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antifa
Trump Counterterrorism Strategy Puts 'Anti-Fascists' on Par With ISIS, Al-Qaeda
"The global War on Terror has come home."
May 06, 2026
The Trump administration on Wednesday released an official counterterrorism strategy that puts "anti-fascist" organizations on par with terrorist organizations such as Islamic State and al-Qaeda.
In outlining its strategy, the document argues that the US faces three "major type" of terrorist threats: "Legacy Islamiast Terrorists," such as al-Qaeda and ISIS; "Narcoterrorists" that sell illegal drugs; and "Violent Left-Wing Extremists, including Anarchists and Anti-Fascists."
When it comes to the purported domestic left-wing threats, the document says the administration will "prioritize the rapid identification and neutralization of violent secular political groups whose ideology is anti-American, radically pro-transgender, and anarchist."
"We will use all the tools constitutionally available to us to map them at home," the document adds, "identify their membership, map their ties to international organizations like Antifa, and use law enforcement tools to cripple them operationally before they can maim or kill the innocent."
The document makes no mention of the threat posed by members of right-wing groups such as the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, many of whom received pardons from President Donald Trump in 2025 for their role in violently storming the US Capitol building on January 6, 2021.
A report published last year by the Center for Strategic and International Studies found that, while left-wing political violence has grown since Trump's first election in 2016, it "remains much lower than historical levels of violence carried out by right-wing and jihadist attackers."
Journalist Ken Klippenstein reported on Wednesday that the strategy "is the brainchild of White House counterterrorism czar Sebastian Gorka, an eccentric figure I have reported on, who last year hinted at terrorism charges being levied for political opponents of the administration."
Digging into the details of the document, Klippenstein said it was essentially a strategy for prosecuting "pre-crime," which he noted "aims to build cases against people for what they might do, most ominously based on speech or beliefs."
At the end of his analysis, Klippenstein warned that the document makes clear "the global War on Terror has come home."
The counterterrorism strategy document builds on the framework established by National Security Presidential Memorandum-7 (NSPM-7), a directive signed by Trump in September that demanded a “national strategy to investigate and disrupt networks, entities, and organizations that foment political violence so that law enforcement can intervene in criminal conspiracies before they result in violent political acts.”
Rights groups have for months been sounding the alarm about the implications of NSPM-7, which they said could be used to initiative a widespread crackdown against the Trump administration’s critics.
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'Serious Threat to the First Amendment' as Trump Admin Wins First Antifa Terror Charge
"A case like this helps the government kind of see how far they can go in criminalizing constitutionally protected protest," one legal advocate said.
Mar 15, 2026
The government has largely won its first case bringing material-support-for-terrorism charges against protesters alleged to belong to "antifa," which President Donald Trump designated as a domestic terror group in 2025 despite the fact that no such organized group exists and the president has no legal authority to designate organizations as domestic terror groups.
A federal jury in Fort Worth, Texas agreed on Friday to convict eight people of domestic terrorism because they wore all black to a protest outside Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Prairieland Detention Facility in Alvarado, Texas on July 4, 2025, at which one of the protesters shot and wounded a police officer. Legal experts say the verdict could bolster attempts by the administration to stifle dissent.
"A case like this helps the government kind of see how far they can go in criminalizing constitutionally protected protests and also helps them kind of intimidate, increase the fear, hoping that folks in other cities then will think twice over protesting,” Suzanne Adely, interim president of the National Lawyers Guild, told The Associated Press.
The administration promised it would be the first such case of many.
"The US lost today with this verdict."
“Antifa is a domestic terrorist organization that has been allowed to flourish in Democrat-led cities—not under President Trump,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement Friday. “Today’s verdict on terrorism charges will not be the last as the Trump administration systematically dismantles Antifa and finally halts their violence on America’s streets.”
The trial revolved around a nighttime protest at which participants planned to set off fireworks in solidarity with the around 1,000 migrants detained inside the Prarieland ICE facility. Some participants brought guns, which is legal in Texas, as The Intercept reported.
