Raw Story: ‘Who?’ Pam Bondi and Kash Patel fail to name a single terrorist group they plan to target

FBI Director Kash Patel and Attorney General Pam Bondi on Thursday failed to name one terrorist organization they plan to investigate during a news conference at the Oval Office with President Donald Trump.

Trump signed a memorandum on the implementation of the death penalty in Washington, D.C, then a series of press questions followed after claims that “this is a very safe city right now, we don’t play games.”

“Who do you specifically want to target?” a reporter asked.

The three leaders were unable to respond to the questions, saying that they would “follow the money” and investigate “any organized group.”

But they still didn’t specifically name anything or anyone.

When pressed again, he responded, “antifa Soros… Well, [billionaire Democratic donor George] Soros is a name certainly that I keep hearing… I hear a lot of different names. I hear names of some pretty rich people that are radical left people, Maybe I hear about a guy named Reid Hoffman.”

Trump reportedly demanded that Soros, a longtime villain to conservatives, be thrown in prison, and the senior DOJ official’s directive lists possible charges – from arson to material support of terrorism – that prosecutors could file, according to a copy of the document viewed by The New York Times, which noted the memo suggests department officials are targeting individuals on the president’s orders.

“I don’t know, maybe, and maybe could be him, could be a lot of people,” Trump said.

Trump indicated that he wants to stop these unnamed groups or individuals from “performing acts of violence.”

“We’re looking at the funders of a lot of these groups. You know, when you see the signs, and they’re all beautiful signs, made professionally. These aren’t your protesters that make the sign in their basement late in the evening because they really believe it,” Trump claimed.

“These are anarchists and agitators — professional anarchists and agitators — and they get hired by wealthy people, some of whom I know, I guess, you know, probably know ’em. And you wouldn’t know it. You’re at dinner with them, everything’s nice and then you find out that they funded millions of dollars to these lunatics.”

Trump also invited his deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, to say a few words.

“This is a very historic and significant day,” Miller said. “This is the first time in American history that there is an all-government effort to dismantle left-wing terrorism, to dismantle antifa, to dismantle violence and terrorism.”

Last week, Trump designated antifa as a “domestic terrorist organization.” The loose-knit group does not have a leader and is comprised of people who generally describe themselves as anarchists, socialists, communists, and don’t generally share their identities to avoid retaliation from right-wing conservatives.

Miller argued that the government was looking at Black Lives Matter, Charlie Kirk’s killing, and attacks on ICE agents as “not lone, isolated events, this is part of an organized campaign of radical left terrorism… there is really no parallel like this…”

He claimed that a feeder organization was isolating public officials, doxxing government officials and attempting political assassinations.

“It is terrorism on our soil. Because of this executive order, Kash and Pam are going to have the tools they need working with Scott to take these organizations apart piece by piece, and the central hub of that effort is going to be the Joint Terrorism Task Force, or JTTF, which sits inside the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” Miller said.

Miller added that the investigation of terrorists, although it’s unclear who they are, would have the full support of the U.S. government.

“But for those at home who are worried about terrorism, understand because of President Trump’s strength, because of his vision, because of his leadership, we are now going to use the entire force of the federal government to uproot these organizations root and branch,” Miller said.

https://www.rawstory.com/donald-trump-2674040913

Reason: What Does It Mean for Trump To Designate Antifa a ‘Terrorist Organization’?

America doesn’t have an official list of domestic terrorist organizations, but the declaration could mean heavier political surveillance and RICO prosecutions.

President Donald Trump announced in a social media post on Wednesday night that he is “designating ANTIFA, A SICK, DANGEROUS, RADICAL LEFT DISASTER, AS A MAJOR TERRORIST ORGANIZATION.” He made the same declaration in 2020 amid the Black Lives Matter protests against the police killing of George Floyd, with no real effect on the ground.

But Trump’s new declaration came with another, more specific order: “I will also be strongly recommending that those funding ANTIFA be thoroughly investigated in accordance with the highest legal standards and practices.” And that may be the real significance of his decision.

