A fresh wave of panic has washed over a network of liberal groups, now bracing for possible threats to their tax-exempt status or worse: a White House willing to find new ways to attack them even if it’s legally dubious.
“Obviously this administration’s fealty to the process and the law is very limited,” said Lanae Erickson, senior vice president for social policy, education and politics at the Democratic think tank Third Way. “So now we’re just trying to figure out, if they were to get as creative as possible, what could they do to make our lives as difficult as possible?’”
President Donald Trump signed an executive order Monday designating the anti-fascist movement known as antifa — a decentralized movement of left-wing groups known for confronting neo-Nazis and disrupting white supremacist demonstrations — as a “domestic terrorist organization.”
White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson told NOTUS that this was “just the beginning.”
“The Trump Administration will get to the bottom of this vast network inciting violence in American communities,” Jackson said in a statement.
Americans Against Government Censorship, a group organizing opposition to the administration’s efforts to target nonprofit organizations, issued a memo last week saying that the “fall calendar is shaping up as a sustained campaign from the same political actors that have been seeking to abuse power and weaponize the government against their enemies from day one of this administration.”
“What once sounded like theoretical warnings about ‘government weaponization’ has become a reality for organizations across the country,” the group said. “While the Administration and other conservative actors have been laying the groundwork for this moment over the past eight months, we’ve seen a significant and dangerous shift in tone and intent from the highest levels of the White House since Charlie Kirk’s assassination.”
Progressive organizations, which run the gamut from the American Civil Liberties Union to local criminal justice groups to organizations that work on politics that can benefit Democratic candidates, have been on alert for action from the Trump administration since January. By the summer, concern that the White House would target them had dissipated somewhat, after action from Trump had failed to materialize.
But the White House’s response to Kirk’s death has convinced some of them that action might be inevitable and that the same kind of crackdown the administration had used against law firms and universities would soon be deployed against them.
“While addressing radical left-wing violence has long been a priority for President Trump, Charlie’s horrific assassination committed by a radical leftist has only further underscored the need to address this scourge on society,” Jackson told NOTUS.
Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette, director of government affairs at the Project on Government Oversight, a nonpartisan watchdog that exposes government waste, fraud and corruption, said he’s been having conversations about how the designation for antifa could be used to go after liberal and nonpartisan groups that are critical of or condemn fascism.
“I wouldn’t put it past them to try and contort and twist that into somehow being supportive of terrorism,” Hedtler-Gaudette told NOTUS.
Nonprofit officials and Democratic strategists say they see two ways that the administration could go after liberal groups. The most severe censure would be sanctioning groups as terrorist organizations, which could threaten their financial viability if banks then refuse to do business with them.
The administration could, these officials say, streamline that process because Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent also runs the Internal Revenue Service, which makes the terrorist designation. (Bessent has been acting head of the IRS since August, when Trump in August removed then-Commissioner Billy Long from the post.)
Most officials, however, think a more likely path for the administration is to target the nonprofit status of some liberal groups, undermining their ability to raise money and tying their organization up in costly litigation. And although some well-funded liberal groups, like the ACLU, might have the money and lawyers to fight such an effort, many smaller organizations do not.
“If you are running a criminal justice reentry program in Mecklenburg County, where that girl just got stabbed, you have to be worried about the administration coming after you next,” Erickson of Third Way said, referencing the fatal stabbing of 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska. “And you don’t have the resources to defend yourself.”
Vice President JD Vance, while hosting Kirk’s podcast after his assassination, singled out two major funders of liberal groups: Open Society Foundations and the Ford Foundation. Smaller groups, including the left-leaning ethics watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW, have also invoked the president’s ire for their investigations into his business dealings and conflicts of interest.
The Ford Foundation and CREW declined to comment. Open Society Foundations did not respond to requests for comment.
If even just a few organizations are embroiled in litigation with the administration, Erickson said, it could have a chilling effect on the entire nationwide network of small, progressive organizations, which work on issues ranging from criminal justice and immigration to gun safety and abortion.
Other groups have warned about congressional action, including legislation from Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, that they fear would label organizations involved in protest movements as criminal enterprises. Already some liberal groups have been left scrambling after Trump issued an executive order earlier this year asking for greater scrutiny into ActBlue, an online fundraising platform widely used by Democratic candidates and progressive organizations.
Hedtler-Gaudette told NOTUS that the White House’s approach is “very much out of the would-be authoritarian playbook.”
“You go after the press, you go after civil society, you go after the universities, you can go after any sort of independent kind of power center that has the ability to challenge you in any way, and you typically do it under the veneer and the auspices of some kind of state action,” Hedtler-Gaudette said.
That said, there are some Democrats cautioning the party against overreacting to actions the administration has not yet taken. Rather than worry, they say, groups should prepare to fight the administration in court and otherwise carry on their day-to-day activities.
“It’s not time to hit the ‘panic’ button,” said Eddie Vale, a longtime Democratic strategist. “It’s time to hit the ‘prepare’ button.”