President Trump signed an executive order Monday labeling antifa a “domestic terrorist organization” — though the move’s legal impact is unclear.
The executive order directs Trump administration officials to investigate and thwart “any and all illegal operations” allegedly carried out by antifa members, and to pursue people who “fund such operations” or provide material support to them.
The president promised to designate antifa as a “major terrorist organization” last week in the wake of the assassination of Charlie Kirk, although officials have not said there was a link between his killing and any left-wing groups.
It’s not clear what happens next. Antifa, short for anti-fascist, typically refers to a loose affiliation of mostly left-wing activists, and isn’t generally considered to be an organized group with a clear leadership structure. And the U.S. doesn’t have a statute that gives the president the power to designate domestic groups as terrorist organizations or charge people with domestic terrorism, legal experts told CBS News last week.
In a fact sheet, the White House argued antifa “has a long history of terrorizing our communities.” It listed out several attacks on or threats against law enforcement agencies and pro-Trump events in recent years, some of which were allegedly carried out by people who self-identified with antifa.
The White House also cited Kirk’s assassination as an example of a “trend of Radical Left violence.” Authorities say Kirk’s suspected shooter, Tyler Robinson, had become “more political” in recent years and lashed out against Kirk’s “hatred” in text messages, though they have not released evidence tying Robinson to antifa.
In 2020, the Congressional Research Service called antifa a “decentralized” movement made up of “independent, radical, like-minded groups and individuals” who typically believe in socialism, communism and anarchism. It said followers of antifa lack a singular organizational structure, set of ideological views or common list of enemies.
University of Pittsburgh professor Michael Kenney told CBS News last week there is “no single organization called antifa,” adding: “There’s tremendous variation inside that movement, even on issues like political violence.”
The antifa movement’s roots date back to opponents of neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan in the 1980s, and an Oregon-based group became the first organization to use the term “antifa” in its name in 2007, according to the Congressional Research Service. The group gained more attention a decade later, during the clashes between far-right groups and their opponents in Charlottesville, Virginia, early in Mr. Trump’s first term.
Mr. Trump and his appointees first vowed to crack down on antifa in his first term, with the president calling for antifa to be designated a terrorist group in 2020. He did not follow through on that threat.
In 2017, then-FBI Director Chris Wray told Congress the agency was carrying out “anarchist extremist investigations” against suspects “who are motivated to commit violent criminal activity on kind of an antifa ideology,” CRS notes. Three years later, Wray described antifa as a “movement or an ideology,” not a singular group.
Mr. Trump’s latest push could face legal hurdles. Unlike with foreign terrorist organizations, there isn’t a legal mechanism for the president to designate a domestic terrorist group, Luke Baumgartner, a research fellow at George Washington University’s Program on Extremism, told CBS News last week. But the administration could choose to make antifa-related incidents a higher priority for federal law enforcement, he noted.
Domestic terrorism also is not a chargeable offense under federal law, though most states have a domestic terrorism statute, and other federal criminal statutes could be applied to alleged domestic terrorists.
“You can’t prosecute an ideology,” Baumgartner said.
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