The National Lawyers Guild (NLG) has carefully reviewed the U.S. Department of Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) August 2026 sanctions against Palestine Action and Autistici/Inventati as Specially Designated Global Terrorists (SDGTs). We strongly and unequivocally condemn these acts by the federal government.
Palestine Action (Pal Action)
Pal Action is British direct action movement that has for years targeted Elbit Systems, the main arms supplier to Israel’s genocide. To widespread and popular backlash, the British government proscribed Pal Action as a terrorist organization in July 2025. Despite the risks, protests and legal challenges against the designation have continued.
Similarly to the Trump administration’s questionable OFAC designation of “Antifa Ost” to create enemies to persecute, the U.S. government seems to be using the SDGT designation as a shortcut to quash pro-Palestine dissent. We see this repression in action in the sealed prosecution of pro-Palestine philanthropist Fergie Chambers, who the Department of Justice vehemently seeks to extradite from Spain. Given the great prosecutorial powers the federal government has against alleged supporters of SDGTs, this designation should alarm everyone who cares about the right to free speech.
Autistici/Inventati (A/I)
Based in Italy, A/I was a volunteer-run web service providing privacy-oriented email, websites, mailing lists, blogs, and communications tools. A/I was best known for hosting the “NoBlogs” platform, a website and blogging platform that hosted approximately 10,000 blogs and thousands of email addresses and mailing lists, according to the U.S. Department of State.
Due to the SDGT designation, A/I decided to shut down its services. As a privacy-oriented alternative to corporate media and web hosting, A/I’s services were commonly used by independent media organizations, activist groups, and others. Hence, the federal government has effectively chilled the First Amendment conduct of thousands of email users and bloggers.
A/I was clear that their political orientation included anticapitalism and antifascism. The U.S. government’s wholesale conflation of these political ideologies with “terrorism” is yet another act of political repression designed to silence and punish dissent and political beliefs. Equating anonymous access to digital services with “terrorism” is a disturbing erosion of civil liberties and privacy.
Call for Challenges
We call on grassroots, civil, and legal groups around the country to speak up against these OFAC designations. Our networks need to send a clear message to the Trump administration that we do not accept criminalizing free speech and dissolving the right to privacy. We hope that impacted individuals consider challenging the OFAC designation.
At this moment, we see communities across the country increasingly expressing concern about mass surveillance from Flock cameras, the technological and environmental impacts of data centers, the abuses of immigration enforcement, and the endless war in Iran. One does not need to agree with the political positions of Pal Action or A/I to understand the grave civil rights implications of proscribing them with a “terrorism” label.
