Donald Trump’s executive order calling “Antifa” a “domestic terrorist organization” has sparked warnings from First Amendment experts and civil rights groups that the president is using the label as a cudgel against left-wing opposition.
The president’s order — following his ongoing false claims that left-wing groups are solely responsible for political violence in the United States as he launches a broader campaign against his opponents and media outlets — singles out an antifascist movement and the people who financially support it. There is no “domestic terrorist organization” designation under U.S. law, and “Antifa” is not a specific organization but a term that encompasses a wider ideologically driven movement against fascism. It’s not clear what legal weight, if any, the order will have.
But the president’s order acts as a “permission slip for government actors at the state and local level to target and censor expression and organizations they don’t like,” according to Will Creeley, legal director of Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.
The order will likely be used to “justify or initiate a broad investigatory response to organizations that say things the White House doesn’t like,” which “should be chilling for all Americans,” Creeley told The Independent.
Trump’s order directs “all relevant executive departments and agencies” to “utilize all applicable authorities to investigate, disrupt and dismantle any and all illegal operations — especially those involving terrorist actions — conducted by Antifa or any person claiming to act on behalf of Antifa, or for which Antifa or any person claiming to act on behalf of Antifa provided material support, including necessary investigatory and prosecutorial actions against those who fund such operations.”
“It’s such a broad statement of purpose with the expectation it will be acted upon that it’s almost inevitable that disfavored political expression — i.e., speech the White House doesn’t like — will be targeted as a result,” Creeley said.
The language in the order also closely mirrors efforts already underway within federal law enforcement agencies targeting “terrorist enterprise investigations” into “anarchist extremists.”
That language appears to give law enforcement and intelligence agencies a “green light” to “spy on and investigate left-wing political speech,” according to Chip Gibbons, policy director at First Amendment advocacy group Defending Rights & Dissent.
“Given the FBI’s current guidelines, which encourage preventative intelligence in the name of counter terrorism, the FBI will have no problem continuing its sordid history of preemptively investigating political speech under the pretext of thwarting terrorism,” he said.
Trump’s order follows months of apparent intimidation tactics — including lawsuits, criminal investigations and arrests — targeting his political opponents, media companies and the lawyers and legal groups that support them in a government-wide crackdown on dissent.
The order also follows his instructions to the Department of Justice to immediately prosecute his political enemies as he threatens protesters and donors to progressive groups after the killing of the right-wing activist Charlie Kirk.
“There is no formal Antifa organization. It’s not Al Qaeda or Hezbollah,” Creeley told The Independent.
“Antifa” instead encompasses individuals and loosely affiliated groups in a broader militant subculture — often physically confronting far-right groups and fascist in the streets — that became a boogeyman for right-wing media, conspiracy theorists and Trump administration officials in the wake of nationwide protests, with some turning violent, over the last decade.
“The past few anti-Antifa panics have shown that MAGA has an expansive definition of who constitutes antifa, with everyone even a little left of center liable to be labeled that way,” according to journalist Christopher Mathias, author of To Catch a Fascist: The Fight to Expose the Radical Right.
“Equating Antifa with a ‘major terrorist organization,’ as Trump has, then becomes an excuse for the right to target whomever it pleases, with both state persecution and vigilante violence,” he wrote.
After Kirk’s murder, as Trump officials and allies baselessly blame Democratic officials and left-wing groups for the assassination, the president’s order appears to be “willing into existence a defined target,” Creeley said.
Left-leaning donor networks supporting Democratic campaigns and causes may also reconsider, pause or withdraw funding over fears that the Trump administration could try to connect them to protests if “Antifa” is present, or if prosecutors consider the organizations “Antifa” themselves, solely because of their political affiliation.
“The chill is, in many ways, the point,” Creeley said.
Trump and Justice Department officials have also suggested protesters and organizations that financially support progressive causes could face federal anti-racketeering charges that were designed to bust organized crime.
Between the January 6 insurrection and the 2024 election, there were at least 300 cases of political violence, marking the largest surge in such attacks since the 1970s, according to a Reuters analysis. Yet a large body of research has found that right-wing extremists have killed more people than those associated with any other political cause in the United States within the last two decades, though many of those attacks don’t map neatly onto one political ideology.
