Antifa, designated a “domestic terrorist organization” by US President Donald Trump on Monday, is a nebulous movement of left-wing “anti-fascist” activists that experts say is more a political ideology than an organized group.Trump’s move follows the September 10 assassination of conservative influencer Charlie Kirk and is one of several actions the Republican president has threatened to take against opponents he accuses of fomenting violence.- Who is Antifa? -Antifa stands for anti-fascism, and the name comes from early 1930s Germany, where socialist “anti-fa” groups attempted to stand up to the rise of Adolf Hitler’s Nazis.Antifa has no national leader or centralized organizational structure and is made up of “independent, radical, like-minded groups and individuals,” according to a 2020 Congressional Research Service analysis.Mark Bray, author of “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook,” said Antifa is “a kind of coalition politics of all kinds of radicals, from different kinds of socialists to communists, anarchists and more independent radicals.””Sometimes I compare it to feminism,” Bray, a historian at Rutgers University, told The Washington Post. “There are feminist groups, but feminism itself is not a group. There are Antifa groups, but Antifa itself is not a group.”Anti-fascist groups in the United States have campaigned on a range of social justice issues in the past two decades but their principal focus has been countering the resurgence of neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups.One of the oldest, Rose City Antifa of Portland, Oregon, began in 2007 to shut down a neo-Nazi skinhead music festival called Hammerfest.Antifa-aligned activists, often masked and dressed entirely in black, protest against racism, far-right values and what they consider fascism, and say violent tactics are sometimes justified in self-defense.Such protesters have been increasingly involved in direct confrontations with right-wing groups since Trump’s first election to the White House in 2016.During Trump’s January 20, 2017 inauguration, scores of black-clad, mask-wearing Antifa followers and other protestors smashed windows in Washington.In August that year, they were at the vanguard of counter-demonstrations when white supremacists and neo-Nazis marched in Charlottesville, Virginia, and engaged in physical fights with the rightists.- Can Trump designate Antifa as terrorists?Unclear.While federal law enforcement’s purview includes combating domestic terrorism, the United States has no statute that permits designating domestic groups as terrorist organizations, as there is for foreign groups like the Islamic State or Al-Qaeda.During his first term in office, following the protests against police brutality sparked by the murder of George Floyd, Trump announced that he would designate Antifa as “terrorists” on the same level as Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State but nothing came of it.The global terror designation is a powerful tool for law enforcement: it permits the arrest and imprisonment of someone who merely expresses support for those jihadist groups or others. That law has not been expanded to domestic groups for good reason: such a law, many fear, could tempt a leader to deploy it against political rivals and would violate First Amendment free speech protections.

The US Treasury said Monday it stood ready to “do what is needed” to support Argentina’s economy, as President Javier Milei battles to calm jittery financial markets.Self-declared “anarcho-capitalist” Milei, a close ally of President Donald Trump, has been faced with a run on the peso, having to sell off dwindling foreign reserves in the aftermath of a provincial election trouncing for his party.As he seeks a US loan to cover debts reaching maturity, Milei is due to meet Trump and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York on Tuesday.Bessent wrote on X Monday that “all options for stabilization are on the table.”These may include “swap lines, direct currency purchases, and purchases of US dollar-denominated government debt from Treasury’s Exchange Stabilization Fund,” he said. Swap lines are transactions in which two central banks agree to swap their currencies at a set exchange rate for a specified period.The Argentine peso has been falling sharply since Milei’s party was beaten by the center-left Peronist movement in a Buenos Aires provincial election on September 7.The vote was seen as a litmus test for national legislative elections scheduled for October 26.Bessent wrote that Argentina “is a systemically important US ally in Latin America” and Washington was confident Milei’s “support for fiscal discipline and pro-growth reforms are necessary to break Argentina’s long history of decline.””Opportunities for private investment remain expansive, and Argentina will be Great Again,” he added.Milei thanked Washington for its “unconditional support for the Argentine people.”The budget-slashing libertarian wrote on X that “those of us who defend the ideas of freedom must work together.”International Monetary Fund head Kristalina Georgieva also welcomed Bessent’s statement and underscored “the crucial role of partners in promoting strong policies for stabilization and growth for the benefit of the people of Argentina.”- ‘Working on it’ -Argentina’s Foreign Minister Gerardo Werthein, meanwhile, said “there has been much speculation” on a possible Treasury loan, “with amounts of $30 billion mentioned, which is absolutely incorrect…”He told Radio Mitre it was true that “we are working on it, but for a much smaller amount.”The United States in April backed an agreement Argentina struck with the International Monetary Fund for a loan of $20 billion, as well as $12 billion from the World Bank and another $10 billion from the Inter-American Development Bank.Bessent at the time poured cold water on the idea of a direct credit line from the United States. Argentina, which has a track record of economic crises and hyperinflation, is the IMF’s biggest debtor. It borrowed $44 billion from the IMF in 2018 — the lender’s biggest-ever loan — and has since renegotiated repayment terms.The government in Buenos Aires said Monday it would suspend taxes on grain and meat exports until October 31 as part of efforts to boost the economy.The objective was to “generate a greater supply of dollars,” presidential spokesman Manuel Adorni said on X.Reducing taxes should make grain cheaper on the global market, boosting sales.Nicolas Pino, president of the SRA agricultural producers’ association, said the tax should be permanently scrapped for Argentina’s biggest export sector.Financial markets reacted to Monday’s developments with a rise in Argentine bonds and shares on Wall Street and in Buenos Aires, as well as a significant strengthening of the peso.

Syria’s new leader Ahmed al-Sharaa, visiting New York for the UN General Assembly, voiced hope Monday for a security deal that eases tensions with Israel but he played down the prospect of recognition.Sharaa, a former jihadist whose forces toppled longtime leader Bashar al-Assad in December, met US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and later will deliver the first address in decades by a Syrian leader to the General Assembly.Syrian officials have set a goal of reaching military and security agreements by the end of the year with Israel, whose military has repeatedly battered its neighbor and longtime adversary in the chaos since Assad’s fall.”I hope that that will lead us to an agreement that will keep the sovereignty of Syria and also resolve some of the security fears of Israel,” Sharaa told the Concordia summit at a New York hotel on the sidelines of the UN summit.But he balked when asked if Syria would join the so-called Abraham Accords, in which the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco normalized relations with Israel in 2020.”Syria is different as those that are part of the Abraham Accords are not Israel’s neighbors. Syria has been subjected to more than 1,000 Israeli raids, strikes and incursions from the Golan Heights into Syria,” he said.He voiced doubts about trusting Israel, questioning whether it sought to expand in Syria and charging that Israel has violated peace agreements with two other neighbors, Egypt and Jordan.”There is also huge anger over what’s going on in Gaza, not only in Syria but in the entire world, and of course this impacts our position on Israel,” he said.Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday that there was a new window of possibility for peace with both Syria and Lebanon after an Israeli military campaign devastated Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Lebanese Shiite militant movement that was close to Assad.Sharaa met in May in Riyadh with US President Donald Trump, who took the advice of Saudi Arabia and Turkey to lift Assad-era sanctions on Syria, despite Israeli misgivings.Sharaa hailed Trump’s move and called on the US Congress to fully lift sanctions, which “put a burden on people who have already suffered from the former regime’s oppression.”Rubio, in his meeting with Sharaa, discussed Syria’s relations with Israel and called on the country to seize the chance to “build a stable and sovereign nation,” State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott said.