But the African People’s Socialist Party explained in and out of court that these were their own opinions, protected by the Constitution. Despite this, the appeals court ruled the Foreign Agents Registration Act has been written to be “content neutral,” so the First Amendment doesn’t apply.
The court also ruled that under this act there is “important governmental interest” to regulate a group’s conduct whether what they do “is legal or not.”
And it said the defendants were guilty even if they didn’t know about the registration act. The ruling argues the group could have avoided all of these problems if they had just notified the attorney general about its political activities.
The government’s use of the Foreign Agents Registration Act isn’t new. In addition to being put on the books as part of a crackdown on political and union groups on the eve of World War II, including the Smith “Gag” Act convictions of Socialist Workers Party and Teamster leaders, it spawned additional frame-up laws used in the 1950s. This included the Subversive Activities Control Act, which was used to convict the Communist Party of being “substantially directed, dominated, or controlled” by the Soviet Union, and ordered it to turn over the names of its leaders and members to the government.
Stepped-up use of the Foreign Agents Registration Act was called for in a September 2025 National Security Presidential Memorandum 7, which projected investigation of any group the government claims promotes “domestic political violence.”
In July, The People’s Forum, BreakThrough News and Tricontinental: Institute of Social Research were hit with federal government subpoenas ordering them to turn over financial records and disclose the identity of their contributors. Jason Smith, chairman of the U.S. House Committee on Ways and Means, accused People’s Forum of “using tax exempt status to spread foreign propaganda while acting as a foreign agent.”
Sen. Bill Cassidy, chair of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, sent a letter Aug. 13 to the International Association of Machinists, a union with some 600,000 members, demanding information about its links to the Cuban government. According to Fox News, “investigators” are looking at whether participation in events that included Cuban officials, from church meetings to podcasts, amounts to a violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act.