Trump's Trials - Trump says he plans to designate antifa as a 'terrorist organization'

Episode Date: September 19, 2025

President Trump says he plans to designate antifa as a "major terrorist organization." It's unclear how he'll go about that, but even the suggestion could have significant ramifications.Support NPR and hear every episode of Trump's Terms sponsor-free with NPR+. Sign up at plus.npr.org.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

I'm Scott Detrow, and this is Trump's Terms from NPR. We're going to be doing all sorts of things. Nobody ever thought was even possible. President Trump has brought back string to the White House. We can't just ignore the president's desires. This will be an entirely different country in a short period of time. Every episode, we bring you one of NPR's latest stories about the 47th president, and now he is trying to remake the federal government.

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For a lot of my years as a radio host, silence sort of made me nervous. That pause before an answer, because you don't know what's going on on the other side of the mic. But these days, I love it. Hmm. Ah. Gosh. Give me a minute. Yeah, yeah.

Think. Listen to the Wildcard podcast only from NPR. I'm Stevenski. The president's talk about Antifa has raised some questions. Yeah, Trump said on social media he will designate it a quote, major terrorist organization. So what is the group really and what can the government do to it? NPR domestic extremism correspondent Odette Yusuf is covering this. Good morning. Good morning. I want to remind people of the backdrop. Charlie Kirk was murdered. There is a suspect in custody in Utah.

Republicans, some of them though, were immediately saying, quote, they killed Charlie Kirk. And the administration began talking of rolling up its political critics, critical groups. Where does Antifa fit into all that? Well, Antifa is shorthand for anti-fascist, and it's really more of a movement than a cohesive organization. But top Republican leaders, including President Trump and Senator Ted Cruz, have suggested without evidence that Antifa or purported funders of Antifa may be involved in the Kirk killing. Now, the man who is charged with that crime does not have any known affiliation with Antifa, and so far he's the only person charged in connection. with the killing. But the focus on funders is notable because it distinguishes this round of scrutiny from what happened in 2020. You may recall Steve back then, President Trump called for Antifa to be designated a terrorist group that failed in large part because, again, it's not a

centralized organization, but also because there is simply no legal mechanism to do this. What do you mean by that? Because when he says designate them as a terrorist group, it sounds very legal? So there is a process to designate certain groups as foreign terrorist organizations. So think ISIS, Al-Qaeda, that process lies with the state department and it requires proof of a foreign connection. But there is no such process or legal authority right now to do the same with domestic groups. And the reason is that such a designation could infringe on Americans' First Amendment rights. So much discussion of the First Amendment now. So when the president uses his First Amendment right to say this on social media. Are there any teeth behind it? Well, there are still

a couple of reasons to track this, I'm told. First, in 2020, Trump was also calling for the designation of Mexican drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations. It didn't happen then, but it has happened now. And so this expansion in the application of the term terrorist is already underway. Also, and even a rhetorical conflation of Antifa with terrorism has been shown to have real world consequences. I spoke with Fiza Patel at the Brennan Center for Justice. She said when that happened in 2020, law enforcement at every level turned their attention and resources toward finding Antifa at protests and trying to establish that it was a national organization. Those efforts failed. But this time, Patel says the impacts could be even broader. It's pretty clear from the president's tweet that he

is focused on the funding of these groups, right? And what that means is that there's potential a broad array of civil society organizations that can be caught up in this as being potentially linked to anti-fascism in some way or the other. And I'll add Steve yesterday on Air Force One, NPR asked the president how he would go after Antifa, since it's more of an ideology than a formal organization. He said, we're going to find out. And then asked our colleague if Antifa had anything to do with NPR. Okay. That's NPR domestic extremism correspondent, Odette.

Yusuf, thanks so much. Thank you. Before we wrap up a reminder, you can find more coverage of the Trump administration on the NPR Politics podcast, where you can hear NPR's political reporters break down the day's biggest political news with new episodes every weekday afternoon. And thanks, as always, to our NPR Plus supporters who hear every episode of the show without sponsor messages. You can learn more at plus.npr.org. I'm Scott Detrow.

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