{"id":15,"date":"2026-05-16T15:37:49","date_gmt":"2026-05-16T15:37:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newhomeamerica.com\/?p=15"},"modified":"2026-05-16T15:37:49","modified_gmt":"2026-05-16T15:37:49","slug":"how-trumps-new-counterterrorism-strategy-puts-you-at-risk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newhomeamerica.com\/?p=15","title":{"rendered":"How Trump\u2019s New Counterterrorism Strategy Puts You at Risk"},"content":{"rendered":"
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the Trump administration<\/span> last week unveiled its \u201c,\u201d a 16-page collection of threats, grievances, hyperbole, and lies. The memo is a truly foundational document and a striking distillation of Trumpism as an ideology, movement, and system of governance. It also serves as a new declaration of war on the Trump administration\u2019s enemies \u2014 foreign and domestic, real and imagined.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Read more \u201cWe Will Find You and We Will Kill You\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

The brainchild of National Security Council official Sebastian Gorka, the \u201cCounterterrorism Strategy\u201d weaves together Trump\u2019s war on the wider world \u2014 which stretches from interventions and wars in Yemen and Iran to Nigeria and Somalia to Venezuela and the Caribbean Sea \u2014 with the administration\u2019s war on dissent at home, which has targeted immigrants, legal observers, activists, protesters, and the press.<\/p>\n

Under the guise of protecting America, it takes aim at wide swaths of Americans, putting targets on the backs of the most vulnerable.<\/p>\n

The \u201cCounterterrorism Strategy\u201d formalizes a drastic shift in focus for counterterror efforts. Now, according to the Trump administration, the nation is battling three major types of terror groups: \u201cLegacy Islamist Terrorists,\u201d the long-standing focus of America\u2019s counter-terror efforts; \u201cNarcoterrorists and Transnational Gangs\u201d; and \u201cViolent Left-Wing Extremists, including Anarchists and Anti-Fascists.\u201d <\/p>\n

This last group is defined in the document as people the administration deems to be \u201canti-American, radically pro-transgender, and anarchist.\u201d This puts antifa \u2014 a fictional foe that is actually a collection of ideas and not an organization \u2014 on par with actual terrorist groups like Al Qaeda and the Islamic State group, and drug-trafficking syndicates such as the Sinaloa Cartel and Jalisco New Generation Cartel.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The memo makes no mention of right-wing extremist groups, despite rafts of research, from the U.S. government and others, demonstrating that such groups have been responsible for the majority of violent attacks in America in recent years.<\/p>\n

Following 9\/11, the George W. Bush administration published the first official National Strategy for Combating Terrorism. The 2003 document purported to set \u201cthe course for winning the War on Terror,\u201d with a focus on \u201cdestroying the larger al-Qaida network,\u201d by defining the threat and laying out big-picture goals and objectives. New strategies have been issued numerous times, over multiple presidencies, since.<\/p>\n

Explaining the 2026 strategy last week, Gorka leaned into the lies which permeate the Trump administration\u2019s document. \u201cVery simply, it\u2019s common-sense counterterrorism based on reality not fake threats,\u201d he explained. \u201cIn the president\u2019s foreword and in chapter one, we make it very clear we will not permit the use of the most powerful national security tools in the world including the counterterrorism enterprise to be used as political weapons.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rep. Valerie Foushee, D-N.C., had a very different interpretation, calling the strategy \u201ca plan on how they\u2019re going to attack people on the left,\u201d noting that antifascists are \u201cnot a real terrorism threat in the United States.\u201d She added that the effort is \u201ccompletely corrupt.\u201d<\/p>\n

To contextualize the U.S. government\u2019s radical new approach to counterterrorism, The Intercept analyzed the document, highlighting revelatory passages that show how\u00a0the Trump administration is\u00a0bringing the war on terror home.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe Will Kill You\u201d<\/h2>\n

History ultimately judges presidents by their priorities, both deeds and words.<\/p>\n

While calling out slavery as the cause of the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln still focused his second inaugural address on reconciliation over retribution. \u201cWith malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation\u2019s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan\u2014to do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations,\u201d he pronounced.<\/p>\n

On the eve of World War II, as the threat of fascism loomed over the world, President Franklin D. Roosevelt readied a nation for war, not with ferocious rhetoric but by envisioning a new world founded upon the freedom of speech and expression, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. \u201cThat is no vision of a distant millennium,\u201d he told Congress on January 6, 1941. \u201cIt is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so-called new order of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb.\u201d<\/p>\n

