President Donald Trump recently announced that he would designate Antifa as a domestic terrorist organization. On September 17, 2025, he posted on Truth Social the following message:

“I am pleased to inform our many Great American Patriots that I will be designating ANTIFA, A SICK, DANGEROUS, RADICAL LEFT DISASTER, AS A MAJOR TERRORIST ORGANIZATION.”

This is similar to a tweet he posted on May 31, 2020:

“The United States of America will be designating ANTIFA as a Terrorist Organization.”

His post five years ago didn’t lead to any official designation, despite his ongoing calls for it from then until now. Will it be different this time? Or is his recent post just political messaging like before? Can the President even make such a designation?

Simply stated: No.

There are three fundamental legal barriers to such a designation by the President.

1.) There is No Statutory Mechanism for Designating a Domestic Terrorist Organization

• • The U.S. Code authorizes the Secretary of State to designate Foreign Terrorist Organizations (18 U.S.C.§ 219) and the President to designate Foreign Terrorist Organizations under the Immigration and Nationality Act (8 U.S.C.§ 1189).
• • There is no parallel statutory authority to designate a domestic group as a terrorist organization. Domestic terrorism is defined (18 U.S.C.§ 2331(5)), and individuals can be charged under domestic or material-support statutes. Still, no law empowers the President or DOJ to label a U.S. group formally as a “terrorist organization.”

2.) The First Amendment and Associational Rights Limits Government Actions

• • The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly held that the government may not penalize political beliefs or peaceful association (NAACP Alabama, 357 U.S. 449 (1958)).
• • Any effort to outlaw Antifa as an organization risks suppressing protected speech and assembly, triggering strict scrutiny. The government must show a compelling interest and that the restriction is narrowly tailored—an almost insurmountable burden for labeling a political movement.

3.) The Attorney General and FBI Guidelines Post-Church Committee Place Controls on Government Investigations

• • The Church Committee reforms and subsequent Attorney General’s Guidelines (1976) require specific criminal predication before opening domestic security investigations. Investigative actions must be based on evidence of crime, not ideology or association alone.
• • Executive Order 12333 and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978 likewise require judicial warrants for electronic surveillance and bar political surveillance without probable cause of criminal activity.

In practice, these restrictions mean:

• • No federal registry or designation process exists for domestic organizations akin to the Foreign Terrorist Organization list.
• • Targeting Antifa as an organization could be construed as a violation of the First Amendment.
• • Law enforcement can and does investigate individual violent acts by self-identified Antifa members, but it cannot prosecute or punish membership or ideology itself.

A Trump administration official told CNN that designating antifa “is just one of many actions the president will take to address left-wing organizations that fuel political violence,” but no specifics on implementation were provided. And despite multiple reports of a planned executive order, none has been issued to date.

U.S. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) introduced House Resolution 26 in January 2025 to classify Antifa as a domestic terrorist organization, but it remains stuck in committee. In July 2019, U.S. Senators Bill Cassidy (R-LA) and Ted Cruz (R-TX) introduced a similar resolution in the U.S. Senate to condemn Antifa and label the group as a domestic terror organization. Although the resolution was non-binding, it was referred to committee, where it never got a hearing, markup, or vote. It was allowed to die, reportedly due to legal barriers to such a designation.

Is this the real story? Or just an excuse?

Let’s examine the major case involving Antifa activists who organized and carried out the assault on the Mark O. Hatfield US Courthouse in Portland, Oregon, in 2020, during President Trump’s first administration. The coordinated siege on the courthouse lasted over 120 nights. The hundreds of participants used various types of weaponry in their assaults.

Incendiary & Explosive Devices, including Large commercial‑grade fireworks fired at the courthouse and officers, improvised incendiary devices such as Molotov cocktails, large explosive devices thrown into the courthouse portico on July 28, 2020, igniting a fire, flares and other pyrotechnics used to start fires at entrances and barricades.

Blunt & Impact Weapons, such as canned food and rocks thrown at officers, wooden shields used both defensively and offensively to strike officers, metal pipes and clubs, slingshots to launch a variety of projectiles.

Thrown Projectiles like glass bottles, frozen water bottles, bricks, and concrete chunks.

Directed‑Energy & Blinding Devices, such as high-powered lasers aimed at officers’ eyes, capable of causing permanent retinal damage, high-intensity flashlights used to disorient.

Cutting & Penetrating Tools such as knives and machetes found on some arrested individuals, improvised spears, and sharpened poles.

Other Tactics & Tools, for example, spray paint used to vandalize and obscure security cameras, power tools and crowbars to dismantle barricades and remove plywood coverings, water supply tampering attempts — photographing and discussing disabling courthouse water intake.

The attacks injured 277 federal officers, caused between $1.6 and $2 million in damages, and required tens of thousands of man-hours to defend the building. Throughout the entire assault on the courthouse, with hundreds of rioters every night, nearly 1,000 people were arrested. The Multnomah County DA outright dismissed or failed to pursue 90% of the cases. The remaining cases resulted in only minor penalties—no jail time.

