In the charged and grieving atmosphere following the assassination of Charlie Kirk, the President of the United States has made a fiery and constitutionally explosive declaration. He has announced his intention to designate the domestic political movement known as “antifa” as a “major terrorist organization.”
This is not a legitimate national security directive. It is a legally baseless and profoundly dangerous threat. It is a story about a president attempting to wield a power that the Constitution and the laws of the United States have never granted to his office, a move that threatens the very foundation of the First Amendment.
A Declaration in Search of a Law
The first and most crucial fact every American must understand is this: under current U.S. law, a president does not have the authority to designate a domestic group as a terrorist organization.
Congress has created a formal, statutory process for the Secretary of State to designate Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs), like Al-Qaeda or ISIS. There is no parallel legal mechanism for the government to officially label a domestic movement – whether it be antifa on the left or the Proud Boys on the right – as a terrorist group. The President’s declaration is an act of political branding, not a legal one.
An Assault on the First Amendment
The President’s threat is a direct assault on one of our most fundamental constitutional protections: the First Amendment’s freedom of association.
In the landmark 1958 case NAACP v. Alabama, the Supreme Court affirmed that the right to associate with a group, even a controversial one, is essential for political expression. The government cannot simply outlaw a political movement it dislikes. The President’s accompanying threat to “thoroughly investigate” those who “fund” this vague movement is a direct menace to this core constitutional right and is designed to create a massive chilling effect on political dissent.
The Peril of Guilt by Association
The true danger of the President’s threat lies in its vagueness. Who, exactly, is “antifa”? As former FBI Director Christopher Wray has testified before Congress, antifa is an “ideology” or a “movement,” not a formal organization with a headquarters and a membership list.
This is what makes the President’s declaration so perilous. It creates a framework for “guilt by association.” A citizen could be targeted for a federal investigation not for committing a crime, but for attending a protest, donating to a bail fund, or simply expressing a political view that a government agent deems to be aligned with “antifa.”
It is a recipe for the arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement of law based on a person’s political beliefs.
The President’s declaration is a dangerous and unconstitutional bluff. In the wake of a national tragedy, the temptation to crack down on political enemies is a powerful one. But our constitutional republic is built on the principle that we do not punish ideologies; we punish criminal acts.
The President’s threat to declare a domestic political movement a “terrorist organization” is a direct assault on that principle and a perilous step toward the criminalization of dissent itself.