These presidents were\u00a0deeply flawed. Both committed grave injustices, were responsible for immense harm, and neither lived up to their most laudable words. But those words survived for a reason and are now part of the American canon. <\/p>\n

For President Donald Trump, the \u201c2026 Counterterrorism Strategy\u201d is as good as any collection of words in defining him. Nothing better illustrates his vision of America\u2019s role in the world than Trump\u2019s capstone quote. He concludes the foreword with words that ring true from the streets of Minneapolis, where federal agents killed U.S. citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti during anti-ICE resistance; to a school building in Minab, Iran, where more than 100 children were killed in a U.S. airstrike; to the Eastern Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea, where close to 200 civilians have been killed in attacks on alleged drug boats; and should follow him forever: \u201cWe Will Find You and We Will Kill You.\u201d<\/p>\n

Treating Americans as Terrorists<\/h2>\n

Under U.S. law, the government can designate \u201cforeign terrorist organizations,\u201d a process that typically entails a formal declaration by the secretary of state at the direction of the president, allowing the Treasury Department to impose financial penalties and the Justice Department to prosecute people for providing \u201cmaterial support\u201d to such groups. Congress has not passed any law creating a domestic terrorism designation, nor is there a standalone crime of \u201cdomestic terrorism.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

This has not stopped Trump from aiming the counterterror apparatus at domestic targets in his second term. Under National Security Presidential Memorandum 7, or NSPM-7, which Trump issued last September, vaguely defined enemies are not only typified by \u201csupport for the overthrow of the United States Government,\u201d but also advocacy of opinions clearly protected by the First Amendment including \u201canti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity\u201d as well as \u201chostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.\u201d<\/p>\n

In this document, the Trump administration makes clear it considers any American who it believes has \u201cadopted ideologies antithetical to freedom and the American way of life\u201d to be a terror threat.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Trump administration has repurposed the \u2018terrorism\u2019 framing and applied it to new boogeymen, like alleged narcos as well as a caricature of their domestic political opposition,\u201d Brian Finucane, a senior adviser for the U.S. Program at the International Crisis Group, told The Intercept.<\/p>\n

White-Washing Right-Wing Terror<\/h2>\n

What\u2019s notable here isn\u2019t just the \u201cmajor terror groups\u201d included \u2014 it\u2019s the type of groups the Trump administration omitted.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAbsurdly, the document incorrectly labels drug cartels, \u2018legacy Islamist terrorists,\u2019 and violent left-wing extremists as the top counterterrorism threats \u2014 despite years of data proving that right-wing extremism has presented the most persistent and deadly threats to Americans for decades,\u201d said Rep. Bennie G. Thompson, D-Miss., ranking member of the House Committee on Homeland Security.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In fact, a 2025 analysis\u00a0conducted by the nonpartisan Center for Strategic and International Studies found that, over the past decade, right-wing extremists carried out 152 attacks in the United States and killed 112 people, compared with 35 attacks and 13 deaths attributed to left-wing militants. Islamist jihadist-inspired attacks resulted in 82 deaths over the same span.<\/p>\n

\u201cRadical Ideologies\u201d<\/h2>\n

The new \u201cCounterterrorism Strategy\u201d signals a jarring shift in the priorities of the national security apparatus. Instead of having the security state primarily focus on foreign actors and those domestic threats responsible for the most violence in recent years \u2014 like white supremacists and violent militias \u2014 the president is effectively siccing them on anyone who dares to disagree with him or his supporters.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a very severe degradation of freedom of thought [and] freedom of speech in the country, and it should be raising alarm bells,\u201d said Robert P. Jones, president and founder of Public Religion Research Institute.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt does look like a very straight blueprint drawn from white evangelical Protestant Christian circles,\u201d said Jones, the author of the forthcoming book \u201cBackslide: Reclaiming a Faith and a Nation After the Christian Turn Against Democracy.\u201d\u201c<\/em>What they call radical ideology is essentially anything that differs from that conservative, white evangelical Protestant worldview.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Narcoterrorist Boogeymen<\/h2>\n