There is no such thing as a domestic terrorist organization list in the United States. When Congress debated the first counterterrorism legislation in the 1990s, the Clinton administration and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) pushed for sweeping domestic police powers. It was Republicans who opposed those measures at the time because they worried that counterterrorism would be weaponized against the right.

As a compromise, the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 only allowed the government to designate and ban foreign terrorist organizations. The first Trump administration reportedly tried to paint Antifa as a foreign organization by pointing to Antifa activists who fought for Kurdish militias in Syria. The problem is that the same Kurdish militias were also allied with the U.S. military, which introduced a foreign policy complication.

The current administration could try to use the Palestinian solidarity movement to paint the left as foreign terrorists. Both Republican politicians and the ADL have tried to imply that student protesters are materially connected to Hamas. As with the Kurdish connection, however, the Palestinian connection to Antifa is fairly stretched.

During the 2020 unrest, then–Attorney General Bill Barr also reportedly told prosecutors to consider using the “seditious conspiracy” law against rioters. The law, passed during the Civil War to round up Confederate guerrillas, punishes any group of people that violently opposes the authority of the U.S. government. The government did not end up pursuing those charges.

The most obvious measure is one that Trump has already hinted at using: the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. After protesters disrupted Trump’s dinner last week, Trump told reporters that he asked the attorney general “to look into that in terms of RICO, bringing RICO cases against them. Criminal RICO. Because they should be put in jail, what they’re doing to this country is really subversive.”

Originally designed to go after the mafia, the RICO Act allows prosecutors to charge an entire organization for criminal behaviors. In September 2023, the state of Georgia tried to use its own state-level RICO law to prosecute members of Stop Cop City, a protest movement against a new police training center. A judge threw out the charges last week.

As many critics have pointed out, Antifa doesn’t exist—at least not as a centralized organization. Anti-fascist is a label that many different left-wing and anarchist activists around the country have adopted, along with similar tactics and aesthetics. But the vagueness of the label can help rather than hinder the Trump administration, if its goal is to crack down on political enemies.

The RICO Act allows prosecutors to define more or less anything they want as a mafia organization, and the charges are nearly impossible to defend against, partly because the government can seize the defendant’s assets before trial, making it impossible to pay a defense lawyer.

Trump’s reference to “those funding ANTIFA” is a hint that he wants to tie Antifa rioting to various progressive donors, as in earlier attempts to go after the Palestinian movement. In May 2024, the House Oversight Committee and House Education Committee demanded information from a wide range of philanthropists—George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, the Pritzker family’s Libra Foundation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation—about their connection to campus protests.

At the time, Foundation for Middle East Peace President Lara Friedman told Reason that this investigation was meant “to demonize parts of the tax-exempt sector that a part of the Republican Party views as a key target in the war on woke….If you make this about supposedly fighting antisemitism, you bring parts of the Democratic Party with you.” 

Now that the Republicans are in power, they may calculate that the war on woke no longer needs Democratic support, and they can go after their targets much more directly. But it doesn’t take much imagination at all to see what the retaliation by a future Democratic administration might look like.

The Biden administration used seditious conspiracy charges to pin the January 2021 riot at the Capitol on the leaders of the right-wing Proud Boys, whom Trump later pardoned. Trump himself was charged under Georgia’s RICO law in 2023 for alleged election interference, a case that is currently on pause but could be resumed in the future.

Of course, Trump’s declaration about domestic terrorism was empty bluster in 2020. Given how much blood the Trump administration tastes from its successful attacks on critical media, and the fact that Democrats have broken the seal on other forms of domestic repression, this time might turn out to be more serious. The tools are there for a political crackdown—not a full descent into dictatorship, but for an escalation of the current surveillance state.

https://reason.com/2025/09/18/what-does-it-mean-for-trump-to-designate-antifa-a-terrorist-organization

Rolling Stone: J.D. Vance Thinks Black Lives Matter Should ‘Celebrate’ Trump

Trump has called Black Lives Matter a “symbol of hate” and called its supporters “thugs”

Vice President J.D. Vance, who previously spread conspiracy theories about the Black Lives Matter movement, said Saturday that its leaders and supporters should celebrate President Donald Trump because he’s “done more to save Black lives than any leader in our country.” 

