It is tempting to see the alarming radicalism of Donald Trump as sui generis. However, it has historical and geopolitical roots that democracy and human rights advocates must recognize if they are to understand the threat to human rights and democracy to come.
In recent years, President Trump has frequently expressed admiration for dictators, and his conservative base is particularly enthusiastic about Viktor Orbán. The Hungarian leader has been at the forefront of a new form of authoritarianism that has been called “regulatory repression,” using laws and regulatory systems rather than brute force to maintain power. It is a global trend with roots in US counterterrorism policy proposals beginning in the 1990s and intensifying after September 11, 2001—proposals that shaped global counterterrorism measures and unwittingly gave authoritarians new tools.
Silencing speech
The United States is poised to bring regulatory repression home to Americans through a bill introduced in the House of Representatives in 2024—the “Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act.” Purportedly drafted in response to protests against Israel’s war in Gaza, the proposed law would enable the US Treasury Department to revoke the tax status of nonprofits for providing material support to “terrorists.”
The bill is ripe for abuse. For example, it stretches the concept of “material support” to apply to universities’ tolerance of anti-Israel protests, suggesting the law is ambiguous and designed to facilitate politicization. Decisions by the Treasury Department can be appealed not to an independent judge but only to the department itself, undermining due process. Further, any revocation may happen before appeals are exhausted. The impact of an accusation alone would be catastrophic—virtually eliminating donations and causing lasting reputational damage.
Threatening funding for nonprofits is a well-established authoritarian strategy. In 2012, Vladimir Putin signed a bill requiring some nonprofits that receive funding from abroad to register as “foreign agents.” The Russian government aimed to choke off nonprofits’ sources of funding, eventually passing a second law criminalizing “undesirable organizations” that receive money from abroad and oppose the country’s authoritarian turn. Within three years, one-third of Russian NGOs had closed. Fifty countries passed foreign agent laws in the same period. Georgia, over mass protests, did so in 2024.
Other examples of regulatory repression are widespread, as governments exploit the fact that nonprofits are embedded in legal systems of incorporation and regulation that are vulnerable to manipulation. In a world where nonprofits are central to social movements, regulatory tweaks crush opposition as effectively as the iron fist. In 2014 and 2016, for example, Hungarian police broke down NGO doors and seized their files—for a supposed financial audit.
The roots
The roots of regulatory repression reach back to US-led efforts at interdicting terrorist financing networks. After the attacks of September 11, 2001, the intergovernmental Financial Action Task Force (FATF) took on a counterterrorism role as the United States hastily worked to harden its defenses and, in the process, created a pretext for demonizing and restricting human rights advocacy. FATF’s recommendations to combat terrorism included Recommendation 8, which singles out nonprofits as possible conduits.
Recommendation 8 has harmed nonprofits worldwide. As the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), a British national security think tank, notes:
Because of the FATF’s guidance, banks found themselves facing new regulatory pressures to limit exposure to terrorist financing risks…. Further, overzealous implementation …saw states implementing a suite of blanket measures on the sector, such as ‘onerous licensing or registration requirements, intrusive powers for investigation and audit’ and in the very worst cases, lumping NPOs together with financial institutions as entities with financial crime reporting obligations. These unintended consequences of Recommendation 8 would prevail despite several assessments indicating that terrorist abuse of NPOs was infrequent….
Groups such as Nigeria’s Spaces for Change have advocated ending the invasive and burdensome FATF measures imposed on NGOs. Amendments to Recommendation 8 were made in 2023, but as RUIC says, these are somewhat superficial and unlikely to curb abuses. By introducing the idea that nonprofits can facilitate terrorism and encouraging governments to take steps like “de-risking” (where banks cut off nonprofits’ access to the banking system), Recommendation 8 created both a means and a pretext for “regulatory repression” around the world.
Other US counterterrorism measures from that era may relate directly to the new proposed law. Enacted in October 2001, the “Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism” (USA-PATRIOT) Act expanded the power of the state to surveil terrorism suspects. It also defined a new crime—“domestic terrorism”—that could be applied to the new law.
This development is cause for concern. In Silencing Political Dissent, Nancy Chang writes that the new federal crime of domestic terrorism “broadly extends to ‘acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws’ if they ‘appear to be intended . . . to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion.’” Chang notes that the vagueness of this language will likely enable its interpretation “by federal law enforcement agencies as licensing the investigation and surveillance of political activists and organizations that protest government policies, and by prosecutors as licensing the criminalization of legitimate political dissent.”
Silencing the nonprofit sector
The bill the House passed in 2024 seems intent on further exploiting ambiguity about what terrorism is: it appears as though its drafters intend to treat pro-Palestinian protests as support for the terrorist group Hamas and, by extension, to treat nonprofits that support or engage in protests—and the universities that tolerate them—as providing material support one degree removed. It would be a means to stifle protest without directly violating First Amendment rights by creating a chilling effect on those who can facilitate or prevent protests.
Nearly a quarter century after the devastating attacks that ushered in the PATRIOT Act, a new draconian counterterrorism law may seem anachronistic. But in the context of regulatory repression, it makes sense. It resembles “foreign agent” laws, but the penalties are more severe. Trump’s campaign rhetoric about “the enemy within” suggests he would use the law to political ends. The eagerness of House Republicans to put the bill to a vote—three times in 2024, twice after the election—suggests that they wish to keep the law and its potential uses in the spotlight to make the most of the chilling effect it may have.
If enacted, the bill would introduce Orbán-style authoritarianism to the United States and legitimize regulatory repression elsewhere. The counterterrorism measures the United States adopted after the turn of the century had wide influence, emboldening repressive government proclivities and endangering civil society worldwide. As always, a threat to the human rights of some threatens the human rights of all.