The Trump administration on Wednesday announced a national counterterrorism strategy calling for more aggressive steps to crack down on left-wing violence, including antifa and the savage attacks prompted by radical gender ideology.
The focus on left-wing terrorism is part of an overarching U.S. counterterrorism plan that also focuses on eliminating threats from drug cartels, hemispheric threats and preventing weapons of mass destruction from entering American soil.
“Our counterterrorism activities will also prioritize the rapid identification of violent secular political groups whose ideology is anti-American, radically pro-transgender and anarchist,” President Trump wrote in the 16-page document outlining the strategy.
“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 to cripple them operationally before they can maim or kill the innocent,” he wrote.
The plan highlights a shift in the U.S. counterterrorism approach, which typically prioritizes fighting foreign terrorists. Violent attacks by left-wing extremists have become a growing problem, laid bare by the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk and the assassination attempt on Mr. Trump at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner less than two weeks ago.
It also marks a 180-degree turn from the Biden administration, which sought to crack down on what it called violent domestic extremism, prioritizing cases of White supremacism and far-right organizations such as the Proud Boys.
Sebastian Gorka, the Trump administration’s senior director for counterterrorism, told reporters that Americans are witnessing a disturbing “resurgence of violent left-wing ideology.”
A study released last year by the Center for Strategic and International Studies found that left-wing violence had risen in the past decade, particularly since Mr. Trump’s first election in 2016. The study found that 2025 was on pace to be the left’s most violent year in more than three decades and outnumbered attacks by those on the far right.
In 2015, left-wing terrorist attacks and plots accounted for roughly 2% of all terrorist attacks and plots, according to CSIS. That number soared to 42% by 2025, a record high.
In fact, 2025 marked the first time since 1994 that the number of left-wing attacks (five) outnumbered those carried out by the right (one) and Islamic jihadists (two).
Although CSIS found that left-wing terrorist attacks are on the rise, it found that over the past decade, right-wing extremists carried out 152 attacks in the U.S., killing 112 people, compared with 35 attacks and 13 deaths attributed to left-wing extremists. Islamic jihadi attacks accounted for 82 deaths over the same period.
Critics faulted the Trump administration’s counterterrorism strategy for overlooking right-wing violence.
“Trump’s CT strategy is out and it does not recognize right-wing terrorism as a problem. That’s just whacky,” Matthew Levitt, a terrorism expert at the Washington Institute, wrote on X.
Rebekah Jones, a former congressional candidate and COVID-19 activist and whistleblower who labels herself as “chief of PR for antifa,” also criticized the strategy.
“If you’re against fascism, you’re now a terrorist in the eyes of the Trump regime. Great job guys. You killed America,” she wrote on X.
The Trump administration is the first to mention antifa, short for antifascist, in its counterterrorism documents. The White House has made public its counterterrorism strategies since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The documents serve as a signal to U.S. adversaries and allies about each administration’s threat priorities.
Antifa organizes protests targeting conservatives and right-wingers. Antifa protests often turn violent as they use harassment, doxing and property damage. Conservative lawmakers have depicted antifa as a coordinated extremist threat, though law enforcement officials say it lacks formal leadership.
In September, the Trump administration designated antifa a domestic terrorist organization.
A federal jury in March convicted eight people whom prosecutors tied to antifa on terrorism charges over a shooting at a Texas immigration facility. It was the first time that charges of material support for terrorists were filed against individuals accused of being antifa members.
Sentencing is scheduled for next month.
Mr. Gorka linked left-wing violence to radical gender ideology, ticking off a series of recent killings that authorities have linked to gender dysphoria.
Among the cases he cited were Aiden Hale, a transgender man who killed three 9-year-old children and three adults at a Nashville Christian school in 2023; Robin Westman, a transgender woman who killed two children and injured 28 others at a Minneapolis Catholic church last year; and Tyler Robinson, the alleged Kirk assassin who is accused of carrying out the killing because he opposed Kirk’s views on gender identity.
“Americans have witnessed politically motivated killings of Christians and conservatives increase, committed by violent left-wing extremists, including the assassination of my friend, Charlie Kirk, by a radical who espoused extremist transgender ideology,” Mr. Gorka said.
He emphasized that right-wing groups would not be immune from the full force of the federal government should they engage in violence.
“We are seeing an ideology that ostensibly began by preaching tolerance being used by specific actors to wage violence against the most innocent little children at Catholic schools, at churches,” he said. “This is a threat we will take very seriously, whether you are right-wing-inspired or left-wing-inspired.”
In September, after Kirk’s death, Mr. Trump signed an executive order labeling antifa a domestic terrorist organization and directing the Justice Department to “investigate, disrupt and dismantle illegal operations of antifa.” The administration has recently moved to designate more far-left groups as terrorist organizations.
The State Department designated four left-wing groups in Europe — two in Greece, one in Germany and another in Italy — as terrorist organizations. The move imposed financial restrictions on the groups and empowered the administration to surveil, investigate and even prosecute members on U.S. soil.
Mr. Gorka highlighted White House efforts to target cartels, which Mr. Trump last year designated as foreign terrorist organizations. He said more Americans have died from cartels bringing illicit drugs into the U.S. than American service members have died in global conflicts since World War II.
“Whether it is strangling their illicit funds, whether it is tracking their drug boats, we will not permit them to kill Americans on a massive scale,” Mr. Gorka said in a telephone call with reporters to announce the strategy.
In September 2025, the Trump administration began blowing up alleged drug trafficking vessels in Latin American waterways, killing at least 191 people to date. The U.S. in January captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, whom the administration long accused of trafficking drugs.
Mr. Maduro is being held in a New York prison where he awaits narcoterrorism charges, which he has denied.
