In the wake of the shocking assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk earlier this month, the American political landscape has been thrown into fresh turmoil. President Donald Trump, seizing the moment, announced on September 23, 2025, that he would soon declare the anti-fascist movement known as antifa a domestic terrorist organization. The move, which follows a string of heated debates about political violence and free speech, has ignited controversy across the nation, drawing sharp lines between advocates of government intervention and defenders of constitutional rights.
Trump’s declaration comes at a time when emotions are running high. The killing of Kirk, a prominent figure on the right, has left many searching for answers. Yet, as Reuters reports, there is no public evidence linking antifa to the assassination. The motive behind the shooting remains a mystery, and the accused gunman, Tyler Robinson, is reportedly refusing to cooperate with investigators. Despite this, Trump has been unequivocal in his condemnation of antifa, branding it a “sick, dangerous, radical left disaster” and vowing to pursue its sources of funding.
But what exactly is antifa? According to a 2020 Congressional Research Service report, antifa—short for “anti-fascist”—is not an organized political group in the traditional sense. Instead, it is a decentralized movement with no clear structure, command hierarchy, or leader. Former FBI director Christopher Wray and several experts on political extremism have described antifa as more of an ideology, rooted in opposition to fascism and white supremacy, than a cohesive organization. This distinction is crucial, as it places antifa’s activities under the protection of the First Amendment’s free speech clause, at least in theory.
The origins of antifa stretch back to early 20th-century Europe, where anti-fascist groups first emerged to counter the rise of authoritarian regimes. In the United States, antifa gained renewed prominence after Trump’s election in 2016, with activists organizing in response to what they saw as a surge in far-right extremism. Operating through local “affinity groups”—small, tightly knit units of three to eight people—antifa members coordinate protests, share tactics, and sometimes provide mutual protection during demonstrations. Communication is often conducted via encrypted messaging apps, reflecting the movement’s emphasis on security and decentralization.
Antifa’s methods are varied, but adherents are united by a belief in “direct action.” This can range from peaceful street protests to more aggressive tactics, such as burning police cars or shattering windows. Activists frequently wear black clothing and cover their faces, a tactic designed to protect their identities and create a sense of solidarity. Online, antifa supporters may track right-wing groups or expose individuals they consider extremists, a practice known as doxxing.
Despite the heated rhetoric surrounding antifa, U.S. law enforcement agencies have found no evidence of terrorist incidents in the United States linked to the movement. Trump’s push to designate antifa as a domestic terror organization is not new; he made a similar attempt during the George Floyd protests in 2020. The most notorious episode involving antifa occurred in Portland, Oregon, in August 2020, when Michael Reinoehl, a self-identified antifa supporter, shot and killed Aaron “Jay” Danielson, a member of the far-right group Patriot Prayer. Reinoehl was subsequently killed by law enforcement officers during an attempted arrest.
More recently, in early 2025, a San Diego jury found two men guilty of conspiracy to riot stemming from street protests in 2021. Prosecutors labeled the men as antifa members, but such cases remain rare and highly contested. According to Reuters, the decentralized and amorphous nature of antifa makes it difficult to pin collective responsibility on the movement as a whole.
Against this backdrop, legislative responses have emerged. On September 22, 2025, Representative Derrick Van Orden, a Republican from Prairie du Chien, introduced a bill to prohibit federal funding for entities that employ individuals who condone or advocate political violence and domestic terrorism. Van Orden’s proposal, which came in the immediate aftermath of Kirk’s assassination, has sparked its own firestorm of debate. The bill originally sought to bar funding for employers of those who “condone and celebrate” political violence, but Van Orden has since pledged to amend the language, replacing “celebrate” with “advocate” in an effort to sidestep First Amendment concerns.
Legal experts, however, remain deeply skeptical about the constitutionality of the measure. Deepa Das Acevedo, an associate professor at Emory University School of Law, told the Washington Post, “The bill is saying that if you don't ensure that all of your dozen, hundreds, thousands of employees, and maybe even more contractors and subcontractors are towing a particular governmentally defined political line, then you lose funds. That is conditioning federal funds on the exercise of vast and likely unmanageable employer authority.” Acevedo argued that the legislation is almost certainly unconstitutional.
First Amendment protections on speech are robust, particularly in the political arena. As Nadine Strossen, a senior fellow at The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, explained, “It has to be intentional incitement of imminent violence or lawlessness that's actually likely to happen imminently.” She referenced the landmark 1969 Supreme Court decision in Brandenburg v. Ohio, which set a deliberately high bar for the government to restrict speech. “It is a deliberately difficult, but not impossible, test to satisfy, and the reason being that we want to encourage the most open and robust debate on political issues, as the Supreme Court recognized in the political arena.”
Critics of Van Orden’s bill, including Representative Mark Pocan of Madison, have raised alarms about its potential for abuse. “It's a scary notion, right?” Pocan remarked. “They have a database, supposedly put together 50,000 people who've said something, and they want to have them fired or take away the funding from their employer. Like, we went through Joe McCarthy once in Wisconsin. We don't need to go through it again.” The specter of McCarthyism—a period in the 1950s marked by government blacklists and loyalty tests—looms large in the minds of many civil libertarians.
While civil rights statutes prevent employers from discriminating on the basis of sex, religion, or gender, the government cannot pressure private sector employers to punish employees for their speech. Strossen emphasized, “If what seems like pressure coming from the private sector is actually coming as a result of government encouragement, that has to be treated exactly the same as if the government had directly imposed the punishment, and that clearly violates the First Amendment.” The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that the government may not use the “carrot” of federal funding to achieve what it cannot do directly through punitive measures.
Senator Ted Cruz, a Republican from Texas, warned that setting a precedent for government censorship under Trump could backfire if Democrats regain power. “The fundamental idea that the government could instantaneously strip funding from entities associated with people who condone political violence or celebrate domestic terrorism is not a little thing,” Das Acevedo observed. While the immediate legal impact of Van Orden’s bill may be limited, experts caution that it stretches the boundaries of governmental intervention in political speech and creates new conceptual risks for civil liberties.
As the nation grapples with the fallout from Kirk’s assassination, the debate over antifa, political violence, and free speech shows no sign of abating. The coming weeks will test not only the resilience of America’s constitutional protections but also the country’s ability to navigate the ever-shifting terrain of political dissent and government power.
