Bring burner phones on overseas trips. Use encrypted apps for communication. Don’t cross international borders with laptops. Beef up office security. Hire more lawyers.
These are just some of the precautions that environmental groups have taken following threats by the Trump administration to investigate them — all under the auspices that organizations such as the Sierra Club and the Center for Biological Diversity are part of an anti-fascist network that’s fomenting political violence.
Every environmental group contacted by POLITICO’s E&E News denounced the use of political violence in all its forms. But at least three organizations said they felt compelled to take additional safeguards in response to moves by the Trump administration against its ideological rivals and perceived political opponents.
None of the green groups would speak on the record about these steps, for fear of either provoking the White House or revealing too much about their plans. Yet they defended them as necessary — even as they put faith in the rule of law.
“These misguided and dangerous attacks on our First Amendment rights will ultimately fail and backfire,” said Denae Ávila-Dickson, a spokesperson for the Sunrise Movement.
The added safeguards come as the Trump administration increasingly has gone after its perceived enemies, including former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James.
Those efforts have accelerated since the Sept. 10 murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. President Donald Trump recently encouraged the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice to probe groups it perceives as anti-fascist, including environmental groups.
That desire was codified in a Sept. 25 memo issued by Trump that directed the National Joint Terrorism Task Force to “disband and uproot networks, entities, and organizations that promote organized violence.” The memo — known as NSPM-7 — creates a broad definition of political violence, which critics say gives the administration wide latitude to pursue its opponents.
According to the memo, the “common threads animating this violent conduct include anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity; support for the overthrow of the United States Government; extremism on migration, race, and gender; and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.”
The White House took it one step further this month when Trump convened an Oct. 8 roundtable to discuss anti-fascist or “Antifa” organizations, which he said were helping to drive a “very serious left-wing terror threat in our country.”
At the event, Trump directed the nation’s top law enforcement agencies to review accusations by two conservative groups. The groups claimed in two separate reports that several left-leaning movements and organizations — including climate activism, homeless advocacy, the American Civil Liberties Union and the organizers of the No Kings demonstrations — are part of a larger Antifa network.
One of the reports, called “Riot Inc.,” was produced by the Government Accountability Institute, which was founded by Trump ally Steve Bannon and bankrolled by Rebekah Mercer, a major Trump campaign donor. The other was produced by the Capital Research Center, which is funded by a series of conservative foundations and conservative dark money groups that also battle against climate regulations.
The Riot Inc. document attempts to link dozens of left-leaning groups to what report author Seamus Bruner has called the “protest industrial complex.”
It centers on groups that have ties to Arabella Advisors, a for-profit consulting firm closely associated with the Democratic Party. Arabella Advisors manages “dark money” funds that support Democratic politicians and causes — and allows donors to remain anonymous.
Among the groups the Riot Inc. report claims as having links to Arabella Advisors are the Sierra Club, the League of Conservation Voters, 350.org, the Sunrise Movement, the Center for Biological Diversity and NextGen Climate.
Arabella has long been a target for conservative groups because it helped power President Joe Biden’s 2020 electoral victory. In a statement, Arabella officials stressed that the group condemns all forms of political violence and that it does not fund or organize violent protests.
“Arabella is a private business that provides professional services to foundations, philanthropists, and nonprofit organizations in full compliance with the law,” the group stated.
Critics say the Riot Inc. report essentially provides a road map for the Trump administration to harass groups that support the Democratic Party or liberal causes — particularly those that provide funding — by claiming it is tracking a “progressive dark money network that has perfected the mounting of made-to-order protests” that can turn violent.
Said Kieran Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity: “These right wing think tanks know that’s enough to trigger this unstable authoritarian president into action.”
For its part, the Capital Research Center report focuses on fewer organizations, but one group it flags is the Sunrise Movement, which made its name as a youth-driven climate advocacy group.
That report claims Sunrise is part of a network of left-wing groups that promote political violence.
According to the report: “Sunrise, also known as Sunrise Movement, is primarily focused on environmentalism but also helps build financial and popular support for anarchist terrorists, wishes for Israel’s destruction, has some pro-Hamas chapters, seeks the abolishment of police and prisons and condemns tourism to Hawaii as ‘colonization.'”
