President Donald Trump and Vice-President JD Vance. Photo / Doug Mills, The New York Times)
The White House is threatening to unleash the power of the United States Government to punish an alleged left-wing network that funds and incites violence.
President Donald Trump and top advisers are seizing on Charlie Kirk’s killing to make broad and unsubstantiated claims about political opponents.
Investigators were still working to identify a motive in the death of Kirk, a prominent conservative activist who was shot last week in Utah.
The Republican Governor of Utah, Spencer Cox, has said that the suspect had a “leftist ideology” and that he acted alone.
But Trump and his top allies suggested that the suspect was part of a co-ordinated movement that was fomenting violence against conservatives, without presenting evidence that such a network existed.
America has seen a wave of violence across the political spectrum, targeting Democrats and Republicans. Trump has downplayed violence from right-wing or other supporters.
He said that he would like to designate a range of groups, including the loosely affiliated group of far-left anti-fascism activists, known as “antifa”, as domestic terrorists and bring racketeering cases against people funding protests.
“We have some pretty radical groups and they got away with murder,” Trump said, without naming additional groups.
He added that he was talking to the Attorney-General, Pam Bondi, about bringing charges under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organisations (Rico) Act against “some of the people that you’ve been reading about that have been putting up millions and millions of dollars for agitation”.
He did not specify who or what he was talking about.
It was unclear yesterday how these plans would unfold, or how the White House could legally formalise such an effort without curbing First Amendment rights.
Democrats have warned that the Trump White House could be using Kirk’s killing as a pretence to go after political dissent, not just hate speech or violence.
“Pay attention. Something dark might be coming,” Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut wrote on social media on Monday.
“The murder of Charlie Kirk could have united Americans to confront political violence. Instead, Trump and his anti-democratic radicals look to be readying a campaign to destroy dissent.”
Representative Greg Casar, (D-Texas), said yesterday that while the killing of Kirk was “heinous”, so were the killings of Melissa Hortman, a Democratic state lawmaker in Minnesota, and her husband, who were on a hit list of dozens of left-wing figures; the hammer assault on the husband of former Speaker Nancy Pelosi; and the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol by a pro-Trump mob.
“He cannot be allowed to use the horrible murder of Charlie Kirk as pretext to go after peaceful political opposition,” Casar said in a statement.
Two senior Administration officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal planning, said that Cabinet secretaries and federal department heads were working to identify organisations that funded or supported violence against conservatives.
The goal, they said, was to categorise as domestic terrorism left-wing activity that they said led to violence, a continuation of existing efforts by federal agencies to try to punish liberal groups they have accused of funding or otherwise supporting violent protests.
One tactic has been to target the tax-exempt status of non-profits that are critical of Trump or conservatives.
An Administration official said officials would be investigating people behind the recent burning of Tesla vehicles in apparent protest against Elon Musk, and assaults against immigration agents, and would be looking to draw links between those episodes and organised liberal groups.
Several other officials, from Vice-President JD Vance on down, made it clear yesterday that they believed political violence was a liberal problem and not a conservative one.
They used Kirk’s podcast, with Vance as guest host, to announce that they would be cracking down on what they called leftist non-governmental organisations, and that they would use every available lever of the federal government to do so.
“With God as my witness, we are going to use every resource we have at the Department of Justice, Homeland Security, and throughout this government to identify, disrupt, eliminate, and destroy this network and make America safe again for the American people,” said Stephen Miller, the President’s top policy adviser.
From his office at the White House, Vance invited other senior members of the Administration to praise Kirk and decry the “far left”. The show was broadcast on the television screens in the White House briefing room and in several West Wing offices.
And while he acknowledged that “our side of the aisle certainly has its crazies”, Vance placed the blame for most political violence on “proud members of the far-left”.
“We can thank God that most Democrats don’t share these attitudes, and I do, while acknowledging that something has gone very wrong with a lunatic fringe, a minority, but a growing and powerful minority on the far-left,” he said.
Vance said the Administration would not go after “constitutionally protected speech” but rather what he described as a network of non-profit non-governmental organisations that “foments, facilitates, and engages in violence”.
In the wake of Kirk’s killing, Trump immediately blamed the “radical left” for much of the political violence in the country and appeared to excuse violence on the right by saying that it was driven by people who “don’t want to see crime”.
The President also promised investigations into who was funding and organising the left, suggesting the violence was somehow co-ordinated.
In recent days, Trump has renewed calls for prosecutors to file racketeering charges against George Soros, one of the Democratic Party’s biggest donors.
Trump and his allies have long claimed without evidence that Soros foments violent protests. A spokesperson for Soros’ organisation, Open Society Foundations, denied the allegations and called the threats “outrageous”.
Trump has previously taken steps to mobilise federal law enforcement against his perceived political enemies.
In the first term, the Trump Administration shifted resources to target the “radical left”, even though law enforcement officials warned about the threat of right-wing extremism.
While the Administration has called attention to recent violent attacks targeting Republicans or perpetrated by those who have displayed leftist ideology, national security officials have said political violence is broadly a problem in America.
In 2025, a threat assessment issued by the Department of Homeland Security said extremists were “motivated by various ideologies”, including “a combination of racial, religious, gender, or anti-government grievances; conspiracy theories; and personalised factors”.
Juliette Kayyem, a former assistant secretary of homeland security in the Obama Administration, said such violent acts went beyond political affiliation of any party.
“These guys have no affiliation,” Kayyem said. “They are, you know, a combination of dystopia, irony, and violence.”
Almost immediately after the shooting of Kirk, several Republican lawmakers started calling for action against the left.
Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who before she was elected to office had repeatedly suggested support for executing top Democratic politicians, said on social media yesterday that “millions on the left celebrated and made clear they want all of us dead” after Kirk’s death.
Calling for a “peaceful national divorce”, she added that America was “no longer safe for any of us”.
Representative Derrick Van Orden of Wisconsin, who blamed the media and Democrats for Kirk’s shooting even before a suspect had been identified, has essentially turned his X social media account into a bulletin board for reports of private citizens who have criticised Kirk’s remarks or seemed to celebrate his death.
He has shared posts that have called for the firing of teachers, an airline pilot and a paralegal.
And Representative Nancy Mace, (R-South Carolina), who has drifted further to the right during her time in Washington, pressed the Education Department in a letter on Saturday to withhold federal funding from any school that did not “take immediate administrative action” against employees who had celebrated or made light of Kirk’s death.
In her letter, Mace — who is running in a contested primary for South Carolina governor — decried a rise in political violence in the country but cited only examples in which Republican figures were targeted.
“We don’t fund hate,” Mace said in a social media post yesterday in which she shared her letter. “We fire it.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Katie Rogers and Zolan Kanno-Youngs
Photograph by: Doug Mills
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