FBI Director Kash Patel crossed a dangerous line when he characterized the Anti-Defamation League as “an extreme group functioning like a terrorist organization” and severed the Bureau’s ties with the ADL. This attack comes alongside absurd allegations by Elon Musk that the ADL “hates Christians,” as well as escalating calls from right-wing extremists to designate the Southern Poverty Law Center and other civil society groups as terrorist organizations. It represents an assault on the infrastructure of American civil society, and shows the administration aligning itself clearly with far-right extremists who routinely excuse and promote antisemitism.
The Nexus Project has philosophical and strategic differences and disagreements with the ADL. But those disagreements do not in any way lessen our outrage and alarm at the Trump Administration’s attacks on these organizations’ very legitimacy.
When an FBI Director characterizes a century-old Jewish civil rights organization as “functioning like a terrorist organization,” he establishes a precedent that any civil society group monitoring extremism can be labeled a threat to national security by those in power. Moreover, casting Jewish watchdog organizations as enemies of the state, the administration is not only borrowing from the authoritarian playbook but also trafficking in antisemitic narratives that have historically painted Jews as conspirators, disloyal citizens, or threats to Christian society.
This is the textbook playbook of authoritarian governments: delegitimize watchdog organizations by inverting their purpose, painting monitors of extremism as extremists themselves.
Organizations that document the reality of hate and discrimination have become targets precisely because their work threatens those who benefit from extremism operating with impunity.
When government officials can selectively target advocacy organizations based on their findings, the entire framework of democratic accountability can collapse. This is not a hypothetical concern. The Trump administration has already eliminated 56 hate crime prevention programs and $38 million in funding for combating hate crimes—programs terminated as “too woke” even as FBI hate crime statistics reached their second-highest level on record. Legislative efforts like H.R. 9495 would grant the Treasury Secretary unilateral power to revoke the tax-exempt status of nonprofits accused of supporting terrorism, without due process protections.
We will not remain silent when government power is weaponized against civil society organizations. We believe that fighting antisemitism, protecting democracy, and defending civil society are intertwined tasks—the Trump Administration’s assault on organizations monitoring extremism threatens all three.