Members of the public who support Palestine Action, which Britain named a terrorist group, protest in August 2025 in Parliament Square in London. The United States has now also classified the group as a terrorist organization and issued sanctions Wednesday. File Photo by Hugo Philpott/UPI | License Photo
Aug. 26 (UPI) — The United States on Wednesday sanctioned British-based direct action group Palestine Action and two other organizations, as the Trump administration expands its campaign against groups it accuses of belonging to “violent far-left terrorist networks.”
The Treasury declared Palestine Action a Specially Designated Global Terrorist, blocking the group’s property and interest in property in the United States/ The sanctions also generally prohibit U.S. persons from providing funds, goods or services to the organization.
“Far-left extremists, their fronts and their enablers should be on notice: We will bring the full weight of our economic tools to bear,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a 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.”
In response, Huda Ammori, the co-founder of Palestine Action, said the group’s activities in the United States and other countries “have always been about saving lives by disrupting the Israeli war machine, which is committing a genocide in Gaza with the support of the U.S. government,” The Guardian reported.
“Trump has been at the center of the mass murder of Palestinians, enabling the Zionist regime at every turn,” Ammori said.
Palestine Action was also the first direct-action group proscribed under Britain’s Terrorism Act in July 2025. The group is fighting the ban in a legal challenge before the country’s Supreme Court in November.
“The fact that Trump is now taking inspiration from Britain’s repression of the movement for Palestinian freedom exposes just how dangerous this ban is and should be a wake-up call to anyone who cares about free speech and civil liberties,” Ammori said.
The U.S. Treasury said Palestine Action “has supported numerous acts of terrorism since July 2020, including acts that have physically injured U.K. law enforcement personnel, as well as acts intended to intimidate lawful commercial enterprises and coerce the U.K. government.”
“The group’s actions include multiple high-profile instances of breaking into defense infrastructure and British military installations and causing millions of dollars’ worth of damage to military equipment,” it said.
In March 2025, Trump’s golf course in Scotland was targeted by Palestine Action supporters who painted graffiti on the clubhouse and damaged the course, spraying “Gaza is not 4 sale.” Trump at the time called those responsible “terrorists.”
Other groups designates Specially Designated Global Terrorists by the United States include Hamas, al-Qaida and the Islamic State.
The two other groups sanctioned Wednesday were Collettivo Autistici/Inventati, an Italy-based group the Trump administration alleges supplies specialized digital architecture, tools and services for purported Antifa cells and “other violent far-left extremists,” and Masar Badil, “which operates as a front for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine,” the Treasury said.
The State Department also announced the designations of the three groups.
Collettivo A/I denied the allegations, saying it provides a platform for digital self-defense, making possible free communication for activists and other groups and associations. It said it would not be deterred and would continue to provide its services.
“We will do whatever is in our possibility to counter the false allegations made by a politically desperate administration with the sole intention of swaying people and media attention away from their own violence and warmongering,” the collective said in a statement.
“Antifascism and anticapitalism are not terrorism. Protesting is not terrorism. And everyone has the right to speak out and to struggle for humanity.”
The sanctions were swiftly rebuked by left-leaning activists who accused the Trump administration of targeting those who stand against what they describe as genocide being committed against Palestinians.
“The U.S. is trying to criminalize and silence opposition to its genocide in Gaza, attacks on Iran and across the region,” the U.S.-based, women-led antii-war organization Code Pink said in a statement.
“People in the U.S. and across the world see through U.S. lies and propaganda.”
The sanctions come as the Trump administration portrays far-left political violence as a growing threat to the United States and builds a counterterrorism framework to target such groups.
The United States has designated several such leftist groups as terrorist organizations, with President Donald Trump personally declaring Antifa, short for anti-fascist, as a domestic terrorist group in September, despite Antifa being widely viewed not as a centralized organization with card-carrying members but more as a decentralized movement.
In May, Trump formally made violent left-wing extremists a counterterrorism priority.
Last month, Secretary of State Marco Rubio hosted an international political terrorism summit in Washington, D.C., where he made the case that far-left violence was a growing threat fueled by “a hatred for civilization itself.”
“It is perpetrated by those who cannot build, who cannot create, who cannot achieve great things and take their revenge upon the world for their own inadequacy by seeking to destroy those who can,” he said.
“That is what radical leftism is.”
On Wednesday, Rubio vowed to use all tools at their disposal to fight these groups and “protect our way of life.”
“There will be no refuge for violent extremists who wage war on our civilization and plot to undermine law and order, destroy critical infrastructure, assault political opponents or conceal their crimes from authorities,” he said in a statement.
