Republican members of a Senate Judiciary subcommittee used a hearing on political violence this week to advance a narrative that could justify sweeping crackdowns on progressive nonprofits, even as testimony revealed the Trump administration has dismantled evidence-based violence prevention programs and deleted government research showing right-wing extremism poses the greater threat.
The hearing, titled “Politically Violent Attacks: A Threat to Our Constitutional Order,” included testimony about proposed legislation, championed by Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) that would allow the US Justice Department and law enforcement authorities to pursue RICO charges—prosecutions under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act—against organizations that “support” protests and “rioting” via anything from helping to organize protests to establishing legal defense funds and bail funds to support organizations and individuals engaged in protest.
Cruz has explicitly called out progressive or left-wing protests and groups, including anti-ICE protests, the recent “No Kings” protests, and protests against Israel’s war in Gaza as the intended target of the legislation, despite the fact that such protests have been largely peaceful—and that available data show that political violence is far more likely to come from the political Right.
In fact, the Department of Justice, under the Trump administration, has removed from its website an internal study that found the greatest threats of political and ideological violence in the United States come from right-wing actors.
As Daniel Hodges, a former member of the National Guard and current Washington, DC, police officer who defended the Capitol on January 6, 2020, testified in the hearing:
The current administration is doing whatever it can to downplay the threat that right-wing violence presents to the United States, including literally erasing data. Between September 12th and the 13th of this year, the Department of Justice deleted their own study from their website, which came to the conclusion that right-wing extremism poses a much greater threat than left-wing extremism. I quote now the opening paragraph of this National Institute of Justice report published just last year: “Militant, nationalistic, white supremacist violent extremism has increased in the United States. In fact, the number of far-right attacks continues to outpace all other types of terrorism and domestic violence extremism.”
Speaking on the Senate floor, Cruz ignored these findings, and instead painted a sweeping picture of the political Left, asserting, “It is many of the same networks, unfortunately, whether they are open border radicals, whether they are anticapitalist communists, whether they are jihadists,” and made an obvious reference to the Open Society Foundations, founded by billionaire George Soros, saying “At the end of the day, the thug who is engaged in violence is committing criminal acts. But the billionaire who is trying to tear down this country by writing checks to fund it, bears in many ways far greater responsibility.”
Targeting the Funding Networks
The drumbeat of claims that left-leaning organizations and networks are sponsors of domestic terrorism and political violence was carried by a panel of witnesses, most from right-wing thinktanks and similar ideological organizations, who attempted to conflate progressive causes and organizations funding them with support of terrorism and violence.
Chad Wolf, former acting Department of Homeland Security secretary and now with the conservative America First Policy Institute, used his testimony in the hearing to call for a “whole-of-government investigation” into the financing of (progressive) protest movements. Right-wing pundit Michael Knowles, who in 2023 called for the “eradication of transgenderism,” painted a picture of progressive organizations as “organized left-wing crime,” speaking to Cruz’s legislative efforts to target progressive organizations with racketeering prosecution for (allegedly) supporting progressive protests.
Sign up for our free newsletters
Subscribe to NPQ's newsletters to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.
By signing up, you agree to our privacy policy and terms of use, and to receive messages from NPQ and our partners.
Chilling Speech and Assembly
Despite being dominated by the Senate’s Republican majority, the hearing did feature testimony contradicting the Right’s claims of alleged left-wing ties to political violence—and aired chilling examples of the Trump administration’s crackdowns on free speech and assembly.
Daniel Hodges, the DC Metropolitan police officer, testified that “a permanent resident was arrested without a warrant and is being threatened with deportation simply for his politics. A Tennessee man was arrested and is being held on $2 million bail for sharing a Trump meme on social media.”
Ranking committee member Senator Peter Welch (D-VT) connected such patterns to historical episodes of similar suppression.
“The Alien and Sedition Acts made it illegal to criticize the government under the guise of national security. My predecessor, Matthew Lyon, Vermont congressman in 1797, went to jail. Because he criticized President Adams,” noted Welch.
Welch continued: “In the 20s, we saw the Palmer Raids and what happened there with illegal searches and seizures without arrests and without warrants and other constitutional attacks on the rights of the organized labor and of everyday citizens. Under the name of going after ‘the far left.’”
What This Means for Nonprofits
The hearing speaks to a multipronged strategy by the Trump administration, its Republican allies in Congress, and an extensive right-wing infrastructure, with serious implications for progressive civil society:
Legal Framework: The Stop Funders Act would create new tools to prosecute nonprofit funders under RICO statutes traditionally reserved for organized crime.
Ideological Targeting: Explicit focus on “left-wing” funding networks and “tax-exempt nonprofits” supporting protest movements creates vulnerability for organizations engaged in social justice work.
Immediate Risks: Nonprofits that fund bail funds, provide legal support to protesters, or support immigration advocacy may face particular scrutiny under expanded terrorism and RICO frameworks.
