White House counterterrorism strategy targets the usual suspects — and some who aren’t
The Trump administration’s new counterterrorism strategy targets drug cartels, Islamic terror groups — and left-wing domestic organizations that President Donald Trump views as enemies.
The 16-page memo, which some analysts at The Guardian labeled as bizarre, identifies the former Biden administration, transgender Americans and antifa as threats to public safety.
However, it makes no mention of far-right extremists, even though Congress and federal law enforcement agencies have long considered them to be behind some of the deadliest acts of political violence in the past two decades.
Security experts panned the memo, saying it does little to clarify what the White House plans to do about legitimate threats. Some labeled the strategy memo as “slop” and an “exercise in gaslighting, partisanship and obsequiousness.”
“It’s the opposite of ‘speak softly and carry a big stick,'” Colin Clarke, director of the Soufan Center, a security think tank, wrote on X. “It’s more like ‘yell loudly to conceal your small stick.’ And it’s transparent to our allies & adversaries. Whatever happened to the quiet professionals?”
Who is targeted on the list?
The memo identifies “three major types of terror groups” as its main priorities. The first group is “Narcoterrorists and Transnational Gangs,” organizations the Trump administration has targeted since the beginning of his second term. The administration has launched dozens of military strikes on suspected drug smuggling boats in the waters south of the U.S. The strikes have killed more than 160 people, and the administration has offered little evidence to support claims that the vessels were transporting drugs to the U.S.
The second group labeled in the memo is “Legacy Islamist Terrorists,” particularly the Muslim Brotherhood. The document also calls Iran’s government a “sinister regime.” But analysts criticized the memo’s lack of details on how the administration would actually target Islamic terrorists.
“The document barely engages with emerging technologies and all of the tools that terrorists use as forced multipliers,” Clarke told PBS News.
He said terror groups are experimenting with 3D printers, artificial intelligence and drone technology to carry out attacks and radicalize new recruits.
But the third group identified in the memo most surprised security experts: “Violent Left-Wing Extremists,” specifically “Anarchists and Anti-Fascist.” The memo emphasized that these groups have “radically pro-transgender” and “anti-American” ideologies.
It contends, without explanation, that these groups organized the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, a plot to prevent “conservative Catholics [from] attending traditional mass in Virginia,” and threats against “parents standing up for their children at school board meetings.”
The strategy calls for the groups’ “neutralization.”
“We will use all the tools constitutionally available to us to map them at home, identify their membership, map their ties to international organizations like Antifa, and use law enforcement tools to cripple them operationally before they can maim or kill the innocent,” the memo reads.
Nadia Ben-Youssef, the advocacy director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, told The Guardian that the memo normalizes and openly embraces state violence and political repression.
“The document follows in the Trumpian tradition and that of the broader rightwing movement by explicitly articulating an extremist worldview, and openly promoting policy and a vengeful executive unbounded by law,” she said.
Why is right-wing extremism left out?
In unveiling the strategy, White House counterterrorism czar Sebastian Gorka cited data from the Center for Strategic and International Studies that showed left-wing attacks outnumbered right-wing ones in 2025, for the first time in 30 years.
However, he omitted a significant finding in the center’s report: that over the past decade, right-wing extremists have carried out 152 attacks in the U.S. that left 112 people dead, while left-wing attacks totaled 35 and caused 13 deaths.
“The rise in left-wing attacks merits increased attention, but the fall in right-wing attacks is probably temporary, and it too requires a government response,” the report’s authors wrote. “In any case, many of the prescriptions for fighting terrorism effectively apply to violence from both the left and right.”
Researchers believe left-wing extremism is rising because of Trump’s presidency, much as right-wing extremism increased after the election of President Barack Obama, the first Black man to hold the office.
Terrorism experts criticized the Trump administration for overlooking violence by right-wing extremists.
“That’s just whacky,” Matthew Levitt, a terrorism expert at the Washington Institute, which studies American interests in the Middle East, wrote on X.
In an interview with Alex Marlow, Breitbart’s editor-in-chief, Gorka claimed that violence or violent rhetoric from the right does not compare to leftist extremism.
“Who are the people in the mainstream of the conservative movement, Alex, who are saying violence is okay?” Gorka said. “Hard to find people who aren’t fringe figures.”
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Ella Rae Greene, Editor In Chief