By labeling drug-trafficking networks as terrorists, Trump is operating in a long tradition of using the rhetoric of war to refer to an issue that is rooted in public health. The terrorism framing is simply the logical next step in the decadeslong war on drugs that is, more often than not, used as a cudgel by U.S. policymakers to keep Latin American countries in line, said Alexander Avi\u00f1a, a historian at Arizona State University.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re using drug war counterterrorism as a cover,\u201d Avi\u00f1a said. \u201cThey\u2019re effectively maintaining control over the region through a bunch of proxy right-wing governments, but it\u2019s being framed as counterterrorism, as an anti-drugs operation. The innovation here is that they\u2019re applying war on terror legislation and laws to drug trafficking organizations\u201d<\/p>\n

The problem with labeling drug networks as \u201cterrorists,\u201d however, is that the vast majority of drug traffickers differ from organizations like Al Qaeda and the Islamic State group in that they have no real membership, and they operate for profit, not to achieve an ideological objective.<\/p>\n

Legacy Islamist Terrorists<\/h2>\n

Despite Trump\u2019s boasts of his prowess at fighting terrorism, both Al Qaeda and ISIS were the top threats in his . They are called out specifically in the new document as well.<\/p>\n

In fact, Gorka\u2019s inclusion of ISIS directly contradicts longtime claims by Trump. \u201cWe defeated ISIS in record time,\u201d Trump said in his 2024 election-night speech. Last year, at his commencement speech at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, he said: \u201cI defeated ISIS in three weeks.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPolitically Motivated\u201d Killings of Christians<\/h2>\n

The idea that Christians, who make up two-thirds of the U.S. population, are under siege is belied by the data. Hate crimes motivated by anti-Christian bias are far rarer than attacks motivated by racism or xenophobia in the United States, and other religious groups are far more likely to report being the victim of a religiously motivated hate crime than Christians. An analysis of 2023 FBI hate crime data found that less than 10 percent of religiously motivated hate crimes were believed to be motivated by anti-Christian bias.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s really no evidence-based reason why a report focused on the domestic front would disproportionately feature violence against Christians. There\u2019s just no evidence that that is the most pressing problem facing us in the United States today,\u201d said PRRI\u2019s Jones. <\/p>\n

In the wake of Charlie Kirk\u2019s killing, right-wing influencers and media outlets rapidly spread misinformation about the shooter\u2019s gender identity and supposed \u201cpro-transgender\u201d ideology based on unverified claims about the bullet casings used in the shooting. Trans people are far more likely to be victims of gun violence than perpetrators. In mass shootings carried out between 1966 and 2025, less than 1 percent of the shooters were transgender, according to the Violence Prevention Project. The overwhelming majority of shooters were cisgender men.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the immediate aftermath of Charlie Kirk\u2019s murder, news outlets and people with large platforms online raced to share unconfirmed reports that wrongfully tied the LGBTQ+ community to the shooter,\u201d Human Rights Campaign national press secretary Brandon Wolf told The Washington Blade. \u201cJumping to those conclusions was reckless, irresponsible, and led to a wave of threats against the trans community from right wing influencers, and a wave of terror for the community that is already living scared.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNeutralization\u201d of Adversaries<\/h2>\n

While Trump has frequently threatened his political opponents in public, experts in extremism told The Intercept that \u201cthis kind of language\u201d in a national security document should raise alarm bells. It\u2019s one thing when the president rants about \u201cradical gender ideology\u201d at a rally, said Jones. \u201cBut when it gets put into a national presidential security memo, when it gets put into a report that\u2019s led by a task force at the U.S. Department of Justice, and when it\u2019s put into a counterterrorism document \u2026 these are laying the legal framework for prosecution.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Read more Internal Pentagon Report Reveals Hegseth Is Willfully Putting Civilians in Danger<\/a><\/p>\n

This language of \u201cneutralization\u201d in this new strategy harkens back to the FBI\u2019s analogous and infamous COINTELPRO program, which was employed in the 1960s and 1970s to target the civil rights movement, the New Left, and anti-Vietnam War protesters, among other domestic groups and individuals and, according to a report on U.S. intelligence activities, \u201cturn[ed] a law enforcement agency into a law violator.\u201d The FBI, the committee found, \u201cwent beyond the collection of intelligence to secret action designed to \u2018disrupt\u2019 and \u2018neutralize\u2019 target groups and individuals,\u201d using \u201cwartime counterintelligence\u201d techniques that \u201cwould be intolerable in a democratic society even if all of the targets had been involved in violent activity,\u201d which they were not.<\/p>\n

