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President Donald Trump’s administration unveiled a new counterterrorism plan on Wednesday that focuses in part on rooting out what it describes as left-wing extremist groups operating domestically and overseas.
It’s the first counterterrorism proposal released by the president since 2018, reflecting many of his second-term priorities. Dr. Sebastian Gorka, Trump’s counterterrorism czar, told reporters that the administration would “use all the tools constitutionally available” to target various organizations, prioritizing “violent, secular political groups whose ideology is anti-American … or anarchist, such as antifa.”
“We will do the same with the state sponsors of such groups and those governments undertaking lethal plots on US soil or against Americans anywhere,” Gorka said.
The Trump administration formally declared antifa a terrorist organization in September, a unique designation for an ostensibly US-based operation — and one that lacks centralized leadership. Gorka said the counterterrorism plan would target “any group that espouses violence,” though he added that there has been “a resurgence of violent left-wing ideologies,” at one point mentioning the assassination of TPUSA founder Charlie Kirk last year.
Prosecutors argue that Kirk’s accused killer, Tyler Robinson, targeted him because of the conservative activist’s political views. Gorka said that any advocacy for violence or engaging of violence for “political purposes” could amount to terrorism.
“Whether you are right-wing-inspired or left-wing-inspired, the point at which you advocate for violence or use violence yourself for political purposes means you are actually undertaking terrorism, and we will not permit that to happen,” he said.
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Trump’s counterterrorism plan also focuses on combating “Islamist terror groups,” as Gorka put it, including al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group, as well as drug cartels. Gorka also highlighted the Muslim Brotherhood, which saw three of its branches designated by Trump as terrorist organizations in January.
But he specifically singled out “radically [sic] pro-gender” individuals while discussing left-wing groups and later alluded to Robinson’s romantic partner at the time of the Kirk assassination, who was reportedly transitioning from male gender identity to female.
“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 said.
The Trump administration, he added, will sit down with some “counterterrorism partners” to discuss the new strategy later this week.
