US Declares Palestine Action “Terrorist” Group in Latest McCarthyist Crackdown

The Trump administration announced that it is designating U.K.-based Palestine Action and two other left wing groups as global “terrorist” groups on Wednesday, escalating its McCarthyist crackdown against the left and the Palestine solidarity movement.

The administration is placing sanctions on Palestine Action, a direct action group that has worked to disrupt the pipeline of arms shipments to Israel amid the Gaza genocide. Trump has also targeted Italian tech collective Autistici/Inventati, which the State Department claims has ties to U.S. activists, and Masar Badil, an international group that works toward Palestinian liberation.

The sanctions are being issued under an executive order signed by President George W. Bush, which declared a national emergency to give the government the ability to target terrorist groups shortly after the attacks of September 11, 2001.

The sanctions freeze the assets of the groups in the U.S., including bank accounts, as well as prohibit individuals and institutions in the U.S. from doing business with them. International officials who have faced similar financial sanctions have described being completely unable to access any financial goods and services because of the U.S.’s heavy influence on the global banking and finance systems.

The Treasury Department described the sanctions against Palestine Action as a “complement” to the U.K.’s ban on the group in 2025 under Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer. Human rights groups, including the UN, warned at the time that the U.K.’s designation of the group as a “terrorist” entity was an extremist act meant to chill dissent. The U.K.’s proscription is still being reviewed by the country’s Supreme Court under an appeal by the group’s co-founder, Huda Ammouri.

“By banning a direct action protest group under terrorism legislation for the first time in British history, Keir Starmer’s government has created a blueprint for authoritarian governments around the world to suppress political dissent, and to criminalise British citizens who travel or live abroad,” said Ammouri, per The Guardian.

The Trump administration’s action is the newest assault in an all-of-government campaign to silence, dismantle, debank, and criminalize left-wing dissenters, as part of the fascist National Security Presidential Memorandum-7 (NSPM-7) and anti-“political terrorism” initiatives that administration officials have accelerated in recent months. The administration has pledged to dismantle all left-wing groups under a wide-ranging definition of “criminal” speech that includes such broad categories as “anti-Americanism” and “anti-capitalism.”

“Far-left extremists, their fronts, and their enablers should be on notice: We will bring the full weight of our economic tools to bear,” said Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent in a statement. “Political terrorism has no place in our society, and we will continue to cut the financial lifelines of these groups until they are eliminated.”

There is not a formal mechanism to designate groups as “domestic terrorist organizations,” but the administration has been targeting international groups as a seeming work-around.

Indeed, the State Department claimed that Portland, Oregon-based anti-fascist group Rose City Antifa has ties to the Autistici/Inventati collective, supposedly using the group’s tools to “disseminate doxing lists and release illegally obtained personal information of Federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement.”

Advocates for Palestinian rights decried the designations, saying that they are the latest attempt by the administration to silence anyone opposed to Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

The “clear goal” of the move is “targeting a few to silence the many,” said UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine Francesca Albanese.

“They’re desperately trying to destroy every effective movement against genocide to protect Israel,” said Palestinian journalist Abubaker Abed. “There’s no democracy in the West.”