Hard right 'seized power' to spread extremist rhetoric under Trump: watchdog

U.S. President Donald Trump's supporter attends the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) USA 2026 at the Gaylord Texan Resort and Convention Center, in Grapevine, Texas, U.S. March 28, 2026. REUTERS

Hard-right groups have expanded their influence inside the Trump administration, a new report on hate and extremism by the Southern Poverty Law Center finds, according to The Guardian. A federal grand jury indicted the SPLC, a civil rights organization, on federal fraud charges earlier this year — months before the report’s publication.

“2025 was a turbulent year marked by injustice, social upheaval and stark new threats from a hard-right movement rapidly establishing its power across institutions,” reads the director’s note to the SPLC’s “2025 Year in Hate and Extremism” series. “The hard right effectively seized the power of government as a messenger for extremist rhetoric and a tool to dictate policies affecting the everyday lives of millions of people.”

The Trump administration “radically” shifted policy to favor hard-right and extremists, claims the report titled “Empowering Extremists,” which was published Tuesday as part of the series.

The report found that the Trump administration has “shifted the focus of federal law enforcement away from violent crime investigations to sweeping immigration raids through American communities, targeting undocumented people as well as Black and Brown people — often regardless of immigration status and absent any suspicion of a violent offense.”

It states that on Sept. 22, 2025, “Trump issued an overly broad, vague executive order designating ‘antifa’ — a term often applied to people and community-based organizations opposing white supremacy, racism and the far right more generally — as a domestic terrorist organization.”

The Guardian noted that the SPLC report “pointed to conservative influencer Andy Ngo, who told Trump during a roundtable in October that ‘perhaps the state department should designate Antifa … a foreign terrorist organization.'”

“Would you like to see it done?” Trump replied. “You think it would help? I’d be glad to do it. I think it’s the kind of thing I’d like to do. Does everybody agree? If you agree, I agree. Let’s get it done.”

Trump “kept his promise,” the SPLC noted. “In November 2025, the State Department named four left-wing militant groups as foreign terrorist organizations.”

The report stated that the Trump administration’s “law enforcement shifts make Americans less safe,” and its actions increase the “threat posed by far-right extremism.”

“The administration gutted efforts to tackle hard-right extremism and downplayed — and even defended — the threat of right-wing extremist violence,” the report alleges. For example, the DOJ “removed a June 2024 peer-reviewed study from its website that concluded that far-right attacks continue ‘to outpace all other types of terrorism and domestic violent extremism.'”

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