Sam Levine explained in The Guardian what happened next:
Shortly after arriving at the facility, two or three of the protesters broke away from the larger group and began spray painting cars in the parking lot, a guard shack, slashed the tires on a government van, and broke a security camera. Two ICE detention guards came out and told the protesters to stop. A police officer arrived on the scene shortly after and drew his weapon at one of the people allegedly doing vandalism. One of the protesters was standing in the woods with an AR-15 and hit him in the shoulder. The officer would survive.
At first, the federal government charged those arrested after the event with "attempted murder of a police officer," according to NOTUS.
However, that changed after Trump's designation of antifa as a terror group in September and the release of National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7), which directs federal law enforcement to target left-leaning groups and activities. The next month, the government's case expanded to include terrorism charges.
“This wouldn’t be a terrorism case if it weren’t for that memo,” one defense lawyer told NOTUS on background.
The prosecution argued that the fact that the protesters wore black clothes to the protest was enough to convict them of material support for terrorism.
“Providing your body as camouflage for others to do the enumerated acts is providing support,” Assistant US Attorney Shawn Smith said during closing arguments, as The Intercept reported on Thursday. “It’s impossible to tell who is doing what. That’s the point.”
The defense, meanwhile, warned the jury about the free speech implications of the charge.
“The government is asking you to put protesters in prison as terrorists. You are the only people who can stop that,” Blake Burns, an attorney for defendant Elizabeth Soto, said, according to The Guardian.
"When the villain is a made-up boogeyman then the target becomes 'anyone who disagrees with Trump'—and this is the result."
Ultimately, the jury decided to convict eight defendants of material support for terrorism as well as riot, conspiracy to use and carry an explosive, and use and carry of an explosive. However, they dismissed attempts by the state to argue that the protest constituted a pre-planned ambush and charge four people who had not shot at the police officer with attempted murder and discharging a firearm during a crime. Only Benjamin Song, the alleged shooter, was charged with one count of attempted murder and three counts of discharging a firearm.
The jury also convicted a ninth defendant, Daniel Rolando Sanchez Estrada, of conspiracy to conceal documents. Sanchez Estrada, who was not at the protest, had simply moved a box of zines out of his wife's home after she was arrested for the protest, according to The Intercept.
"The US lost today with this verdict,” Sanchez Estrada’s attorney, Christopher Weinbel, said, as AP reported.
Support the Prarieland Defendants said in a statement, "Everything about this trial from beginning to end has proven what we have said all along: This is a sham trial, built on political persecution and ideological attacks coming from the top."
However, the group commended the solidarity that had sprung up among the defendants and their allies and vowed to continue to support them.
"We have a long journey ahead of us to continue fighting these charges along with the state level charges," they said. "What happens here sets the tone for what’s to come. We are here and we won’t give up."
Outside observers warned about the implication for the right to protest under Trump.
"Remember all the people who dismissed the alarm over NSPM-7 because 'ANTIFA isn't even a real organization'? We told you that didn't matter. When the villain is a made-up boogeyman then the target becomes 'anyone who disagrees with Trump'—and this is the result," said Cory Archibald, the co-founder of Track AIPAC [American Israel Public Affairs Committee].
Content creator Austin MacNamara said: "The Prairieland trial was given almost zero media coverage because of the blatant lies by DHS [Department of Homeland Security] and Police. This verdict now sets a precedent for criminalization of dissent across the board. Noise demos, Black-Bloc, pamphlets/zines/red cards, all of this can be used to imprison you."
Academic Nathan Goodman wrote that convicting people of terrorism based on clothing was a "serious threat to the First Amendment."
The verdict gives new poignancy to what defendant Meagan Morris told NOTUS ahead of the jury's decision: “If we win, I think it shows that Trump’s mandate is not working, that the people understand that you can’t criminalize, you know, First and Second Amendment-protected activities. And I think if we lose, then… a lot of the country is OK with what’s going on. And it will be a much darker time, it’ll just signify a much increased crackdown on political opposition and free speech."
