With the fast pace of the news cycle, it is easy to miss all the good things the Trump administration is currently advancing. One key highlight was the National Counterterrorism Strategy issued from the White House this month. The strategy is a refreshing reset from previous decades of misguided and even malicious activities undertaken in the name of “counterterrorism” and points in a promising direction with immediate steps to restore and protect our nation, citizens, and way of life. The official strategy document touts many achievements of the Trump administration already in the first 17 months, but this brief survey will focus on the parts of the strategy that are most uniquely promising to America First patriots who have been hopeful supporters of the president.
The strategy identifies three main categories of terrorist groups that threaten the U.S.: “Narcoterrorists and Transnational Gangs,” “Legacy Islamist terrorists,” and “Violent Left-Wing Extremists, including Anarchists and Anti-Fascists.” The administration’s identification of cartel gang bangers, jihadists, and Antifa thugs as its top targets is a drastic change from just a few years ago when the Biden administration identified supposed white nationalists and right-wing domestic extremists as the “most lethal elements of today’s domestic terrorism threat.”
Border Security, Immigration, and the American Hemisphere
President Trump’s counterterrorism strategy rightly places border security, immigration enforcement, and hemispheric dominance at the top of its agenda for securing America from terrorist threats. Whereas previous administrations gladly spent untold amounts of American blood and treasure fighting the nebulous threat of terror globally and especially in the Middle East, Trump’s strategy openly touts a “return to common sense which dictates that some things are more important than others and … some regions are more important than others.” Common sense requires a focus on immigration and on our own hemisphere.
The insanity of our government’s “Global War on Terror” was that, while supposedly waging a worldwide kinetic and information war on terrorists, the U.S. continued to let millions of unvetted immigrants into our country — both legally and illegally. “We have to fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them over here” proved to be one of the most malicious lies foisted upon the American people.
President Trump knows that the simplest way to protect American citizens here in our country is by locking down the border, barring all illegal entries, deporting illegal aliens (especially the “worst of the worst” criminals), and restricting even legal immigration as much as possible. Terrorists across the world or across the border are much less of a threat to Americans if they cannot get into America.
Along with securing the border and ramping up the largest immigration enforcement and deportation operations yet undertaken in our country, President Trump designated transnational gangs such as MS-13 and Tren de Aragua as foreign terrorist organizations and launched aggressive preemptive strikes on cartel boats trafficking drugs. As the strategy notes, the president even designated illicit fentanyl and fentanyl precursors as “Weapons of Mass Destruction.” The fentanyl-as-WMDs designation seems almost an ironic jab at previous politicians, who gladly waged a war in Iraq over spurious claims of WMDs while allowing lethal drugs to pour over the border from Mexico and kill hundreds of thousands of Americans. Despite the ongoing conflict with Iran, the counterterrorism strategy and all these laudable actions taken by the Trump administration make it clear that this president is not interested in repeating the misguided debacles of previous administrations.
The Trump administration has also revoked more than 100,000 visas, sought to revoke Temporary Protected Status for all groups, tightened the process for acquiring legal resident status in the U.S., reduced naturalizations, and placed an immigration ban on dozens of countries deemed a threat to U.S. national security and public safety.
The strategy also directly calls out the European nations and NATO allies for their abject failure to police their own borders, boldly observing that “Unfettered mass migration has been the transmission belt for terrorists.” The Trump administration expresses its goal that European nations work with the U.S. to curb mass migration and the growth of anti-Western, anti-Christian ideologies brought into Europe largely by immigrant populations.
Violent Left
Not only does the strategy demonstrate that the White House is going after Muslim terrorists and illegal alien criminals, but it also focuses on left-wing violence and Antifa. The strategy notes that formerly the intelligence state targeted conservative Christians and right-wing movements, including Latin Mass Catholics in Virginia and parents who attended school board meetings to oppose LGBT and woke ideologies in school. “As real threats were ignored or underplayed, Americans have witnessed the politically motivated killings of Christians and conservatives committed by violent left-wing extremists, including the assassination of Charlie Kirk by a radical who espoused extreme transgender ideologies,” the strategy states. Whereas the Biden administration promoted LGBT beliefs and actively covered up the transgender ideology animating attacks like the Nashville shooting at a Christian school in 2023, the Trump administration is openly admitting transgenderism to be a radical ideology fueling domestic terrorism.
The Trump administration has put these promises into action by fighting to suppress and end transgenderism, designating Antifa as a domestic terrorist organization, arresting and charging violent leftist protestors and thugs, and even securing the first-ever convictions of Antifa criminals as domestic terrorists. Admitting these incredible wins, it is still clear that much more could be done to shut down radical leftist groups that promote violence and to cut off funding sources for Antifa and other similar groups. The strategy promises to “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.” Hopefully this will result in even more investigation and enforcement against the militant left in the upcoming months.
And looking beyond the U.S., the Trump administration could designate Antifa a foreign terrorist organization, and the U.S. State Department and other agencies could exert even more pressure on European nations and NATO allies to go after the foreign wings of Antifa within their borders and even to extradite Antifa leaders who have fled the U.S. The U.S. has begun to leverage its global pressure in favor of halting mass migration and instead advancing remigration, and much more can be done with U.S. leverage upon Europe.
Also promising is the strategy’s acknowledgement of the oft-named “Red-Green alliance” between the radical left and radical Islam, which has frequently combined to undermine the character and culture of Western nations, oppose immigration enforcement, and breed domestic terrorism. The radical left and growing Islamic influence must both be defeated, and the president’s strategy demonstrates a discerning grasp of how these two often work in tandem to undermine America and the West.
Africa
Even in its brief section on Africa, the counterterrorism strategy openly repudiates the former “nation building” interventionist agenda and the “Biden-era neocolonial policies focused on globalist left-wing cultural hegemony.” Instead, the strategy notes that the president’s primary goals for Africa are preventing jihadist terrorism and protecting Christians who have been targeted and slaughtered by jihadists, as President Trump has done with several bold strikes on ISIS targets and groups. It is remarkable to see from the most powerful government on earth such an open expression in favor of Christians against the threat of Islamist violence. Even if we can debate the merits of non-intervention and argue about how much intervention in Africa actually serves American interests, it is a massive shift to see the Trump administration discarding liberal, globalist foreign policy and instead giving a militant defense of persecuted Christians.
Restoring Our Country
The recent counterterrorism strategy released in May 2026 is just one more sign of how much the Trump administration is working to reform our long-corrupted government so it can genuinely protect American citizens. Even for those skeptics who reasonably doubt the wisdom of the Iran conflict, it is undeniable that the president’s domestic priorities are a vast improvement over previous iterations. Immigration, cartels, Antifa, and Islamic violence are among the greatest threats to America today, and it should be an encouraging sign to all patriots that President Trump has identified these as the chief targets.
Much work remains, but it is incredibly encouraging that as we get ready to celebrate our nation’s 250th anniversary we are course-correcting and making many strides in the right direction towards reclaiming and restoring our country.