Trump has called Black Lives Matter a “symbol of hate” and called its supporters “thugs.” In 2020, Trump deployed the National Guard on people in Washington, D.C. protesting the police murder of George Floyd. He also allegedly said of the protesters, “Can’t you just shoot them?”

In 1973 Trump was sued in federal court for refusing to rent apartments to blacks. Why should blacks celebrate such a bigot?

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/j-d-vance-black-lives-matter-trump-1235375033

DNYUZ: Opinion: How ICE’s L.A. Raids Spiraled Into the ‘Riot’ Trump Thirsted For

The Trump White House has been demanding many, many more deportations, but hasn’t been getting enough of the “worst of the worst” it is supposedly targeting.

So, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) resolved to target the more abundant “not so bad.”

Going after whatever murderers and rapists actually did cross the southern border was one thing most people can applaud. Going after people who are just seeking to make an honest living was sure to trigger protests.

But Donald Trump always welcomes any opportunity to justify his fearmongering about chaos in the streets—and what better place than a deep-blue state like California, which is headed by Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom (whom Trump always calls Newscum)?

Even relatively minor disturbances could be hyped into a pretext for Trump to deploy active-duty military, as he wanted to do when Black Lives Matter staged protests outside the White House during his first term. He was dissuaded from doing so in 2020 by the combined objections of Attorney General William Barr and Defense Secretary Mark Esper, but always expressed regret about not sending in troops—even though the peaceful D.C. protesters were cleared with unnecessary brutality by federal law enforcement officers.

Trump is now getting another chance, this time with an attorney general and secretary of defense who only know to utter variations of, “Yes, Sir! Only you can save the nation, and thereby save civilization!”

A number of white ICE vehicles that exited the area were pelted with rocks by protesters. Video of that prompted Trump’s new FBI director to further hype the disorder by putting a rock-thrower on the agency’s 10 Most Wanted List.

Rock thrower wanted? Dead or alive? LOL!!!

On Saturday, Trump issued an executive order deploying a state’s national guard without the governor’s approval, which has not been done in more than half a century. Trump ignored Newsom’s warning that it would only inflame the situation. Trump said he was sending in 2,000 California guardsmen and women, but only around 300 were immediately dispatched. Trump went online to declare that he and his team had saved the day.

“A once great American City, Los Angeles, has been invaded and occupied by Illegal Aliens and Criminals,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Now violent, insurrectionist mobs are swarming and attacking our Federal Agents to try and stop our deportation operations — But these lawless riots only strengthen our resolve. I am directing Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, and Attorney General Pam Bondi, in coordination with all other relevant Departments and Agencies, to take all such action necessary to liberate Los Angeles from the Migrant Invasion, and put an end to these Migrant riots. Order will be restored.”

“We made a great decision in sending the National Guard to deal with the violent, instigated riots in California,” Trump said. “If we had not done so, Los Angeles would have been completely obliterated.”

He went on, insisting “Newscum” and L.A. Mayor Karen Bass should be saying, “THANK YOU, PRESIDENT TRUMP, YOU ARE SO WONDERFUL. WE WOULD BE NOTHING WITHOUT YOU, SIR.’”

The guy is off in Lala Land!

A senior law enforcement source who had dealt firsthand with Trump suggested to the Daily Beast that the commander–in-chief was excited by the very possibility of being able to send active-duty military against protesters.

“That’s what gives him a boner,” the source said.

