Trump Reportedly Weighs Executive Order Targeting Nonprofits

The provision, signed into law in 2003 by President George W. Bush, allows a president to designate an organization in an executive order as supporting or engaging in terrorism. The law also bars organizations from challenging a designation or suspension in proceedings concerning federal tax liability. The report did not identify groups that would be targeted.

Administration allies in Congress have signaled interest in pursuing left-leaning organizations, including George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Council on American-Islamic Relations. CAIR was forced to cease operations in Florida on Thursday after Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis gave it a state-level “terrorism” designation.

In September 2025, weeks after the assassination of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk, Trump signed National Security Presidential Memorandum 7. It associated “anti-capitalism,” “anti-Christianity,” “extremism on migration, race, and gender,” and hostility toward traditional American views on family, religion and morality with “domestic terrorism.” The memo directed the IRS and other federal agencies to investigate nonprofits and their funders for alleged links to political violence.

Shanna Singh Hughey, a policy strategist at Protect Democracy, said the memo’s vague language could give the administration broad power to target political opponents. She told Inside Philanthropy that scrutiny could reach organizations connected to people accused of violence, including board members and staff, if a group were accused of funding or facilitating it. She also said governments seeking to consolidate power can use available tools to silence organizations that hold them accountable.

Trump named Stephen Miller, the memo’s chief architect, as his new White House chief of staff on the same day as the reported plan. Miller has vowed to “dismantle and take on” what he called radical left organizations fomenting violence. At a State Department ministerial on terrorism in July, he said NSPM-7 empowered the administration to “disrupt, identify, defund, debank, arrest, and prosecute” organizations it deemed terrorist. He has also described the Democratic Party as a “domestic extremist organization” and said leftists were “enemies of civilization.”