Trump Weighing Executive Order to Label Disliked Nonprofits as ‘Terrorist’ Groups
Stephen Prager for Common Dreams
The Wall
Street Journal reported Friday that the order plans to label some
nonprofit groups as having “terrorist” ties—an act that would immediately
suspend their tax-exempt status, dramatically imperiling their ability to
operate and raise money.
According to the report, the administration is seeking to
use a little-known provision in the federal tax code to strip nonprofits of
their status without going through the normal Internal Revenue Service
investigation and appeals process.
The law, signed in 2003 by then-President George W. Bush,
allows the president to identify an organization in an executive order as
supporting or engaging in terrorism. The law also prevents organizations from
challenging designation or suspension in proceedings concerning federal tax
liability.
It’s not clear yet which groups will be targeted, but the
administration and its allies in Congress have already signaled
their intent to go after left-leaning groups like George Soros’ Open
Society Foundations, the Southern Poverty Law
Center (SPLC), and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).
The latter was forced to cease operations in Florida Thursday following a state-level “terrorism” designation by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis.
In September 2025, weeks after the assassination of right-wing
activist Charlie
Kirk, Trump signed National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7),
which identified “anti-capitalism,” “anti-Christianity,” “extremism
on migration, race, and gender,” and “hostility towards those who hold
traditional American views on family, religion,
and morality” as ideological characteristics associated with “domestic
terrorism.”
The memo directed the IRS and other federal agencies to investigate
nonprofits and their funders for alleged connections to political violence.
Shanna Singh Hughey, a policy strategist at the
anti-authoritarian watchdog group Protect Democracy, said in September that the memo’s vague and
subjective language gave the administration expansive powers to target the
nonprofits of its political foes.
“It goes way beyond that to the organizations that are
connected to the folks who might be accused [of violence], including board
members and staff, as long as that organization is accused of either funding or
facilitating the violence done by the target,” she told Inside Philanthropy.
“This is exactly what we expect to see when authoritarians
attempt to consolidate and hold power,” she said. “There are entities that seek
to hold the government accountable, and so the government uses the tools in its
toolkit to try to silence them.”
Trump’s reported plan to attack nonprofits comes on the same
day that he named Stephen Miller, the
chief architect of NSPM-7, as his new White House chief of
staff.
Weeks before the memo was signed, Miller vowed to “dismantle and take on the radical left
organizations in this country that are fomenting violence.” He has said that descriptions of Trump and his immigration policies as
“authoritarian” or “fascist” were examples of language that “incites” violence.
He has also referred to the Democratic Party
itself as “not a political party,” but “a domestic extremist organization.”
During a State Department ministerial on terrorism in July, Miller said that under
NSPM-7, the administration was empowered to “disrupt, identify, defund, debank,
arrest, and prosecute” what it called terrorist organizations.
In the same speech, he claimed that left-wing extremists
invoke “civil
liberties” disingenuously to evade criminal punishment.
Describing leftists as the “enemies of civilization,” he
said, “It is essential that we are wise enough and strong enough to understand
that these appeals must fall on deaf ears.”
