At a Mosque in San Diego, Trump’s Counterterrorism Strategy Falls Flat

(Peter Beck, Jacob Ware – Lawfare) During an interview to unveil the latest edition of the U.S. Counterterrorism Strategy, Sebastian Gorka, the senior director for counterterrorism on the National Security Council, was asked by conservative outlet Breitbart whether the United States faced a terrorism threat from the violent far right. “No,” Gorka responded, and then proceeded to discuss Tucker Carlson and his apparent betrayal of the conservative movement. Gorka’s answer was likely unsurprising to anyone who read the recent strategy, which fails to mention the far right at all, instead focusing on global Salafi-jihadist threats, narcoterrorism from drug cartels, and “Violent Left-Wing Extremists, including Anarchists and Anti-Fascists.” The final group appeared for the first time in the counterterrorism strategy as part of the Trump administration’s broader shift to crack down on “radical ideologies” that the strategy describes as “antithetical to freedom and the American way of life”. The failure to mention terrorism from the far right, which includes both white supremacists driven by conspiracy theories such as the Great Replacement as well as anti-government extremists organizing against perceived federal tyranny, flew in the face of reality. According to data collected by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the far right was by far the deadliest terrorist threat to the United States between 2016 and 2025, claiming over 100 lives in 152 separate attacks, including at a synagogue in Pittsburgh and a Walmart in a predominantly Latino community in El Paso, Texas. There were just 13 fatalities among 35 attacks perpetrated by the far left during that same period. These days, the national counterterrorism strategy is more symbolic than actionable: After all, the 2026 strategy was released a year late, and it’s fairly obvious its delay did not stop the exercise of counterterrorism across the federal government. But it nevertheless signals what should and should not be prioritized. And given the United States’ long-standing experience with white supremacy and other forms of extremism, including most recently at the Islamic Center of San Diego, the administration’s oversight is likely to cost lives. – At a Mosque in San Diego, Trump’s Counterterrorism Strategy Falls Flat | Lawfare