Trump Instructs Administration to Investigate Funders of Left-Wing Political Violence
U.S. President Donald Trump directed his administration on Thursday to investigate organizations and individuals that fund what he claims is a pattern of left-wing political violence in America.
“We’re looking at the funders of a lot of these groups,” Trump said in remarks in the Oval Office where administration officials spoke about the threat of significant financing of left-wing terrorism without providing evidence. “We hear the same names, but they’re bad. And we’re going to find out. And if they are funding these things, they’re going to have some problems because they’re agitators and they’re anarchists.”
The presidential memo referred to the recent assassination of right-wing activist and close Trump ally Charlie Kirk, the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, and the assassination attempts on Trump and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh as justifications for the initiative to crack down on political violence. Investigators so far, however, have not confirmed that any of the suspects in these cases were part of left-wing groups.
“This political violence is not a series of isolated incidents and does not emerge organically,” the memo said. “Instead, it is a culmination of sophisticated, organized campaigns of targeted intimidation, radicalization, threats, and violence designed to silence opposing speech, limit political activity, change or direct policy outcomes, and prevent the functioning of a democratic society.”
Missing from the memo, however, was any mention of attacks on members of the Democratic Party, including the assassination of former Minnesota Speaker of the House Melissa Hortman and her husband earlier this year.
In the memo, Trump instructed the National Joint Terrorism Task Force (NJTTF) and its local offices to coordinate and supervise a “comprehensive national strategy to investigate, prosecute, and disrupt entities and individuals engaged in acts of political violence and intimidation designed to suppress lawful political activity or obstruct the rule of law.”
The memo added that the task force should coordinate with other executive departments and agencies as needed to support these investigations and any relevant prosecutions of political violence. The memo requires that regular updates on the investigations be made to Trump via Homeland Security Adviser Stephen Miller and that the U.S. attorney general instruct the U.S. Department of Justice to prosecute federal crimes to the maximum permissible by law.
“The attorney general shall issue specific guidance that ensures domestic terrorism priorities include politically motivated terrorist acts such as organized doxing campaigns, swatting, rioting, looting, trespass, assault, destruction of property, threats of violence, and civil disorder,” according to the memo. “This guidance shall also include an identification of any behaviors, fact patterns, recurrent motivations, or other indicia common to organizations and entities that coordinate these acts in order to direct efforts to identify and prevent potential violent activity.”
Additionally, the memo directs the U.S. secretary of the treasury to disrupt financial networks that fund domestic terrorism and political violence, as well as ordering the commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service to confirm that tax-exempt entities are not directly or indirectly financing political violence or domestic terrorism.
“These are not lone isolated events,” said Miller, without evidence, in a press conference on Thursday. “This is part of an organized campaign of radical left terrorism. It is structured. It is sophisticated. It is well-funded. It is well-planned.”
The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) analyzed terrorism trends in the United States and found that left-wing violence has risen in the last 10 years, but that it remains lower than historical levels of violence by right-wing and jihadist attackers. CSIS also assessed that 2025 appears to be a novel year for left-wing attacks, which for the first time in 30 years outnumber those from the far right.
“Indeed, the increase in left-wing attacks is particularly noticeable because attacks from right-wing perpetrators have sharply declined in 2025,” CSIS explained. “This decline is striking, and explanations are speculative. One possibility is that many traditional grievances that violent right-wing extremists have espoused in the past—opposition to abortion, hostility to immigration, and suspicions of government agencies, among others—are now embraced by President Trump and his administration.”
Trump issued the new memo three days after signing an executive order that designated Antifa as a domestic terrorist organization—the first time that a president has given a specific group that designation.
“Designating Antifa—which has no defined organizational structure or leadership—as a domestic terrorism organization is not only incorrect, it serves no purpose other than an excuse for the Trump administration to stifle dissent, investigate anyone—or any group—they don’t like, punish their enemies, and potentially label any American they want as a terrorist,” said U.S. Representative Bennie G. Thompson (D-MS), ranking member of the Committee on Homeland Security, in a statement shared with Security Management.
“Never in our history has the U.S. government named a domestic terrorist organization,” Thompson continued. “Domestic terrorism has been on the rise for years, but government officials from both Republican and Democratic administrations—along with all available data—are clear: the real threat is from right-wing violent extremism.”
The Trump administration has taken actions to limit access to data about domestic terrorism trends. In March, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security eliminated funding for the Global Terrorism Database’s Terrorism and Targeted Violence in the United States project. Earlier in September, the U.S. Department of Justice pulled the public findings of its study that showed far-right extremists committed more violent acts than other actors in the United States.
And just this week, The New York Times reported that the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence is eliminating a prominent four-year report on future threats to the United States. The most recent report, published in 2021, discussed in detail the potential threats of polarization and the evolution of domestic terrorism trends.
“Terrorist groups will continue to exploit societal fragmentation and weak governance to push their ideologies and gain power through violence,” according to the Global Trends 2040: A More Contested World report. “During the next 20 years, regional and intrastate conflicts, demographic pressures, environmental degradation, and democratic retrenchment are likely to exacerbate the political, economic, and social grievances terrorists have long exploited to gain supporters as well as safe havens to organize, train, and plot.”
