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WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump is escalating threats to crack down on what he describes as the “radical left” following Charlie Kirk’s assassination, stirring fears that his administration is trying to harness outrage over the killing to suppress political opposition.
Without establishing any link to last week’s shooting, the Republican president and members of his administration have discussed classifying some groups as domestic terrorists, ordering racketeering investigations and revoking tax-exempt status for progressive nonprofits. The White House pointed to Indivisible, a progressive activist network, and the Open Society Foundations, founded by George Soros, as potential subjects of scrutiny.
Although administration officials insist that their focus is preventing violence, critics see an extension of Trump’s campaign of retribution against his political enemies and an erosion of free speech rights. Any moves to weaken liberal groups could also shift the political landscape ahead of next year’s midterm elections, which will determine control of Congress and statehouses across the country.
“The radical left has done tremendous damage to the country,” Trump told reporters on Tuesday morning when leaving for a state visit to the United Kingdom. “But we’re fixing it.”
Trump has sometimes made similar threats without following through. But now there’s renewed interest fueled by anger over the killing of Kirk, a conservative activist who was a prominent supporter of Trump and friends with many of his advisers.
Dozens of nonprofit leaders, representing organizations including the Ford Foundation, the Omidyar Network and the MacArthur Foundation, released a joint letter saying “we reject attempts to exploit political violence to mischaracterize our good work or restrict our fundamental freedoms.”
“Attempts to silence speech, criminalize opposing viewpoints, and misrepresent and limit charitable giving undermine our democracy and harm all Americans,” they wrote.
White House blames ‘terrorist networks’
Authorities said they believe the suspect in Kirk’s assassination acted alone, and they charged him with murder on Tuesday.
However, administration officials have repeatedly made sweeping statements about the need for broader investigations and punishments related to Kirk’s death.
Attorney General Pam Bondi blamed “left-wing radicals” for the shooting and said “they will be held accountable.” Stephen Miller, a top policy adviser, said there was an “organized campaign that led to this assassination.”
Miller’s comments came during a conversation with Vice President JD Vance, who was guest-hosting Kirk’s talk show from his ceremonial office in the White House on Monday.
Miller said he was feeling “focused, righteous anger,” and “we are going to channel all of the anger” as they work to “uproot and dismantle these terrorist networks” by using “every resource we have.”
Vance blamed “crazies on the far left” for saying the White House would “go after constitutionally protected speech.” Instead, he said, “We’re going to go after the NGO network that foments, facilitates and engages in violence.”
Asked for examples, the White House pointed to demonstrations where police officers and federal agents have been injured, as well as the distribution of goggles and face masks during protests over immigration enforcement in Los Angeles.
There was also a report that Indivisible offered to reimburse people who gathered at Tesla dealerships to oppose Elon Musk’s leadership of the Department of Government Efficiency. Sometimes cars were later vandalized.
Indivisible’s leadership has said “political violence is a cancer on democracy” and said that their own organization has “been threatened by right-wingers all year.”
Nonprofits brace for impact
Trump’s executive actions have rattled nonprofit groups with attempts to limit their work or freeze federal funding, but more aggressive proposals to revoke tax-exempt status never materialized.
Now the mood has darkened as nonprofits recruit lawyers and bolster the security of their offices and staff.
“It’s a heightened atmosphere in the wake of political violence, and organizations who fear they might be unjustly targeted in its wake are making sure that they are ready,” said Lisa Gilbert, co-president of the government watchdog group Public Citizen.
Trump made retribution against political enemies a cornerstone of his comeback campaign, and he’s mobilized the federal government to reshape law firms, universities and other traditionally independent institutions. He also ordered an investigation into ActBlue, an online liberal fundraising platform.
Some nonprofits expect the administration to focus on prominent funders like Soros, a liberal billionaire who has been a conservative target for years, to send a chill through the donor community.
Trump recently said Soros should face a racketeering investigation, though he didn’t make any specific allegations. The Open Society Foundations condemned violence and Kirk’s assassination in a statement and said “it is disgraceful to use this tragedy for political ends to dangerously divide Americans and attack the First Amendment.”
Sen. Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut, wrote on social media that “the murder of Charlie Kirk could have united Americans to confront political violence” but “Trump and his anti-democratic radicals look to be readying a campaign to destroy dissent.”
White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said “it is disingenuous and false for Democrats to say administration actions are about political speech.” She said the goal is to “target those committing criminal acts and hold them accountable.”
Republicans back Trump’s calls for investigations
Trump’s concerns about political violence are noticeably partisan. He described people who rioted at the US Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, as “hostages” and “patriots,” and he pardoned 1,500 of them on his first day back in the Oval Office. He also mocked House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi after an attack on her husband.
When Trump condemned Kirk’s killing in a video message last week, he mentioned several examples of “radical left political violence” but ignored attacks on Democrats.
Asked on Monday about the killing of Minnesota state Rep. Melissa Hortman over the summer, Trump said “I’m not familiar” with the case.
“Trump shrugs at right-wing political violence,” said Ezra Levin, the co-executive director of Indivisible, in a newsletter.
Some conservative commentators have cheered on a potential crackdown. Laura Loomer, a conspiracy theorist with a long record of bigoted comments, said “let’s shut the left down.” She also said that she wants Trump “to be the ‘dictator’ the left thinks he is.”
Katie Miller, the wife of Stephen Miller and a former administration spokeswoman, asked Bondi whether there would be “more law enforcement going after these groups” and “putting cuffs on people.”
“We will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech,” Bondi said. “And that’s across the aisle.”
Her comments sparked a backlash from across the political spectrum, since even hate speech is generally considered to be protected under the First Amendment. Bondi was more circumspect on social media on Tuesday morning, saying they would focus on “hate speech that crosses the line into threats of violence.”
Trump is getting more support from Republicans in Congress. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and others proposed legislation that would enable the Justice Department to use racketeering laws, originally envisioned to combat organized crime, to prosecute violent protesters and the groups that support them.
Rep. Chip Roy of Texas wants the House to create a special committee to investigate the nonprofit groups, saying “we must follow the money to identify the perpetrators of the coordinated anti-American assaults being carried out against us.”

