Warning lights on American democracy have shifted from yellow to a glaring red this week, as a series of government actions and pronouncements have stirred deep anxieties about the future of free speech and civil liberties in the United States. At the center of the storm is President Donald Trump’s September 17, 2025, declaration that he intends to designate “antifa” as a terrorist organization—a move that legal experts, historians, and civil liberties advocates say could have profound consequences for the country’s constitutional order.
Trump’s announcement, made in the wake of the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, was delivered in typically blunt terms on the social network Social Truth. He called antifa a “sick, dangerous radical left disaster” and promised it would be “thoroughly investigated.” According to the BBC, this move is part of a broader campaign against what the president terms the “radical left.” Trump warned of investigations into those who “fund” antifa, raising the specter of a sweeping crackdown on political dissent.
Yet, as both the Davis Vanguard and BBC point out, the United States has no statutory mechanism for labeling domestic organizations as terrorist groups—a limitation that is not accidental. It exists to protect the rights enshrined in the First Amendment: free speech, free association, and free thought, even when those views are fringe or unpopular. “There is no legal mechanism that I know of that could formally declare a group a domestic terrorist organization,” Luke Baumgartner, a researcher on extremism at George Washington University, told the BBC. “As far as I know, this is just a post on Truth Social, which means nothing. Unless Congress takes concrete steps, I don’t see it happening.”
Antifa itself is a decentralized, leaderless movement—more an ideology than an organization, as experts repeatedly emphasize. Rutgers historian Mark Bray compared it to feminism: “There are feminist groups, but feminism itself is not a group. There are antifa groups, but antifa itself is not a group.” Christopher Wray, then-FBI director in 2020, described antifa in similar terms, stating it was “an ideology rather than a formal organization.”
Antifa, short for anti-fascist, is made up of a loose coalition of activists—anarchists, communists, and hardline socialists—who oppose far-right, racist, and fascist groups. They advocate for LGBTQ and migrant rights, and their tactics have sometimes included violence, which they justify as self-defense. According to the BBC, footage shows some activists carrying batons, shields, and pepper spray at rallies. Notably, after the killing of George Floyd in 2020, a self-proclaimed antifa activist killed a member of a far-right group in Portland; police later killed the activist.
Despite these incidents, the lack of centralized organization means that antifa groups emerge organically, both online and in person. Conservative politicians and commentators sometimes use the term “antifa” as a catch-all for left-wing groups with whom they disagree, further muddying the waters. Brad Evans, a professor of political violence at the University of Bath, warned the BBC that antifa’s amorphous nature “provides an extraordinary opportunity to expand government jurisdiction and apply it to anyone who can be assumed to belong to a vaguely defined organization.” He added, “The dangers of overstepping the bounds are quite obvious.”
Trump’s 2025 push to label antifa as a terrorist organization is not his first attempt. In 2020, he tried to apply the “domestic terrorist” label to antifa following nationwide protests, but the courts blocked the move. This time, however, the president has a government apparatus more firmly under his control, raising concerns that the Overton window—the range of acceptable political discourse—has shifted further toward authoritarianism.
Legal experts stress that the president’s designation would face significant constitutional hurdles. “The First Amendment to the Constitution protects the right to freedom of association, which includes the right of individuals to form groups and prohibits the government from interfering with the actions of those groups, unless, of course, they violate the law,” said Professor David Schanzer, director of the Center on Terrorism and National Security at Duke University, in comments to the BBC. Hina Shamsi of the ACLU echoed this sentiment, stating, “The president does not have legal authority to designate a domestic group as terrorists for good reason, as any such designation will raise significant First Amendment, due process and equal protection concerns.”
The government does have the power to designate Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs), but the legal requirements specify that the group “must be a foreign organization.” The State Department’s list of FTOs includes groups linked to ISIS and certain Latin American drug cartels—entities with clear leadership, membership, and structure, none of which apply to antifa.
The broader context of Trump’s announcement is a pattern of government actions that critics say are aimed at intimidating critics and punishing dissent. On the same day as Trump’s antifa declaration, ABC abruptly suspended Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show indefinitely after FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, a Trump appointee, floated the idea of punishing broadcasters for airing Kimmel’s program. According to the Davis Vanguard, this was widely seen as a veiled threat. Major affiliates Nexstar and Sinclair quickly pre-empted Kimmel’s show, and ABC cut him off entirely. Jim Rutenberg of The New York Times wrote that the president is “conducting the most punishing government crackdown against major American media institutions in modern times, using what seems like every tool at his disposal to eradicate reporting and commentary with which he disagrees.”
The week’s most harrowing story, however, comes from a ProPublica investigation into the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), briefly led by Elon Musk. On March 31, 2025, DOGE terminated the contract of Mohammad Halimi, a 53-year-old Afghan scholar who had worked with the United States Institute of Peace. DOGE then smeared Halimi online, falsely accusing him of Taliban ties—a post Musk shared with millions. A week later, Taliban intelligence agents in Kabul abducted and beat three of Halimi’s relatives, interrogating them about his work for the U.S. “DOGE did not do their homework. They are putting at risk individuals who are helping the United States,” said Lisa Curtis, a former senior adviser on the National Security Council, as reported by the Davis Vanguard. DOGE officials went on Fox News, mischaracterized Halimi’s work, and joked, “The Taliban Gets DOGED,” while his family endured threats and violence.
As Bret Stephens told Frank Bruni in their New York Times dialogue, “Trump is the first president in our history to invert Lincoln: He speaks with malice toward all and charity for none. He makes Nixon look like Churchill.”
These incidents, taken together, have sparked alarm across the political spectrum. Some argue that both sides are guilty of overreach—Democrats have pressured social media companies to moderate content, and universities have policed speech tightly. But critics insist that these are not equivalent to the state wielding its power to silence critics or mislabel ideologies as terrorism. The difference, as the Davis Vanguard notes, is stark: Private institutions can make bad decisions; the state can strip you of rights.
For many observers, the events of this week mark a dangerous escalation in the use of government power to punish dissent. The warning lights are no longer subtle—they’re flashing red. The nation faces a pivotal choice: whether to heed these warnings and restore the guardrails of democracy, or to continue down a path that could lead to the erosion of fundamental freedoms.
