There is no legal mechanism for President Donald Trump to designate antifa as a domestic terrorist organization — and his executive order attempting to do so has only spurred questions about how the Trump administration will implement its left-wing crackdown.
But for Trump aides and allies who have long awaited this step, that’s not the point.
People close to the president view the executive order Trump issued Monday as a long-overdue action, one that serves as both a messaging and prioritization tool for the White House and sends a signal that Trump will devote resources to investigating the broad anti-fascist ideology. And as national security and legal experts note there is no legal process for such a designation, it’s another example of the White House not shying away from a potential court challenge as the president’s aides work to expand his Article II powers.
“This is going to be challenged legally, too. I think the one thing that this administration is pretty clear about is that Trump is breaking norms … but he’s doing that for a purpose because the country is in an emergency,” said Steve Bannon, the former Trump strategist and War Room podcast host, adding that the president’s team is already gearing up to implement his executive order. “I think President Trump is saying, ‘this ain’t my first term, and I’m not going to be talked out of it by [former Attorney General] Bill Barr.’”
The assassination of Charlie Kirk, the 31-year-old founder of the youth-focused conservative organization Turning Point USA, has reignited the president’s yearslong focus on antifa, which he blames for funding and fueling political violence. Trump was close to issuing a similar action in 2020, Bannon said, and his willingness to forge ahead now is another example of the president going a step beyond the policy ambitions of his first term.
In 2020, the president and his aides blamed antifa for fueling violence at protests sparked by the death of George Floyd, the unarmed man killed by former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. Trump at the time called for antifa to be designated a terrorist organization, but his administration never took that step mostly due to Justice Department resistance, and those charged with serious federal crimes were unable to be linked to the loose collective of anti-fascist activists.
“There’s not really a formal designation in law, but as the executive, he can do that, and he can direct a skewing of DOJ resources to attack the problem. That’s how I perceive what he’s doing,” said Ken Cuccinelli, who served as Trump’s deputy secretary of Homeland Security during the first administration. “I wish we had done it in 2020 when these people were rather clearly going from city to city. And I asked for it and didn’t get it.”
Antifa, a decentralized and sometimes violent protest culture of left-wing activists, takes its name from anti-fascist movements that sprung up post-World War I in opposition to far-right political parties, including the Nazi Party. The modern antifa, which the White House describes as a “militarist, anarchist enterprise,” has been marked by some incidents of violence and law-breaking but lacks leadership and structure. During the first Trump administration, FBI Director Christopher Wray described it as an ideology, not an organization.
Because of this, the administration will face significant difficulties as Trump threatens “investigatory and prosecutorial action” against those who financially support antifa. The federal government does have a list of foreign terrorist organizations, and the Justice Department has the power to prosecute those who give material support to those organizations. But no such mechanism exists for designating domestic terrorist organizations, in part due to sweeping First Amendment protections for organizations operating on U.S. soil, said Faiza Patel, senior director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice.
“The law does not have a parallel statute for designating anybody as a domestic terrorism organization — that simply doesn’t exist in the law,” Patel said. “But this framework will be used to further elevate law enforcement attention to anybody or anything that can potentially be described as being linked to antifa in any way.”
Building successful cases connecting people and organizations to antifa will be difficult, and any actions the administration takes to charge people under a domestic terrorism framework will likely face a “robust legal challenge,” she added.
A White House official, granted anonymity to discuss the executive order, wouldn’t say how the president would designate antifa a domestic terrorist organization. But the official said the action means Trump is “directing different parts of the government” to stop “illegal activities and terrorism.”
Cuccinelli said it’s a message to all 93 U.S. Attorney’s offices to ensure they put resources toward addressing the financial and organizational connections between violent actors and antifa.
White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said antifa uses “violence and terrorism to try and accomplish their sick goals.” She said Democrats have tried to downplay the movement’s “reign of territory and looked the other way while left-wing violence plagued communities. No more.”
Questions remain about how the president will execute his vow to target antifa and left-wing groups. The text the White House released this week is vague, and it doesn’t spell out how agencies across the administration will “investigate, disrupt, and dismantle any and all illegal operations.” But the president on Wednesday — after an attack at an ICE facility in Texas — said he will sign another executive order later this week to “dismantle these Domestic Terrorism Networks.”
A gunman killed at least one detainee and injured several others at a Dallas ICE facility on Wednesday, and FBI Director Kash Patel posted photos of the ammunition on X, including one with the words “anti-ICE” written on it. The motive of the gunman, who died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, was still unknown Wednesday afternoon. Republicans pointed to it as another example of left-wing violence.
“The continuing violence from Radical Left Terrorists, in the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, must be stopped. ICE Officers, and other Brave Members of Law Enforcement, are under grave threat. We have already declared ANTIFA a Terrorist Organization, and I will be signing an Executive Order this week to dismantle these Domestic Terrorism Networks,“ the president said in a Truth Social post on Wednesday.
There are broader fears that the Trump administration is building to an expansive crackdown on left-wing opposition to the president. The White House has vowed to target liberal organizations such as the Ford Foundation and George Soros’ Open Society Foundations. The president has decried what he says is a liberal media ecosystem, sued news organizations and threatened broadcast station licenses. Administration officials said they’re working to revoke visas from non-citizens who celebrated Kirk’s death. And they’ve warned against hate speech.
Even if Trump’s executive order has little to show in criminal prosecutions, Patel said, the effect of the executive order will still be felt.
“If the goal is chilling speech and activism,” she said, “the fact that you know the federal government is doing this is in and of itself hugely consequential.”
