The Trump administration’s new national counterterrorism strategy explicitly names “radically pro-gender” and anarchist groups as domestic terrorism threats, marking the first time a White House counterterrorism plan has directly addressed the wave of violence carried out by transgender-identifying individuals against Christian targets.
Sebastian Gorka, the National Counter Terrorism senior director, outlined the policy in comments to The Daily Wire on Wednesday. “In addition to cartels and Islamist terror groups, our national counterterrorism activities will prioritize the rapid identification and neutralization of violent secular political groups whose ideology is anti-American, radically pro-gender, or anarchist, such as Antifa,” Gorka said.
The administration plans to use law enforcement tools to map these groups, identify their members, and disrupt operations before attacks occur. “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 tools to cripple them operationally before they can maim or kill the innocent,” Gorka told the outlet.
Gorka cited a pattern of attacks carried out by transgender-identifying shooters against Christian targets as part of the rationale for the new priority. He pointed specifically to Audrey Hale, who killed six people at Covenant School in Nashville in 2023; Robert Westman, who attacked children at Annunciation Catholic School on August 27, 2025; and Tyler Robinson, who was charged with assassinating conservative commentator Charlie Kirk.
“Sadly, if you look at the manifestos of individuals who have undertaken successful attacks on the innocent, the justifications for the likes of Audrey Hale, the Covenant School shooter, if you look at Tyler Robinson, the assassin of Charlie Kirk, if you look at Robin or Robert Westman, the murderer of the little children at the Annunciation Catholic School last year, we see 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,” Gorka said.
Gorka said the administration sees the pattern as part of a broader ideological current. “This is familiar to anyone who’s studied modern terrorism,” he said. “The age of modern terrorism actually begins in the 1920s with the anarchist movement in Russia. Over time it has morphed. It has developed.” He described what he called a “resurgence of violent Left-wing ideologies” in the United States and framed the new policy as a non-partisan anti-violence measure.
Gorka addressed the political dimension directly: “It is the great irony of the modern age that we have a political side of the aisle that preaches acceptance and tolerance while at the same time cheering the death of people like my friend Charlie Kirk or assassination attempts against my boss President Trump.”
“We will not permit politically motivated violence in the United States from either side of the aisle,” he added, “but the sad truth is the Left has far more politically motivated assassinations or attempted assassinations to its credit in recent years, not the Right.”
