What is this creeping fascism you speak of?

With multiple felony charges brought against more than 200 people on Inauguration Day, police and prosecutors in the District of Columbia are putting activists on notice that legal protections ingrained in the Constitution may not apply to them, according to legal experts.

This new era of law enforcement is affecting policing tactics beyond Washington. The harsh treatment of protesters in the District since Donald Trump assumed the presidency — with a large number of people who did not engage in violence facing decades in prison for simply taking part in a protest — lets law enforcement officials across the nation know that a tough-on-dissent policy is acceptable, the experts said.

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Shortly after Trump took the oath of office on January 20, the official White House website published statements outlining the new president’s six top priorities, including one titled “Standing Up For Our Law Enforcement Community.” The White House page explaining this priority said Trump’s administration “will be a law-and-order administration,” committed to ending the “dangerous anti-police atmosphere in America.”

Trump’s attorney general, Jeff Sessions, issued a memorandum last week in which he directed federal prosecutors across the country to charge suspects with the most serious offense they can prove. The memo was seen as a reversal of President Barack Obama’s policy shift toward fewer mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines and a rethinking of how people charged with non-violent drug crimes are prosecuted and sentenced.

The memo also aligns with how the Justice Department is ratcheting up its prosecution of protesters and could serve as a guide for how state and local jurisdictions treat expressions of dissent, according to Flores-Williams. “Under the Sessions DOJ, states are going to have carte blanche to pass whatever local ordinances they want to eliminate, outlaw, and make protests extremely difficult,” he told ThinkProgress.