How the White House Can Crack Down on Radical Groups—Legally

The assassination of Charlie Kirk has turned the Trump administration’s focus to left-wing extremism. Deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller has vowed to “identify, disrupt, dismantle and destroy” the left-wing “networks” that he claims foster political violence. “We are going to channel all of the anger that we have over the organized campaign that led to this assassination,” Miller pledged, “to uproot and dismantle these terrorist networks.” Attorney General Pam Bondi declared that the Department of Justice would “target” those who engage in “hate speech.”

These imprecise (and in Bondi’s case, constitutionally indefensible) statements signal an emerging effort in need of discipline and legal grounding. Thankfully, the White House has constitutional and effective tools at its disposal to address the uptick in political violence.

Two realities should inform the Trump administration’s response. First, it’s hard to pinpoint to what extent the behavior of extremist groups “led to” Kirk’s assassination. But that doesn’t mean they didn’t play a role. Revolutionary organizations lionize violence and minimize the perceived costs of breaking political “rules.”

Second, domestic extremist networks are not interested in using the democratic process to fight for policy change. Rather, they celebrate and encourage revolutionary violence, in part because they hold unpalatable views that can only be advanced through intimidation. Some operate in concert with hostile foreign entities, while others simply flout state and federal law.

The White House does not need to target extremist groups for speech—“hate speech” or otherwise—but for deeds. These groups break laws all the time, often blatantly. Their members’ worldview tends to lead them to do so. The Trump administration, therefore, can disrupt the forms of lawbreaking integral to these extremists’ strategy—and, in turn, cripple the networks that support political violence.

One powerful tool at the administration’s disposal is the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, designed to prosecute organized crime. The feds should take note of the names that repeatedly pop up when hordes of activists block a highway or vandalize federal property—not to mention the nonprofits that fund these lawbreakers. Doing so would yield dozens of subjects for investigation. Providing money or materials, telling individuals where to go and when, or promising to help conceal the crime can all be part of a criminal conspiracy.

Another approach is to investigate organizations that systematically deprive Americans of their constitutional rights by blocking roads and access to buildings. Federal civil-rights law protects Americans’ right to travel freely, assemble peacefully without fear of mob intimidation, and access houses of worship. Those who materially support or are otherwise involved in a demonstration that impedes those rights are legitimate targets for federal investigators.

The administration should also investigate extremist groups that provide material support to designated terrorist organizations. Just as the White House sanctioned Samidoun for operating as a terrorism front, it should scrutinize organizations that have partnered with Samidoun and that share the group’s stated methods and objectives.

While the law surrounding material support for terrorism is largely unsettled, Supreme Court precedent gives the government broad latitude to prosecute defendants who try to further the aims of designated foreign terrorist organizations. The Trump administration should use this latitude to investigate organizations that have both supported terrorist groups and fomented revolutionary fervor against mainstream political figures. To support that effort, the IRS should audit suspicious funding patterns that may violate terror-financing bans or laws against garden-variety fraud.

Indeed, the IRS can play a decisive role in exposing the shady world of radical leftist dark money. Many extremist organizations embed themselves within a deliberately confusing web of interlocking 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) entities, which constantly shuffle money between parent organizations, subsidiaries, and affiliated groups to obscure their funding sources and activities. This financial shell game makes the groups increasingly hard to track, subverting the transparency requirements that Congress imposed as a condition of favorable tax treatment.

If it’s unclear where an organization’s money comes from, where it goes, or how several organizations circulate money among themselves, the Justice Department should investigate. Such scrutiny will hit these groups where it hurts, as radical organizations, faced with civil lawsuits, often do their utmost to settle and avoid discovery, lest the authorities get a glimpse into their finances, personnel, and communications.

A book could be written on the regulatory changes that can stamp out the radical nonprofit network. But for now, one proposed change will suffice: the administration should reform the arcane but crucial tax provision known as the fiscal sponsorship loophole, which has let civil terrorist outfits maintain a phantom existence without proper oversight or accountability. Fiscal sponsorship allows new nonprofits to get off the ground by attaching themselves to existing organizations as essentially subsidiary entities. The sponsored nonprofit can funnel all its affairs through its principal and is not required to file a separate disclosures document. Limiting organizations’ ability to use this arrangement or imposing transparency requirements would help reveal the funding, personnel, and partnerships of many dodgy groups.

None of these actions would involve targeting “hate speech,” and the federal government would not be punishing groups and their leaders for what they say. But that doesn’t mean that these leaders’ words are unimportant. Federal officials should pay careful attention to their speech in order to understand and document why they do what they do—which consistently tends to be illegal, evasive, and designed to encourage and facilitate political violence.

That pattern of criminal conduct is what demands a federal crackdown. The First Amendment protects even offensive speech, but it has never protected criminal conspiracy, material support for terrorism, systematic deprivation of others’ civil rights, or nonprofit fraud. And while it’s too quick to call for prosecutions, the feds have more than enough initial evidence to start asking questions—and to make these infamously opaque groups crack open their books.

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