A new Justice Department memo from Attorney General Pam Bondi instructs the FBI to create a “cash reward system” to incentivize providing information against domestic terrorists. However, it also makes it clear that the targets of such domestic terrorist investigations will be “Antifa-aligned extremists,” including those promoting “radical gender ideology.”

 “The FBI shall establish a cash reward system for information that leads to the successful identification and arrest of individuals in the leadership of domestic terrorist organizations,” the memo reads. The memo, dated December 5, was leaked.

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Bondi’s memo cites multiple laws that might be used to target domestic terrorism, but also lays out a clear vision for the priorities of the FBI in targeting suspected terrorists. Primary examples given are not the mass shootings and white supremacist actions that have plagued the nation; rather, the document names the “doxing of law enforcement” or the “violent efforts to shut down immigration enforcement.”

While it raises the specter of extreme viewpoints, they are not the ones that previous studies have linked most domestic terrorism to. Bondi’s memo suggests that the perpetrators are “certain Antifa-aligned extremists” and that their “animating principle is adherence to the types of extreme viewpoints on immigration, radical gender ideology, and anti-American sentiment.”

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These ideas from Bondi are in line with Trump’s September executive order “Designating Antifa as a Domestic Terrorist Organization.” As antifa is not a specific group, but simply the idea of being against fascism, it was suggested that the motivation behind the order was an “aim to criminalize opposition.”

Hiding under the guise of national security, these supposed anti-domestic terrorism moves are more likely to be used against trans activists and immigration advocates.

These moves and the idea that the far-left is the real threat to the United States fly in the face of the data and appear to be part of a coordinated move to shift the blame away from far-right actors.

In 2020, the Center for Strategic and International Studies reviewed data from 25 years of domestic terrorist incidents. They found that the far-right was responsible for the majority of domestic terrorist attacks, with an increase as time went on. In 2019, they were estimated to be responsible for two-thirds of the events, and in 2020, that had risen to 90%.

A National Institute of Justice study from 2024 found that far-right extremists were responsible for the majority of ideologically driven deaths. That study showed that since 1990, there were 227 attacks from “far-right extremists,” with more than 520 people killed, while that period saw only 42 attacks from “far-left extremists,” with 78 deaths.

However, that was removed from the Justice Department website in the days following the death of Charlie Kirk, an attack that many on the right tried to blame on trans people before any evidence was known about the killer.

In line with that move, also after Charlie Kirk’s death, the Heritage Foundation twisted data to claim that “50% of all major (non-gang-related) school shootings since 2015 have involved or likely involved transgender ideology.” That was in an effort to get the FBI to create a new domestic terror threat category for “Transgender Ideology-Inspired Extremism.” The real data did not support those claims at all, but it was part of attempting to move the focus off of far-right extremist terrorism and claim it was trans people and the radical left.

Back in March, the FBI cut staffing in the office focused on domestic terrorism and scrapped tools used to track those investigations. Many of those investigations targeted far-right extremists and white supremacists, and it was suggested at the time that those crimes might be less of an investigative priority under FBI Director Kash Patel’s leadership.

Bondi’s memo does not at any point mention the wealth of far-right domestic terror attacks in the nation, nor does it touch on the issues of white supremacy and antisemitism, which often fuel those events.

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