President Donald Trump has designated Antifa as a domestic terrorist organization, citing years of violent attacks on federal facilities, law enforcement, and right-wing figures across the nation.
The designation follows escalating left-wing violence that has left multiple people dead and caused billions in property damage. Trump administration officials argue the pattern demands federal action against what they call “Radical Left terrorists.”
Recent Antifa-linked attacks include a July 2025 ambush at an ICE facility in Alvarado, Texas. Assailants defaced vehicles with graffiti, including “ICE pig” and “F— you pigs,” then opened fire on officers, shooting one in the neck.
That same month, federal agents at a Portland ICE facility were assaulted by rioters. Officers were “kicked, punched, and targeted with an incendiary device,” according to the White House statement.
A February 2024 bombing outside Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall’s office left behind Antifa stickers and anarchist symbols. The suspect was identified as “transgender.”
In Atlanta, Antifa members attacked police at a planned training center in March 2023. They deployed Molotov cocktails, booby traps, and commercial-grade fireworks in what police called “anarchy.”
The violence attributed to Antifa reflects a larger trend of left-wing extremism, according to the administration, including the assassination of Charlie Kirk, and Tesla dealerships across the nation have faced ongoing attacks.
Two Israeli embassy staffers were killed in Washington, D.C., by a gunman shouting “Free Palestine!” A Minnesota Catholic church shooting by a “transgender” individual left two children dead and 17 injured.
The 2020 riots following George Floyd’s death caused up to $2 billion in damage and at least 19 deaths. In Portland that year, a self-identified Antifa member shot and killed a Patriot Prayer supporter.
Earlier incidents include the 2017 congressional baseball shooting that wounded Rep. Steve Scalise and the attempted assassination of Justice Brett Kavanaugh in 2022.
Trump himself survived two assassination attempts in 2024. The first occurred at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania; the second happened six weeks later in Palm Beach, Florida.
The White House statement concludes: “This is a time that demands fearless and courageous leadership — not moral cowardice, indecision, or the lack of fortitude to call this what it is: an epidemic of Radical Left violence.”