Vance, Miller Announce Crackdowns Left-leaning Nonprofits That Criticized Kirk, Calling Them "Terrorist Networks"

The administration announced that it would target nonprofits who were critical of Kirk, going as far as to name the Ford Foundation and Open Society after an article criticized Kirk at The Nation.

Left: Stephen Miller // Creative Commons // Gage Skidmore. Right: JD Vance // Creative Commons // Gage Skidmore

On Monday, JD Vance took over a special edition of the Charlie Kirk Show following the death of its namesake. Framed as a tribute, the broadcast quickly became a vehicle for announcing sweeping new crackdowns. White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller used the segment to label certain left-leaning nonprofits “terrorist networks” that push “messaging designed to trigger and incite violence.” Vice President Vance then confirmed the administration would target “the NGO network that foments, facilitates, and engages in violence,” singling out the Ford Foundation and Open Society for the role he claimed they played in The Nation publishing an article that accurately described Charlie Kirk as an “unrepentant racist, transphobe, homophobe, and misogynist.”

“We are going to go after the NGO network that foments, facilitates, and engages in violence,” said JD Vance while interviewing Stephen Miller.

“We are going to channel all of the anger that we have over the organized campaign that led to this assassination, to uproot and dismantle these terrorist networks. The organized doxxing campaigns, the organized riots, the organized street violence, the organized campaigns of dehumanization, vilification. Posting people’s addresses, combining that with messagings designed to trigger and insight violence. And the actual organized cells that carry out and facilitate the violence, it is a vast domestic terror movement. And with God as my witness, we are going to use every resource we have at the Department of Justice, Homeland Security, and throughout this government to identify, disrupt, dismantle, and destroy these networks and make American safe again for the American people. It will happen, and we will do it in Charlie’s name,” responded Miller.

Later in the same broadcast, Vance zeroed in on a Nation article by Elizabeth Spiers titled “Charlie Kirk’s Legacy Deserves No Mourning.” What drew his ire was Spiers’s description of Kirk as an “unrepentant racist, transphobe, homophobe, and misogynist”—a description backed by Kirk’s own words. Rather than engage the substance, Vance lashed out at the Ford Foundation and Open Society, blaming them for the piece and putting both nonprofits in the administration’s crosshairs. He then escalated further, declaring in a fiery monologue that “there can be no unity” with citizens who dared to criticize Kirk in the wake of his death.

“To state the obvious, I was not paid by the Ford Foundation or Open Society to write the column, which is what Vance is alleging and he's saying he is going after those groups,” Spiers wrote on Bluesky in response to his remarks.

Hours later, Trump used a press conference to escalate the threat. He floated once again the idea of designating “Antifa” a terrorist organization and said he was exploring RICO charges against “some of the people you’ve been reading about that have been putting up millions and millions of dollars for agitation.” He added: “These aren’t protests, these are crimes they are doing.”

Later, the New York Times confirmed that the administration was reviewing various ways they can further crack down on left-leaning non-profits, stating in one report, “On Monday, two senior administration officials, who spoke anonymously to describe the internal planning, said that cabinet secretaries and federal department heads were working to identify organizations that funded or supported violence against conservatives. The goal, they said, was to categorize left-wing activity that led to violence as domestic terrorism, an escalation that critics said could lay the groundwork for crushing anti-conservative dissent more broadly.”

The weaponization of laws against non-profits is something that Republicans have been exploring for some time. In late 2023, Republicans in Florida heavily pushed a bill that would have essentially outlawed LGBTQ+ groups from being considered nonprofits. Though this provision did not pass, it was not the last effort to target nonprofits, especially LGBTQ+ nonprofits. In March, an executive order attempted to strip Public Service Loan Forgiveness from nonprofits supporting gender affirming care for trans youth. Likewise, many nonprofits have seen federal grant dollars for political reasons, such as hospitals and private universities. Now, we could see Trump further weaponize these threats to target any number of nonprofits it judges is responsible for “fomenting violence” with what it claims will be RICO charges or domestic terrorism support, both of which would be legally dubious.

The latest escalation tracks closely with similar steps taken by Vladimir Putin in Russia to target nonprofits and LGBTQ+ organizations and other left-leaning NGOs in recent years. In 2016, the country banned NGOs deemed a threat to public order by creating a new “undesireable” label. In 2023, the country declared LGBTQ+ organizations to be “extremist” in nature, closely tracking with some of the rhetoric used by the administration and its supporters in the wake of Kirk’s killing.