The Trump administration has zeroed in on “violent left-wing extremists, including anarchists and anti-fascists” as one of the greatest threats to Americans
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NEED TO KNOW
- A new counterterrorism strategy published by the White House attempts to outline the U.S. government’s priorities when it comes to “deadly threats from terror groups and non-state actors”
- The document names three categories of terrorists: Islamist groups like ISIS, drug cartels, and violent left-wing extremists “whose ideology is anti-American, radically pro-transgender, and anarchist”
- “If you hurt Americans, or are planning to hurt Americans, ‘We Will Find You and We Will Kill You,’ ” Trump wrote in the memo’s foreword
A new counterterrorism strategy published by the White House attempts to outline the U.S. government’s priorities when it comes to “deadly threats from terror groups and non-state actors”: Islamist terrorist groups like al-Qaeda and ISIS, narcoterrorists and transnational gangs, and violent left-wing extremists “whose ideology is anti-American, radically pro-transgender, and anarchist.”
The 16-page memo was authored by Sebastian Gorka, the National Security Council senior director for counterterrorism, and includes with a foreword by President Donald Trump.
“Our new U.S. Counterterrorism Strategy is a return to common sense and Peace through Strength,” Trump wrote in the foreword. “As I said after our first successful counterterrorism mission, just days after I was sworn back in office – if you hurt Americans, or are planning to hurt Americans, ‘We Will Find You and We Will Kill You.’ ”
Trump’s administration has zeroed in on “violent left-wing extremists, including anarchists and anti-fascists” as one of the largest threats facing the American public.
In his second term, Trump has cited the alleged threats of anarchists and anti-fascists as justification to deploy troops to U.S. cities, including Portland, Ore., Memphis, Tenn., and Chicago.
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In September 2025, Trump declared “antifa” — short for anti-fascists — a "major terrorist organization” despite the lack of a centralized antifa group that could be defined as an organization.
Anti-fascism is a term that could be applied to a broad range of peaceful and legal protest activities, statements or actions speaking out against fascism, neo-Nazis and white supremacists.
The president has also targeted transgender Americans and LGBTQ populations broadly during his second term, purging transgender service members from the military, pushing to ban transgender people from owning guns, restricting access to transgender healthcare, and frequently railing against trans women athletes — including in two media appearances and at three White House events in May alone.
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The counterterrorism document cites the killing of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk — a prominent figure in Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement who had a personal relationship with the president and many in his administration — and pledges “the rapid identification and neutralization of violent secular political groups whose ideology is anti-American, radically pro-transgender, and anarchist.”
“We see a threat, we will respond to it, and we will crush it, whether it is the cartels, the jihadists, or violent left-wing extremists like antifa and like the transgender killers, the non-binary, the left-wing radicals who killed my friend Charlie Kirk, we will take them on, head on,” Gorka told reporters on a call last week, according to Politico.
Kirk was killed on Sept. 10, 2025, while speaking at an event at Utah Valley University. Law enforcement officials alleged in a recently released search warrant affidavit that the accused killer, 22-year-old Tyler Robinson, left a letter for his roommate explaining his actions, according to ABC News.
Law enforcement officials and other authorities in Utah, including the governor, have claimed the roommate was transgender and was at some point in a romantic relationship with Robinson, though the roommate has not made public statements even as they cooperated with police.
Robinson himself never identified as non-binary nor transgender, and prosecutors have never alleged as such.
Non-binary people are individuals who identify as neither a man nor a woman and can sometimes be transgender, though not always.
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There is no evidence to suggest support for or identifying as a member of transgender or LGBTQ populations leads to violence, despite insistences by the Trump administration and prominent MAGA figures, including Kirk.
“I can’t frankly name a mass shooting in the last year or two in America that wasn’t committed by a transgender lunatic that has been pumped up on probably hormones since they were three years old,” Donald Trump Jr. said on Fox News the day after Kirk’s killing.
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The Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit that tracks mass shootings and other acts of gun violence, recorded five mass shootings carried out by shooters confirmed to be transgender out of the 5,748 on record between Jan. 1, 2013, and Sept. 15, 2025, according to FactCheck.org. That’s less than a tenth of 1% of mass shootings.
Gorka has also promoted this falsehood, as he did in an August 2025 CNN appearance following a mass shooting that killed two children and injured 21 others at a Minneapolis Catholic church.
He claimed that “in just a couple of years, we have seen seven mass shootings involving people of transgender nature or who are confused in their gender.”
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His list included the five shootings between 2018 and 2025 identified by the Gun Violence Archive, as well a 2024 Iowa school shooting where claims about the shooter being transgender were never confirmed, and a 2023 mass shooting in Philadelphia where local law enforcement were forced to clarify that the accused gunman never identified as transgender.
Gorka — and the president — have zeroed in on left-wing violence. The memo does not mention far-right groups or individuals, who have killed at least 97 people since 2017, Trump’s first year in office, according to a February analysis by the right-wing Cato Institute. Killings motivated by left-wing ideologies during that same period numbered 25, Cato found, and totaled 68 since 1975.
“Absurdly, the document incorrectly labels drug cartels, ‘legacy Islamist terrorists,’ and violent left-wing extremists as the top counterterrorism threats – despite years of data proving that right-wing extremism has presented the most persistent and deadly threats to Americans for decades,” Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, the top House Democrat on the Homeland Security Committee, said in a May 6 statement.
“Perhaps even more deranged is the failure to mention terrorism threats stemming from Trump's unnecessary war with Iran," Thompson added.
Gorka, who hails from Hungary and became a U.S. citizen in 2012, sparked outrage during Trump’s first term after he allegedly wore a medal that could be interpreted as a nod to Miklos Horthy, a Hungarian leader who entered into a strained alliance with Nazi Germany in the early years of World War II, as reported by The New York Times.
Gorka denied these allegations, reportedly saying the medal belonged to his father, who he said had suffered “under both the Nazis and the Communists” in Hungary.
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