WARSAW: The wife of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny said Wednesday that laboratory analysis of smuggled biological samples found he was killed by poisoning while incarcerated at an Arctic prison in February 2024.
Navalny, President Vladimir Putin’s most formidable critic for years, died in mysterious circumstances while serving a 19-year prison sentence on a string of charges widely seen as retribution for his opposition.
The charismatic anti-corruption campaigner had rallied hundreds of thousands across Russia in anti-Kremlin protests as he exposed the alleged ill-gotten gains of Putin’s inner circle.
His allies allege he was murdered in prison, and Moscow has never fully explained the causes of his death, saying only that he fell ill while walking in the prison yard on February 16, 2024.
Before he was buried, his wife Yulia Navalnaya said his allies “were able to obtain and securely transfer biological samples of Alexei abroad.”
“Laboratories in two countries came to the conclusion that Alexei was killed. Specifically: poisoned,” she said in a video posted on social media.
She did not divulge details of what samples were obtained nor the results of the analysis, but she urged the labs to independently release their results and to specify which poison they believe was used.
Navalnaya also published unverified photos she said were of his prison cell after his body was removed, showing a pool of vomit on the floor, and claimed that testimony from prison officials said he had been convulsing on the floor.

- ‘Murder’ -

Navalny was previously poisoned with a nerve agent of the Novichok type in 2020 while campaigning in Siberia and flown to Germany on an emergency evacuation flight, where he spent months recovering.
Jailed upon his return to Russia in January 2021, he was convicted on a series of charges, including “extremism.”
From behind bars, he continued to campaign against Putin and spoke out against the invasion of Ukraine.
Russian authorities said he died suddenly after falling ill while walking outside after lunch in his prison colony.
Following Navalny’s death, officials refused for days to release his body to his relatives, raising suspicions among his followers.
Navalnaya has maintained that her husband was killed on Putin’s orders, an accusation she repeated Wednesday.
“Vladimir Putin is guilty of the murder of my husband, Alexei Navalny,” she said.
The Kremlin denies the charges.
It escalated a crackdown against his allies and opponents even after his death, adding Navalnaya to a “terrorists and extremists” blacklist and sentencing his lawyers and journalists who followed his court cases to years in prison.
Most of his family and key allies have long lived abroad.
The Russian opposition, plagued by infighting, has struggled for relevance in exile following Navalny’s death.
Public displays of opposition to Putin inside Russia have become exceptionally rare since he invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
The Kremlin introduced military censorship, ramped up its targeting of dissenters and critics and effectively outlawed criticism both of the Kremlin and the invasion.