A Sunrise spokesperson previously told E&E News that “Trump is directing his cronies to concoct baseless allegations against anyone who dares to stand up to him.”
Scott Walter, the president of the Capital Research Center, has met with White House officials to brief them on left-leaning groups, their donors and the way they raise money.
“We think we’ve documented a lot of smoke,” he said in an interview. And he noted that his group has documented instances that could be used by the administration to revoke liberal nonprofits’ tax exempt status. “Authorities can investigate to see if there’s a fire that endangers tax-exemptions,” he said.
Nonprofits cannot “engage in illegal activity, including civil disobedience that violates laws, even if it’s ‘only’ blocking traffic for a few hours,” Walter added. “It’s not hard to show some of the more radical environmental groups like Sunrise and Extinction Rebellion have encouraged that.”
He said criminal prosecutions would be harder to land, and Walter has urged the administration to proceed carefully with criminal charges. Still, he connected the protesting techniques used by some left-leaning groups to what he described as potential illegal activity.
“If you do things like setting up bail funds and legal defense funds ahead of a protest, and the protest is violent, you have arguably aided and abetted the violence by signaling that consequences for law-breaking will be diminished,” he said.
A White House spokesperson did not answer questions from E&E News about whether the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security or the Department of Justice were probing environmental groups. But the spokesperson broadly defended the administration’s efforts against liberal groups.
“Left-wing organizations have fueled violent riots, organized attacks against law enforcement officers, coordinated illegal doxing campaigns, arranged drop points for weapons and riot materials, and more,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement. “The Trump Administration will get to the bottom of this vast network inciting violence in American communities, and the President’s executive actions to address left-wing violence will employ a whole-of-government approach to end any illegal activities.”
The White House, however, offered no evidence that environmental groups were engaging in such activities.
Trump and other senior administration officials, such as deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, have said their investigations into Democrat-aligned groups and funders are about quelling political violence. Miller has been one of the most vocal proponents for using the weight of the federal government to go after liberal groups and their donors, which he has claimed are part of a “vast domestic terror movement.”
After hearing about the Riot Inc. report at the White House roundtable earlier this month, Trump said “these are people that do not have good intentions for the country and it’s treasonous, probably.”
He was referring to groups listed in the report, as well as the entities that provide some of their funding.
Bruner, an author of the Riot Inc. report, told Trump at the White House roundtable that his group was putting out the information because “rioting has many divisions.”
“We have identified dozens of radical organizations, not just the decentralized Antifa organizations,” he said. “These would be the lawyer groups. These would be the groups that advocate for calling good honest Americans, fascists, etc.”
On a podcast for the Daily Wire, Bruner said he’s already had follow-up meetings with Trump administration officials about the report. Bruner said he has spoken with “homeland security investigations” and that they are “very interested in the follow the money aspect” of his report.
The Government Accountability Institute did not respond to requests for comment.
Environmental groups have rejected the administration’s accusations and have made clear they do not endorse political violence.
“These so-called reports are filled with baseless claims clearly designed to give the Trump administration a pretext to silence progressive organizations that are advocating for the American people,” said Ávila-Dickson, the Sunrise spokesperson.
The Sierra Club has condemned the administration’s efforts to crack down on liberal groups as “fear tactics and intimidation to suppress criticism and opposition.”
“The Sierra Club proudly celebrates and exercises our Constitutional rights,” spokesperson Jonathon Berman said in a statement. “We invite Donald Trump to familiarize himself with these rights and uphold them.”
The Wall Street Journal reported last week that the administration is preparing to enact sweeping changes at the IRS to make it easier to go after left-leaning groups and pursue criminal charges.
The news prompted pushback from Senate Democrats, who sent a letter to acting IRS Commissioner Scott Bessent, who also serves as Trump’s Treasury Secretary.
“You should immediately end all attempts to politicize the IRS, including attempts to use the agency to attack Americans who have different political views,” wrote Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer and several other senators.
