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The 2022 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) took place in Dallas, Texas, from Aug. 4-7, featuring Republican notables such as former U.S. President Donald Trump and U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, as well as an assortment of panel discussions. A digital banner displayed during one of those panel discussions became the subject of controversy when photographs and video clips of it went viral on social media. The banner read: We Are All Domestic Terrorists. Conservative panelists at CPAC Dallas embraced a new label on Saturday, read a tweet by the Houston Chronicle, adopting 'domestic terrorist' as a badge of honor. The banner -- actually, two banners -- can also be seen in the video clip below: We Are All Domestic Terrorists was also the title of a panel discussion, it should be noted. Present on that panel was Julie Pickren, a Texas State Board of Education candidate who claimed the title was meant to be tongue-in-cheek, the Houston Chronicle reported. Nobody in this room is a domestic terrorist, she reportedly told the crowd of attendees. Among other digital banners spotted during the conference was one bearing the slogan, You're Next: The Rise of the Democrat Gulag. It's unclear if that one was tongue-in-cheek as well. A political science professor consulted by the Chronicle compared conservatives' sarcastic embrace of the descriptor domestic terrorists with their previous co-option of Hillary Clinton's characterization of Trump followers as a basket of deplorables. However, the professor, Cal Jillson, suggested that the joke isn't quite so funny anymore. To label yourself 'domestic terrorists' is over the line, she warned.
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