Critics say the Trump administration’s focus is disproportionate, as analysts raise alarms about the growing strength of far-right movements.
The State Department on Wednesday designated three groups based in Europe, including two that advocate Palestinian rights, as transnational terrorist organizations.
The move is part of the Trump administration’s fight against what it calls a “resurgence of far-left political terrorism” worldwide, a focus that many security experts say is disproportionate.
In a statement, the department said that it would impose sanctions on Palestine Action, which is based in Britain and organizes acts of support for Palestinians and opposition to Israeli policies; Masar Badil, another pro-Palestinian group with branches in Western Europe and Canada; and Autistici/Inventati, known as A/I Collective, which is based in Italy and offers free digital tools to leftist activists around the world.
Even as many Western leaders and analysts raise alarms about the growing strength of far right-wing movements with violent tendencies, the Trump administration has mainly targeted what it calls an even more dangerous alternative on the left. In July, Secretary of State Marco Rubio hosted an international summit on the subject, which the State Department billed as a response to “a deliberate, ideologically motivated strategy to destabilize free societies by violently targeting our political and economic systems” on the part of far-left groups.
That threat has long been “a blind spot in the international community’s counterterrorism focus,” the department said in a statement at the time.
Many conservatives have been galvanized by the issue by recent events such as pro-Palestinian demonstrations seen by critics as sympathetic to Hamas and hostile to Israel, anti-Trump protests in U.S. cities that have sometimes turned violent and the assassination of the pro-Trump activist Charlie Kirk in September 2025.
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