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'Throwback to McCarthyism': Trump DOJ Moves to Treat Leftist Dissent as Criminal
A former official from Trump’s first term said the FBI will be able to throw the full might of the surveillance state at “Americans whose primary ‘offense’ may be ideological dissent.”
Dec 18, 2025
The Trump administration is about to embark on a massive crackdown on what it describes as a scourge of rampant left-wing “terrorism.”
But the US Department of Justice (DOJ) memo ordering the crackdown has critics fearing it will go far beyond punishing those who plan criminal acts and will instead be used to criminalize anyone who expresses opposition to President Donald Trump and his agenda.
Earlier this month, independent journalist Ken Klippenstein reported that Attorney General Pam Bondi had sent out a memo ordering the FBI to “compile a list of groups or entities engaging in acts that may constitute domestic terrorism.”
As part of this effort, Bondi set Thursday as a deadline for all law enforcement agencies to "coordinate delivery" of intelligence files related to “antifa” or “antifa-related activities” to the FBI.
The memo identifies those who express “opposition to law and immigration enforcement; extreme views in favor of mass migration and open borders; adherence to radical gender ideology,” as well as “anti-Americanism,” “anti-capitalism,” and “anti-Christianity," as potential targets for investigation.
This language references National Security Presidential Memorandum-7, or NSPM-7, a memo issued by Trump in September, which identified this slate of left-wing beliefs as potential "indicators" of terrorism following the assassination of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk in September.
In comments made before the alleged shooter's identity was revealed, Trump attributed the murder to "those on the radical left [who] have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis," adding that "this kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country and must stop right now."
Weeks after Kirk's shooting, Trump designated "antifa" as a "domestic terrorism organization," a move that alarmed critics because "antifa," short for "anti-fascist," is a loosely defined ideology rather than an organized political group.
Senior Trump adviser Stephen Miller, meanwhile, promised that the Trump administration would use law enforcement to "dismantle" left-wing groups he said were "fomenting violence." He suggested that merely using heated rhetoric—including calling Trump and his supporters "fascist" or "authoritarian"—"incites violence and terrorism."
Klippenstein said that “where NSPM-7 was a declaration of war on just about anyone who isn’t MAGA,” the memo that went into effect Thursday “is the war plan for how the government will wage it on a tactical level.”
In comments to the Washington Post, former FBI agent Michael Feinberg, who is now a senior editor at Lawfare, said it was "a pretty damn dangerous document," in part because "it is directed at a specific ideology, namely the left, without offering much evidence as to why that is necessary."
Studies have repeatedly shown that while all political factions contain violent actors, those who commit acts of political violence are vastly more likely to identify with right-wing causes.
Miles Taylor, who served as chief of staff for the Department of Homeland Security under the first Trump administration, pointed out in a blog post the extraordinary surveillance capability that the FBI will have at its disposal to use against those it targets.
He said it "includes the FBI’s ability to marshal facial recognition, phone-tracking databases, license-plate readers, financial records review, undercover operations, and intelligence-sharing tools against Americans whose primary 'offense' may be ideological dissent."
"Unfortunately, once you are fed into that system, there is no real 'due process' until charges are brought," Taylor said. "It’s not like you get a text-message notification when the FBI begins investigating you for terrorism offenses, and there’s certainly no 'opt-out' feature. For this to happen, you don’t need to commit violence. You don’t even need to plan it. Under the administration’s new guidelines, you merely need to be flagged for association with the anti-fascist movement to become a potential target."
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Wash.), a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told the Post, "It is a throwback to McCarthyism and the worst abuses of [Former FBI Director J. Edgar] Hoover’s FBI to use federal law enforcement against Americans purely because of their political beliefs or because they disagree with the current president’s politics."
Taylor argued: "He’s right, but it’s actually more dangerous than that. Joseph McCarthy had subpoenas and hearings and created his blacklists of 'communist' Americans from Capitol Hill. And while controversial FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover may have had old-school wiretaps and informants, Donald Trump’s team has algorithmic surveillance, bulk data collection, and a post-9/11 security state designed for permanent emergency. It’s like comparing a snowflake with a refrigerator."
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