Treasury Sanctions Palestine Action, Pro-Palestinian Network in Widening Terrorism Crackdown

The Treasury Department on Wednesday imposed sanctions on a British pro-Palestinian protest group, a Germany-based Palestinian solidarity network and an Italian technology collective, the latest and broadest step yet in a year-long Trump administration campaign to treat left-wing activism as a national security threat on par with foreign terrorist organizations.

The Treasury announcement, issued jointly with a State Department release, designates Palestine Action, the UK direct-action group already banned as a terrorist organization by the British government, and Masar Badil, a transnational network Treasury describes as a front for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Also named was Autistici/Inventati, an Italy-based collective that provides encrypted hosting and digital infrastructure to anarchist and antifascist groups. Two Masar Badil figures, Rawa Alsagheer in Brazil and Zaid Abdulnasser in Germany, were sanctioned individually as leaders of the network.

What the designations do

All three organizations and both individuals were named "specially designated global terrorists" under Executive Order 13224, the post-9/11 authority that lets Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control freeze U.S. assets and bar Americans from providing material support to the designated parties. In practice, the order blocks any property the groups hold in U.S. jurisdiction, cuts them off from the American banking system and exposes anyone in the United States who materially supports them to criminal liability.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent framed the action as part of a broader financial offensive. "Far-left extremists, their fronts, and their enablers should be on notice: We will bring the full weight of our economic tools to bear," Bessent said in the department's statement. "Political terrorism has no place in our society, and we will continue to cut the financial lifelines of these groups until they are eliminated."

Palestine Action was proscribed as a terrorist organization by the United Kingdom in July 2025 after members broke into a Royal Air Force base and damaged military aircraft in protest of British arms sales to Israel. Britain's own courts have wavered on the ban: a High Court judge ruled the proscription unlawful in February, an appeals court reinstated it in June, and the UK Supreme Court has since agreed to hear a final challenge from co-founder Huda Ammori this autumn, meaning the underlying designation Washington cited remains legally unsettled. Masar Badil, Treasury said, is directed by the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, which the United States and Canada jointly sanctioned in October 2024 as a PFLP front; the PFLP itself has been a State Department-designated foreign terrorist organization since 1997.

Part of a wider campaign

Wednesday's action extends a push that began in earnest last September, when President Trump signed an executive order designating Antifa as a domestic terrorist organization, an unprecedented move given that U.S. terrorism designations had historically been reserved for foreign groups and that Antifa itself is a decentralized movement rather than a formal organization with leadership or assets to freeze. The order directed federal agencies to investigate and dismantle Antifa's "illegal operations" and financial networks. Congressional Republicans have since tried to put the designation into statute: Sen. Rick Scott of Florida and Rep. Greg Steube of Florida introduced companion Stop ANTIFA Act bills that would codify the terrorist label and task a national joint task force with disrupting left-wing political violence, though neither has advanced out of committee.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio laid the diplomatic groundwork for Wednesday's sanctions in July, when he convened a ministerial with counterparts from more than five dozen countries on what he called the "resurgence of political terrorism." Rubio told the gathering that American and allied counterterrorism doctrine "has had a blind spot ... when it comes to extremist violence from the political left," and argued that treating far-left violence as a serious security threat has been dismissed as "a right-wing fever dream." Wednesday's sanctions mark one of the first concrete actions to flow from that diplomatic effort.

Civil liberties groups object

The designations drew immediate pushback from civil liberties advocates, who argue the administration is using terrorism law to punish disfavored political speech rather than genuine violence. Chip Gibbons, policy director at Defending Rights and Dissent, called the action "retaliation against the sanctioned for holding political views the Trump administration dislikes," and said it effectively places acts of civil disobedience in support of Palestinian rights in the same legal category as al-Qaeda.

"These sanctions have broad speech implications. They severely curtail and criminalize U.S. citizens' ability to engage in otherwise lawful associations," Gibbons said.

More than 250 academics and lawyers have separately urged the British government to lift its own ban on Palestine Action, arguing the proscription conflates property damage with terrorism. Ammori, the group's co-founder, rejected the U.S. sanctions and said Palestine Action's goal is to disrupt "the Israeli war machine, which is committing a genocide in Gaza," accusing Trump of being "at the center of the mass murder of Palestinians." Israel and the United States government reject the characterization of the Gaza campaign as genocide.

The practical reach of Wednesday's order is limited by the fact that none of the three organizations is known to hold significant U.S.-based assets; Palestine Action and Masar Badil operate primarily in Britain and continental Europe, and Autistici/Inventati is a volunteer-run server collective based in Italy that has hosted anarchist and antifascist websites, including infrastructure security researchers say is used by groups tied to Antifa, since the late 1990s. The more immediate effect, sanctions lawyers say, is reputational and financial: American banks, payment processors and cloud providers now face legal exposure if they knowingly do business with the designated entities or individuals, which can choke off donations and hosting services even absent frozen U.S. bank accounts.

What comes next

Treasury officials did not say whether additional far-left designations are imminent, but Bessent's statement described Wednesday's action as part of a "U.S. government-wide effort" that officials have signaled will continue. The Stop ANTIFA Act remains pending in both chambers of Congress, and Rubio's State Department has indicated it intends further coordination with European governments on cross-border enforcement against groups it links to Antifa and allied movements. Palestine Action's legal challenge to its UK proscription is still working through British courts, a case that could complicate the U.S. designation if judges there ultimately narrow or overturn the underlying terrorism label Washington cited in justifying its own action. Civil liberties groups, meanwhile, are expected to explore legal challenges to the U.S. designations on First Amendment grounds, though no lawsuit had been filed as of Wednesday evening.