It was also retroactively deemed unlawful.

It would be like donating to BLM and then the government using emergency measures to shut down the protests like freezing bank accounts of those involved and then you lose your jobs and your accounts are frozen by the government and anyone that doesn't help the government stop the protest can be prosecuted by the government as well.

A lady in Ottawa who owned an ice cream shop was harassed because the information was leaked but in her mind she was supporting truckers that were out in the freezing weather protesting instead of working and still needed food and shelter.

People donate to protests and causes on a whim that get popular on social media all the time. I imagine a lot of people were donating to support some of the most thanklessly hard-worked people in society, truckers, that worked throughout the pandemic bringing back goods for the lucky people that could stay at home. The backgrounds of some of the initial organizers (some who are legitimate white supremacists) was not known initially and I imagine the majority still don't know and are instead protesting what they see as unnecessary mandates for truckers to get vaccinated even though they drive their trucks alone, and there's no indication that truckers are the cause of the spread of COVID.

I'm having an extremely hard time imagining people being okay with this and if you just change the protest cause just a bit I think it helps make clear why this is so dangerous.

Why not? Is everyone that works for the government supposed to hold exactly the same opinions and political leanings? If a staffer in a Republican area of the US donated to BLM and was fired, would there be a different reaction?

Certainly in the US if you are an at-will private employee you can be terminated for any reason or no reason at all, except for explicitly protected classes. Political affiliation is not a protected class, at least not on a Federal level, although a few states have varying degrees of protection [0] that may have protected this staffer. As for government employees, the situation is more complicated. If you are a low-level government employee, your political affiliation is not valid grounds for being terminated. However, employees who are considered as placed in "policymaking" [1] roles, which would include being an "adviser" [1] of some sort, would be able to be terminated according to US standards.

[0] https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/legal-and-compliance/...

[1] Elrod v. Burns, 427 U.S. 347 (1976). Also see Rutan v. Republican Party of Illinois, 497 U.S. 62 (1990).

She doesn't work for the government, but rather is a political staffer of the government of the day.

So imagine that the communications director to the Lieutenant Governor of a GOP state donated to BLM.

Some organisations are simply illegal to give money to; this has long been a "War On Terror" thing. It is not clear whether that actual process applied here or whether this is just private action.

i would certainly expect your scenario to play out as you stated.

Hasn’t the US just gone through 6 years of protests against the government that have been a lot more violent than this, and I don’t recall anyone being fired for donating.

If the rule is you can’t use civil disobedience and be employed by the government, that rule is being unevenly applied.

What's this got to do with the US?

Exactly, I'm certain that many here cheer when there are protests that explicitly are about a government stepping down.

Think about the thousands and even millions that demanded Trump resign, that Obama resign, that Putin resign, that Modi resign, that Macron resign, and so on.

Well it's a big government isn't it? Surely they could reassign her to communicate for her bosses on some other matters?