Guardian: Oklahoma high schools to teach 2020 election conspiracy theories as fact

State superintendent Ryan Walters tapped chief of Heritage Foundation, key player behind Project 2025, for curriculum

As part of the latest Republican push in red states to promote ideologies sympathetic to Donald Trump, Oklahoma’s new social studies curriculum will ask high school students to identify “discrepancies” in the 2020 election results.

The previous standard for studying the 2020 election merely said: “Examine issues related to the election of 2020 and its outcome.” The new version is more expansive: “Identify discrepancies in 2020 elections results by looking at graphs and other information, including the sudden halting of ballot-counting in select cities in key battleground states, the security risks of mail-in balloting, sudden batch dumps, an unforeseen record number of voters, and the unprecedented contradiction of ‘bellwether county’ trends.”

The revised curriculum standard comes at the behest of Ryan Walters, the state school superintendent, who has publicly voiced his support for Trump. In October, Walters lauded Trump in an interview, saying that “Trump’s won the argument on education”.

Walters, who has also advocated for ending “wokeness” in public schools, went on to say: “We have education bureaucrats that are left-wing, elitist, that think they know best for families, and they have become so radicalized that our families are going: ‘What is going on here?’”

Oklahoma’s new social studies standards for K-12 public school students, already infused with references to the Bible and national pride, were revised at Walters’ direction. The Republican official has spent much of his first term in office not only lauding Trump but also feuding with teachers’ unions and local school superintendents.

“The left has been pushing left-wing indoctrination in the classroom,” Walters said. “We’re moving it back to actually understanding history … and I’m unapologetic about that.”

History according to whose warped pathetic viewpoint?

ATTENTION & WARNING, employers, colleges, and universities: Students from Oklahoma may require extension remedial coursework to mitigate ill effects of institutionalized Trump derangement syndrome.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/17/oklahoma-high-schools-election-conspiracy-theories

The Telegraph: If you think it’s alarming now, just wait for Trump to wreck the bond market

The White House’s push for for expanded presidential power threatens US economic stability

Donald Trump is systematically purging every US government institution, a pattern familiar to anybody who has studied the caudillo regimes of Latin America, or the playbook of today’s Putin-Orbán-Erdoğan prototypes.

It is a racing certainty that he will soon do the same to the Federal Reserve, forcing the central bank to cut interest rates into the teeth of rising inflation, with epic consequences for the world’s dollarised financial system and for €39 trillion (£33 trillion) of offshore dollar debt contracts and swaps.

Late last week he fired the head of the National Security Agency and its top officials at the behest of Laura Loomer, a fringe conspiracy theorist, who whispered into Trump’s ear that they were disloyal to the Maga movement.

He has already fired the heads of the FBI’s intelligence division, its counterterrorism division and criminal investigations division, as well as the heads of the Washington and New York offices.

He has fired the top brass of the US military, starting with a preemptive strike on the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. An earlier chairman – General Mark Milley – refused to ratify Trump’s attempted coup d’etat on Jan 6 2021.

“We don’t take an oath to a king, or to a tyrant or dictator, and we don’t take an oath to a wannabe dictator. We take an oath to the constitution,” said Milley in his parting shot.

But Trump also fired the three judge advocates general, who are legally independent by Congressional statute and have the authority to decide which military orders should be disobeyed – such as Trump’s order to “just shoot” American protesters, on American soil, during the Black Lives Matter saga.

That obstacle will not recur. Pete Hegseth, the defence secretary, said the three judges had been sacked to stop them posing any “roadblocks to orders given by the commander-in-chief”.

You can go through the list, agency by agency, extending to the universities and private law firms, and even to the muzzled editorials of some of America’s once great newspapers: the purge is Bolshevik in ambition.

Does anybody in their right mind think that Trump will spare the Fed’s Jerome Powell as the two men gear up for an almighty clash over US monetary policy? “CUT INTEREST RATES, JEROME, AND STOP PLAYING POLITICS!” bellowed Trump in capital letters on Truth Social on Friday.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/04/08/trump-sell-off-is-bad-wait-until-wreck-us-bond-market