Trump admin’s counterterrorism plan reveals their greatest fears: trans people, antifa, and debunked conspiracies

Trans people and their supporters rally Feb. 6, 2026, at the Statehouse in opposition to Senate Bill 244. (Photo by Sherman Smith/Kansas Reflector)

Michael McGrady Jr is a political columnist for The Kansas City Pitch. 

The Trump Administration released its official counterterrorism strategy early in May. I am extremely alarmed as it paints individuals I care deeply about as domestic terrorists. Authored by avowed Islamophobe and antisemite Sebastian Gorka, President Donald J. Trump and his regime consider transgender people and left-wing political dissenters as potential domestic terror threats.

The absurdities of the counterterrorism strategy are a demonstration of right-wing extremism emblematic of Trump’s Temu authoritarianism.

Foreign policy and national security experts are alarmed at Gorka’s blueprint, which he said he poured his soul into–that explains a lot. Michael Jacobson, senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, wrote recently that Gorka’s blueprint to fight “terrorism” is disconnected from the actual counterterrorism landscape internationally.

National security experts Colin P. Clarke and Clara Broekaert wrote for Foreign Policy that Trump’s counterterrorism strategy is “alarming.” They argue that “[the] document falls far short of previous counterterrorism strategies and is riddled with partisanship, misplaced assumptions, and a failure to grasp the nuance of terrorists’ ideology and [a] modus operandi.”

Other critics of the report have called it “slop” and “typo-sprinkled.”

An analysis by The Pitch found that many of the assertions made in the Gorka-authored document were fabrications, misinformation, or clear exaggerations. I digress, though. I took issue, clearly, with how Trump tasked his counterterrorism czar with targeting the groups of people whom he clearly hates: transgender folks, “antifa,” and radical leftists.

The federal government’s current counterterrorism strategy “will prioritize the rapid identification and neutralization of violent secular political groups whose ideology is anti-American, radically pro-transgender, and anarchist.”

This translates to laypeople as going after non-conservative and non-MAGA-friendly groups that even dare challenge President Trump’s tumultuous platform.

Consider what happened in the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s death. Anti-transgender activists instigated a moral panic about supposed transgender terrorists lurking in every corner of conservative America. Figures like Matt Walsh of the now-failing Daily Wire shared in the immediate aftermath of the shooting a post on X where he characterized Kirk’s death as “LGBT terrorism” and circulated the conspiracy theory of trans rights activists being aware of the plan to shoot and kill Kirk.

This is a derivative of the “trans terrorism” trope used to blame an entire community of people for actions they aren’t responsible for.

The reality is that there is no such thing as trans terrorism or any evidence of a rising LGBTQ+ terrorist threat, as Gorka alleges.

The same can be said for other alleged domestic terror threats, including the claims that “violent secular political groups” are propagating “anti-American” and anarchist threats. Trump and his inner circle have been accused of two things over the span of his second term: promoting Christian supremacy and instigating full-scale bigotry as policies of the government.

This shines through in the counterterrorism strategy document, and it speaks not only to Gorka’s belief that Christianity is targeted, but the upper echelons of the federal government have been infiltrated by such beliefs and clearly overt hardliners.

And don’t forget that the regime’s 2026 counterterrorism strategy was released the week following Trump’s Department of Justice release of its anti-Christian bias report. Todd Blanche, the acting U.S. attorney general and Trump’s defense attorney during his hush money trial involving porn star Stormy Daniels, approved the report, which accuses the administration of former President Joe Biden of carrying out a government-backed campaign to discriminate against Christians and infringe upon the First Amendment.

Barring the overwhelming evidence that anti-Christian bias is a product of right-wing hysteria, the Justice Department expended taxpayer dollars to produce a whopping 565-page report to confirm their political ideologies versus actual evidence. The term “transgender” is mentioned 141 times in the report. They allude to already debunked and litigated claims that Biden co-opted Easter in 2024 to recognize International Transgender Day of Visibility, which falls on May 31 of every year. The term “LGBTQ” was found 50 times, while “gender ideology” was found 36 times.

Pairing the long-winded anti-Christian bias report with the counterterrorism strategy by Gorka furnishes a sobering truth that Trump and his minions live in a post-truth world.

And the reason is clear: they’re the problem, and they will never accept that fact.

Once again, there is overwhelming evidence that discredits both documents I reviewed for this column. The threat of supposed left-wing extremists is minimal, if not near zero.

Trump’s deputy chief of staff for policy, Stephen Miller, said in the aftermath of Kirk’s death that all of the country’s left-wing political groups are a “vast domestic terror movement.” But it is right-wing extremists most likely to perpetrate an attack or domestic terror incident. Despite this fact, the far-right’s control of the White House has resulted in officials of the Trump administration, including President Trump himself, lodging claims that dissent and criticism of their platforms and actions are the same as a pipe bomb being thrown into the office of the Republican National Committee.

Even under President Trump’s regime, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security have defined domestic terrorism as having to be acts of actual violence. Simply criticizing the government isn’t domestic terrorism, as Gorka and the Trump White House argue. And it goes to show that calling an entire group of people potential terrorists, whether it is a sexual and gender minority or not, is a tactic that has developed over many years.

Like demagogues before him, Trump carries a big stick to use against his political opponents. The stick, however, is going to break with displays of ideology that characterize Mr. Gorka’s so-called counterterrorism strategies.

Michael McGrady Jr is a political columnist for The Kansas City Pitch.