9.18.25
President Donald Trump says he will designate Antifa a "major terrorist organization," but he faces a legal problem in trying to do so: there is no federal process to list a domestic group as a "terrorist organization" the way the State Department lists foreign groups. The president wrote on Truth Social on Thursday: "I am pleased to inform our many U.S.A. Patriots that I am designating ANTIFA AS A MAJOR TERRORIST ORGANIZATION". But "Antifa is a dubious candidate for designation as a terrorist organization since the law only allows foreign terrorist groups to be designated as such," Georgetown professor Bruce R. Hoffman told Newsweek. Antifa, short for "anti-fascists," is an umbrella term for multiple far-left groups and is not an official organization with any hierarchical structure, making it difficult to legislate over. Trump has repeatedly threatened to make the terrorism designation, notably in 2020 when protests over George Floyd's murder shook the nation. His latest push comes against the backdrop of the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, who was shot while speaking at an event in Utah on September 10. In the aftermath of Kirk's death, Trump has slammed the "radical left," vowing to "fix" the "tremendous damage (done) to the country."
Hoffman, who is also a senior fellow for Counterterrorism and Homeland Security at the Council on Foreign Relations, said the Trump administration would have to change federal law in order to classify Antifa as a terrorist organization. This could have longstanding consequences, with Malcolm Nance, a former U.S. Navy counter-terrorism intelligence operator, arguing in a post on X that this could set the stage to "designate ANY American as a terrorist." Conversely, the move has the support of several Republicans, including House Freedom Caucus Chair Andy Harris, who said the designation would "protect communities" and enable law enforcement to "investigate those who fund them and stop the lawlessness once and for all." In 2020, Trump's former FBI director, Christopher Wray, told Congress, "Antifa is a real thing. It's not a group or an organization, it's a movement or an ideology." For a group to be added to the U.S. State Department's Foreign Terrorist Organization List, which includes ISIS and Al-Qaeda, it has to be a "foreign organization," according to the latest Congress guidelines issued this month.
www.newsweek.com
