The youth-led climate activist group Sunrise Movement is expanding its mission to battle “authoritarianism” as the Trump administration targets left-leaning organizations and puts one of the group’s major funders in the crosshairs.

“There is no serious way to think about stopping the climate crisis under a fascist government,” Sunrise executive director Aru Shiney-Ajay told The Intercept. “The path to climate lies through getting rid of the authoritarian government we’re in.”

The move comes as President Donald Trump furiously dismantles the green energy initiatives that Sunrise fought to see enshrined in President Joe Biden’s 2022 Inflation Recovery Act. In a striking success for the climate group, the law contained parts of Sunrise’s top priority: the Green New Deal.

The group, now eight years old, has decided that it cannot continue to fight climate change without fighting Trump, Shiney-Ajay told The Intercept. Delegates from the nonprofit’s more than 100 local hubs voted by a wide margin last month approve its expanded mission, Sunrise announced Thursday.

Sunrise is making the change public just a week after Trump sent a chilling message to activists who oppose him: In a memo, he directed cabinet officials to investigate nonprofits and their funders for supposed links to terrorism.

In the Crosshairs

While the Sunrise Movement has received no official word that it is under investigation, the group has ample reason to believe that it may be targeted.

The Justice Department has directed local prosecutors to investigate billionaire financier George Soros’s Open Society........

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