Federally, 60 of the 100 cases were dismissed without delay. Of the 20 individuals initially charged with felonies, I found none who served any time or had a felony conviction on their record, including the person charged with the most serious offense, arson, which carries a minimum five-year sentence. At least a third appear to have received a deferred sentence, which was vacated after a year without any subsequent arrest record.

While the Trump administration was focused on aggressively pursuing convictions, the Biden Administration reversed course and halted the prosecutions. Why? And who in the Biden Administration made this decision?

At this point, we don’t know.

We also don’t understand why, even after numerous clearly organized violent actions by self-proclaimed Antifa members like those in Portland, many government officials refuse to recognize that Antifa is an organization—including former FBI Trump appointee Christopher Wray—but instead claim it is just an ideology.

As FBI Director, Wray consistently maintained throughout his tenure that Antifa is an ideology or movement, not an organization, directly contradicting the first Trump administration’s efforts to designate it as a terrorist group. In multiple congressional testimonies between 2020 and 2021, Wray articulated this stance with notable consistency despite intense political pressure to align with the White House position.

Wray testified before the U.S. House Homeland Security Committee in September 2020 that the FBI considers Antifa “more of an ideology or a movement than an organization”. He explained that although Antifa activists pose real concerns, they lack the hierarchical structure typical of organizations that could be designated as terrorist groups.

Although characterizing Antifa as an ideology, Wray acknowledged that the FBI conducted “any number of properly predicated investigations into what we would describe as violent anarchist extremists,” including individuals who self-identify with Antifa. He emphasized that these investigations focus on criminal violence, not ideology.

Wray described Antifa as operating through “small groups or nodes” at local and regional levels rather than as a centralized organization. He noted that people identifying with Antifa had been “coalescing regionally into small groups,” but stopped short of calling it an organization.

I don’t know where the Director got his information, whether he even read the information his agents provided to him or reviewed publicly available sources. But he is either uninformed or willfully blind.

The fact is that Antifa functions as a sophisticated international terrorist network with formal structures that coordinate with like-minded groups, far surpassing the criteria the FBI has historically used for terrorist designations.

The organizational structure is broad. Coordination among the groups is currently maintained through their membership in The Torch Network, created in 2013 to replace the Anti-Racist Action Network (ARA). The Network requires the various Antifa groups to be “vouched for by at least two network chapters” to join. The veteran ARA chapters founded it to expand the ideological scope of the group. It operates as a loose yet coordinated alliance of autonomous chapters that share common “points of unity” and are dedicated to confronting fascist, white supremacist, and other far-right movements — often through direct action.

The groups stay connected through torchantifa@riseup.net and use regional delegates, requiring “two individual vouches” for coordination. This isn’t a loose ideological alignment—this is a formal organizational structure with membership criteria, communication protocols, and hierarchical coordination.

The network works with It’s Going Down, which acts as a digital command center publishing detailed organizing manuals, coordinating “calls to action” across autonomous groups, and facilitating anonymous communication for “taking credit for illegal direct actions.”

There is also an international element that underscores the absurdity of Wray’s position. The International Anti-Fascist Defence Fund is known to have provided over $250,000, that we know of, to more than 750 activists in 26 countries since 2015, according to reports. This kind of financial support seems to represent what law enforcement usually considers to be a terrorist funding network.

Members of the European Parliament submitted a formal motion in March 2023 calling for Antifa to be added to the EU terrorist list, citing “violence across Europe and the USA,” “international coordination using hit-lists,” and alleged “training received from other terrorist groups in Syria.” Meanwhile, the FBI director and other government officials continued to insist they are just an ideology.

During the Portland 2020 attacks, participants traveled from various states, using encrypted communications shared among them. They maintained operational security by using Signal for tactical communication and coordination. Additionally, they obtained centralized legal defense funding through international networks and employed countermeasures, such as deleting records of communication. Their cellular structure functions through what they call “spokes councils”—multiple affinity groups coordinating via designated representatives, sharing information on a need-to-know basis, with operations designed to continue even if individual cells are compromised.

Not an organization?

Further study is needed to understand why many in government still resist designating Antifa as a terrorist organization. However, I suspect it’s because some government officials see the group as serving their interests.

Antifa is an organization that advances the same false narrative as those in government advance to resist control by the person elected to run the government—that Trump and his team and his supporters are fascists. It puts the President and his administration on the defensive, it influences some people to turn against the President, and it causes some Trump supporters to grow weary of the fight and withdraw from public service.

This is a terrible approach to win a political argument. Labeling the President and his supporters as fascists, as racists, as homophobes, as Islamophobes, as transphobes has led to us becoming a highly polarized nation. It has divided communities. It has split apart friends and families. It has led to two assassination attempts against President Trump, one of which was a split second from being successful. And the political vitriol directly led to the assassination of Charlie Kirk, devastating his loving family, and further dividing us.

This has to end. Everyone in government and the media needs to help stamp out this false narrative that the President, his team, and his supporters are fascists. A good first step would be to join together to condemn Antifa and put the organization out of business.

Don’t worry about designating it as a domestic terrorist organization. Designate it as a foreign terrorist organization that has U.S. affiliates.

Do it now.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to send a message to your federal lawmakers today and demand they support legislation to officially designate Antifa as an international terrorist organization.