Trump Administration’s New “Counterterrorism” Strategy Targets Trans People and Left-Wing Activists

The Trump administration’s new “United States Counterterrorism Strategy,” released this week under the direction of White House “counterterrorism czar” Sebastian Gorka, marks a dangerous and unprecedented expansion of who the government considers a terror threat. Far from focusing on the proven menace of right-wing extremists, the document conspicuously omits them entirely. Instead, it elevates “Violent Left-Wing Extremists, including Anarchists and Anti-Fascists,” and shockingly, targets transgender people as part of a “radically pro-transgender” ideology deemed “anti-American.”

This shift is not just a policy change — it’s a political weaponization of counterterrorism language to criminalize and surveil marginalized groups. The document accuses transgender activists of violent extremism and bizarrely blames them for the assassination of conservative figure Charlie Kirk. Gorka doubled down at a press conference, vowing to “crush” threats from “the transgender killers, the nonbinary, the left-wing radicals who killed my friend, Charlie Kirk.” These claims echo Trump’s false assertions of a rise in transgender shooters, recycled every time a shooting occurs to stoke fear and justify repression.

Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.), ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Homeland Security, slammed the document for its glaring omission of the far right — the group responsible for the vast majority of deadly attacks on US soil. Thompson called the strategy a “document full of fake administration counterterrorism ‘achievements’” with no clear objectives or accountability.

This new strategy continues a troubling pattern of authoritarian overreach by the Trump administration, which has long used the language of counterterrorism to justify surveillance and repression of targeted communities. After 9/11, Muslim and Arab Americans were branded as inherent threats; now, that same framework is being repurposed to demonize transgender people and progressive activists.

The Heritage Foundation has also pushed for the FBI to classify transgender advocacy as violent extremism, further fueling this dangerous narrative. The administration’s plan promises to “identify their membership, map their ties to international organizations like Antifa, and use law enforcement tools to cripple them operationally.” This is not counterterrorism — it is state-sponsored harassment and intimidation aimed at silencing dissent and marginalizing vulnerable Americans.

As this document reveals, the Trump administration’s approach to security is less about protecting the public and more about consolidating power by scapegoating vulnerable communities. We cannot let this authoritarian playbook go unchallenged. The real threat to American democracy is not transgender people or left-wing activists — it is the administration’s willful blindness to right-wing violence and its embrace of fearmongering to justify repression.