A 1967 FBI memo notes that purpose of this type of \u201ccounterintelligence endeavor is to expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize\u201d African American groups and leaders. Efforts included \u201csending anonymous poison-pen letters intended to break up marriages,\u201d \u201cencouraging gang warfare,\u201d \u201cfalsely labeling members of a violent group as police informers,\u201d and other means to \u201ccause serious physical, emotional, or economic damage to the targets,\u201d according to the committee. Their investigation found that civil rights leader \u201cMartin Luther King, Jr. was, for instance, the target of an intensive campaign by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to \u2018neutralize\u2019 him\u201d and that \u201cthe man in charge of the FBI\u2019s \u2018war\u2019 against Dr. King\u201d said they used the same methods employed against Soviet agents.<\/p>\n

An Antifa Obsession<\/h2>\n

Antifa, short for antifascist, is a decentralized, leftist ideology, a collection of related ideas and political concepts much like feminism or environmentalism. Over the last decade, however, Republicans have used it as an omnibus term for left-wing activists \u2014 as if it were an organization with members and a command structure. They have increasingly blamed antifa for terrorist violence.<\/p>\n

In 2019, during his first term, Trump floated the idea of declaring antifa \u201ca major Organization of Terror,\u201d likening it to the group MS-13, an international criminal gang that originated in the U.S. and that the administration added to the foreign terrorist organization list last year. \u201cThe United States of America will be designating ANTIFA as a Terrorist Organization,\u201d Trump tweeted in 2020, during protests after the police killing of George Floyd. <\/p>\n

Then-FBI Director Christopher Wray said, however, that antifa was \u201cnot a group or an organization\u201d but a \u201cmovement or an ideology.\u201d Trump lashed out, calling antifa \u201cwell funded ANARCHISTS & THUGS who are protected because the \u2026 FBI is simply unable, or unwilling, to find their funding source.\u201d After Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, in an effort to overturn his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden, Trump blamed \u201cantifa people\u201d for inciting violence.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Finally, last September, Trump signed an executive order designating antifa as a \u201cdomestic terror organization.\u201d He followed it by issuing NSPM-7, which directs the Justice Department and elements of the Intelligence Community and national security establishment to target \u201canti-fascism \u2026 movements\u201d and \u201cdomestic terrorist organizations.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

On his press tour touting the new strategy, Gorka said \u201cleft-wing violent radicals like antifa and the anarchists\u201d were the \u201cmost ascendant\u201d terror group and \u2014 without evidence \u2014 claimed they were \u201cthe people who killed our friend Charlie Kirk.\u201d He said these leftists are \u201cpeople who think that if you don\u2019t agree with them politically, they get to kill you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Locking Up Trump\u2019s Enemies<\/h2>\n

The new document detours to discuss the wrongful detention of Americans abroad. Ironically, the Trump administration has unlawfully detained thousands of people residing in the United States, including those with legal status, targeting everyone from perceived political dissidents to racial and ethnic minorities.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Last year, the Trump administration detained Tufts University student R\u00fcmeysa \u00d6zt\u00fcrk for writing an op-ed, as revealed by legal documents unsealed as a result of litigation from The Intercept and other parties.\u00a0
Also in 2025, the administration sent Kilmar \u00c1brego Garc\u00eda, a Salvadoran national with an order preventing his deportation to his country of origin, to CECOT, a prison in El Salvador notorious for human rights abuses. He has since been released to his home in Maryland, but the administration has continued to target him, including with criminal prosecution.<\/p>\n

The Monroe Doctrine<\/h2>\n

Issued by President James Monroe, the Monroe Doctrine is a foundational principle of U.S.\u00a0foreign policy opposing any foreign interference in the Western Hemisphere \u2014 except by Washington. It\u2019s seen by American nationalists and by modern \u201cAmerica First\u201d Trump ideologues as marking a \u201cgolden age\u201d of U.S. power in the region, according to historian Greg Grandin.<\/p>\n

\u201cGoing back to World War I and World War II, America First nationalists have liked the Monroe Doctrine because they saw it as an alternative to liberal internationalism,\u201d Grandin said. \u201cThey were never isolationists, even though that word is often applied to them, because they\u2019ve long claimed the right to intervene and project power in the Western Hemisphere.\u201d <\/p>\n

Now, Trump is using the spectre of terror to justify extrajudicial killings of alleged drug traffickers at sea and the abduction of Venezuelan President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Boat Strikes and Bogus Stats<\/h2>\n

