For a year, White House counterterrorism adviser Sebastian Gorka heavily promoted the national strategy he was writing, describing it as his “life’s work” and a “massive” blueprint that would fundamentally reshape America’s approach to fighting terrorism. The final document, released May 6 after repeated delays, is a sloppy 16-page paper riddled with typos that prioritizes threats according to political considerations rather than intelligence analysis, according to multiple current and former counterterrorism officials and threat analysts. Islamist militant groups, long ranked as the top danger, have now been placed behind Latin American drug cartels. The far-right extremists, whom the FBI has consistently identified as the top domestic terrorism threat, receive no attention at all. At the same time, far-left militants—a tiny fraction of extremist violence in the United States—are depicted as a danger comparable to global terrorist organizations like al-Qaida. “A new form of domestic terrorism has arisen,” the document states, “fueled by violent extremists who have embraced ideologies opposed to freedom and the American way of life.” Gorka’s plan — recently detailed in a ProPublica investigation — heaps praise on President Donald Trump’s national security agenda while providing scant specifics on how to address the administration’s chief concerns: Latin American “narcoterrorists,” Islamist militant organizations, and violent leftist antifascists and anarchists. Gorka, who oversees White House counterterrorism policy at the National Security Council, has described the document as a “return to common sense” following President Joe Biden’s 2021 strategy, which focused primarily on far-right domestic extremism. The updated strategy references Biden seven times. “It suggests to me that this administration is ignoring the evidence, what our allies are observing around the world, and the primary sources of violent threats — along with how those threats could be stopped,” said Cynthia Miller-Idriss, founding director of the Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab at American University. GOP leaders have frequently depicted Biden’s emphasis on the violent far right as Democrats seeking to suppress conservative activism. That notion prompted Trump to issue a sweeping pardon for over 33,500 individuals—including those who assaulted police—related to January 6. Gorka did not respond to a request for comment regarding the January 6, 2021, storming of the U.S. Capitol. When asked about criticisms of the plan, the White House pointed to several of Gorka’s public statements praising it.
