Donald Trump Signs 16-Page U.S. Counterterrorism Strategy, Critics Say It Ranks Threats Politically

The White House released a 16-page U.S. Counterterrorism Strategy on May 6 that White House counterterrorism czar Sebastian Gorka had promoted as a “massive” blueprint to overhaul the U.S. approach to combating terrorist threats.

“Trump's new counterterrorism strategy targets Europe and the left, focusing on eradicating 'extremists,' including 'transgender-supporting' groups”

Akhbar al-Yawm

ProPublica reported the finished product is “a 16-page, typo-sprinkled document” that ranks threats based on politics rather than intelligence assessments, with Islamist militant groups coming second to Latin American drug cartels.

Akhbar al-Yawm

The strategy’s framing drew criticism from Cynthia Miller-Idriss, who said, “this administration is not paying attention to the data,” and from Juliette Kayyem, who lamented on X that “Now it reads like a partisan screed.”

The document also includes a signed foreword by President Donald Trump that claims credit for ending “four years of weakness, failure, surrender, and humiliation under the last administration,” while the White House spokesperson Olivia Wales said, “President Trump is crushing terrorist threats to the United States.”

Foreign Policy said the most worrisome issue is “the terrorist threats missing from the document,” including minimal discussion of Iranian-backed or -inspired terrorism despite the United States being “currently at war with Iran.”

Foreign Policy also described the strategy’s three lines of effort as “legacy Islamist terrorists, violent left-wing extremists, and narcoterrorists and transnational gangs,” while arguing that it mis-prioritizes imminent threats.

Alternet

In the same critique, Foreign Policy quoted the strategy’s focus on “exploitation of new weapons, like drones, by cartels and Jihadists,” but said this was “wholly inadequate” for emerging technology threats.

The Common Sense described the strategy as identifying “three major types of terror groups,” including “narcoterrorists and transnational gangs,” “legacy Islamist terrorists,” and “violent left-wing extremists, including anarchists and anti-fascists,” and said it prioritizes neutralizing hemispheric terror threats by incapacitating cartel operations.

Truthout reported that the White House’s 2026 Counterterrorism Strategy, published May 6, expands the administration’s war on progressives by directing the Department of Justice, the FBI, and other national security agencies to root out what it calls “domestic terrorist organizations.”

“What Makes Trump’s New Counterterrorism Strategy So Alarming Most worrisome are the terrorist threats missing from the document”

Foreign Policy

Truthout quoted Hina Shamsi of the ACLU National Security Project saying, “NSPM-7 is a deliberate attempt to sow fear and intimidate and silence opposition,” and also quoted Sumayyah Waheed saying the memo draws on policies characterized by “mass surveillance, racial and religious profiling, and crackdowns on dissent.”

The Common Sense said the strategy prioritizes “violent secular political groups whose ideology is anti-American, radically pro-transgender, and anarchist,” and described the mission as to “identify those groups that have the intent and capability to plot attacks against Americans and then neutralise them.”

In a separate report, France 24 said the strategy urged Europe to “act now and halt their deliberate decline,” while also stating it targets “violent left-wing extremists,” including groups that are pro-transgender rights, as the administration intensifies political attacks on opponents.