Antifa is designated a 'domestic terrorist organization'

A presidential order signed 22 September 2025 designates Antifa a “domestic terrorist organization.”¹ The operative sentence is one line of section 2: “Because of the aforementioned pattern of political violence designed to suppress lawful political activity and obstruct the rule of law, I hereby designate Antifa as a ‘domestic terrorist organization.’”¹ The order runs to three sections and about a page and a half of the Federal Register, and is a presidential order rather than an executive order — it carries no executive order number.¹

1. The findings are stated, not sourced. Section 1 describes Antifa as “a militarist, anarchist enterprise that explicitly calls for the overthrow of the United States Government, law enforcement authorities, and our system of law,” which “uses illegal means to organize and execute a campaign of violence and terrorism nationwide.”¹ It says Antifa “recruits, trains, and radicalizes young Americans,” and conceals “its funding sources and operations in an effort to frustrate law enforcement.”¹ The order cites no report, investigation, finding or record for any of this, and names no entity, incorporation, membership or leadership — the conclusion is that “[t]his organized effort designed to achieve policy objectives by coercion and intimidation is domestic terrorism.”¹

2. No statute provides for designating a domestic organization. The phrase “domestic terrorist organization” appears in the order in quotation marks; it has no definition in federal law. What federal law defines is the conduct: 18 U.S.C. 2331(5) says “domestic terrorism” means activities involving “acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws” that appear intended “to intimidate or coerce a civilian population” or “to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion,” occurring primarily inside the United States.² That is a definition of acts, and it confers no power on anyone to designate an organization. The designation authority that does exist runs the other way: 8 U.S.C. 1189 lets the Secretary of State designate a foreign terrorist organization, and its first statutory condition is that “the organization is a foreign organization.”³

3. The distinction decides what a designation can do. The material-support offence that depends on a designation is 18 U.S.C. 2339B, and it reaches “material support or resources to a foreign terrorist organization,” requiring knowledge that the organization “is a designated terrorist organization.”⁴ A domestic designation does not engage it. The domestic material-support provision, 18 U.S.C. 2339A, works differently: it turns on the offence the support is meant for, reaching anyone who provides support “knowing or intending that they are to be used in preparation for, or in carrying out,” one of a long list of enumerated federal crimes.⁵ That liability exists with or without a designation, and the designation adds nothing to it.

4. What the order does instead is direct attention. It tells “[a]ll relevant executive departments and agencies” to “utilize all applicable authorities to investigate, disrupt, and dismantle any and all illegal operations” of Antifa or anyone “claiming to act on behalf of Antifa,” including operations “for which Antifa or any person claiming to act on behalf of Antifa provided material support,” and to take “necessary investigatory and prosecutorial actions against those who fund such operations.”¹ The order closes with the standard clause that it “is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity.”¹ Three days later a presidential memorandum set out the machinery for acting on it.⁶