The U.S. military has\u00a0conducted\u00a058 attacks on so-called drug boats in the Caribbean Sea and Eastern Pacific Ocean since September 2025,\u00a0killing\u00a0more than 190 civilians.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Experts in the laws of war, as well as members of Congress from both parties, say the strikes are illegal, extrajudicial killings because the military is not permitted to deliberately target civilians \u2014 even suspected criminals \u2014 who do not pose an imminent threat of violence.<\/p>\n

The assertion that this campaign has resulted \u201cin a more than 90% decrease in maritime drug smuggling\u201d into the U.S. slightly tempers similarly outlandish and false figures from Trump, who regularly claims that \u201cdrugs entering our country by sea are down 97 percent.\u201d\u00a0Experts say these claims are meant to deceive the American people. \u201cIt wouldn\u2019t be the first time this administration just made up something out of whole cloth,\u201d Sanho Tree, the director of the Drug Policy Project at the Washington-based Institute for Policy Studies, told The Intercept.<\/p>\n

Even the Pentagon\u2019s own figures refute Trump\u2019s numbers. \u201cHe\u2019s trying to imply that 97 percent of the cocaine that left South America by boat headed to the United States has been stopped,\u201d said Rear Adm. William Baumgartner, the former commander of the Seventh Coast Guard District, who oversaw drug-interdiction operations in the Southeast U.S. and the Caribbean Basin. \u201cThat\u2019s not true and is contradicted by the administration\u2019s own statements.\u201d Acting Assistant Secretary of War for Homeland Defense and Americas Security Affairs Joseph Humire, for example, offered\u00a0\u00a0to Congress, telling the House Armed Services Committee in March that there \u201chas been a 20 percent reduction of movements of drug vessels in the Caribbean and an additional 25 percent reduction in the Eastern Pacific.\u201d<\/p>\n

The \u201cTrump Corollary\u201d<\/h2>\n

This isn\u2019t the first time we\u2019ve seen an attempt by the administration to enshrine a \u201cTrump Corollary\u201d to the Monroe Doctrine, with the term also appearing in the administration\u2019s national security strategy document in December. But it\u2019s not entirely clear what, precisely, this corollary means, said Avi\u00f1a, the historian.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s supposed to be an addition to the Monroe Doctrine, but we don\u2019t get a very precise definition of what that is,\u201d said Avi\u00f1a. \u201cIt harkens back to the Roosevelt Corollary, but Teddy Roosevelt was very clear about what his addition was: international police power.\u201d Trump makes no claim to a new power. \u201cSo Trump is working in that tradition, but in a weird and imprecise way.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Loosened Rules and Civilian Deaths <\/h2>\n

The loosened rules of engagement during Trump\u2019s first term had a profound effect across the Middle East and Africa. Attacks in Somalia tripled after Trump relaxed targeting principles, while U.S. military and independent estimates of civilian casualties across U.S. war zones spiked. The U.S. conducted 219 declared attacks in Somalia during Trump\u2019s single term in the White House, a more than 329 percent increase over the eight years of the Obama presidency. Trump is already on the cusp of eclipsing those numbers in less than a year and half. Since taking office last year, Trump has overseen at least 190 attacks in Somalia.<\/p>\n

A review of Trump-era rules by the Biden administration found that, in some countries, \u201coperating principles,\u201d including a \u201cnear certainty\u201d that civilians would \u201cnot be injured or killed in the course of operations,\u201d were reportedly enforced only for women and children, while a lower standard applied to civilian adult men. All military-age males were considered legitimate targets if they were observed with suspected al-Shabab members in the group\u2019s territory, Donald Bolduc, who led Special Operations Command Africa at the time, told The Intercept.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A 2023 investigation by The Intercept found that Trump\u2019s directive contributed to a particularly disastrous attack in Somalia that killed at least three \u2014 and possibly five \u2014 civilians, including 22-year-old Luul Dahir Mohamed and her 4-year-old daughter, Mariam Shilow Muse. The mother and child survived the initial strike but were killed by a double-tap attack as they fled for their lives. \u201cThey know innocent people were killed, but they\u2019ve never told us a reason or apologized,\u201d said Abdi Dahir Mohamed, one of Luul\u2019s brothers. \u201cNo one has been held accountable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Using Europe to Promote Bigotry<\/h2>\n

The document employs its section on Europe to shamelessly promote racism, white nationalism, and Christian supremacy employing a stilted worldview that ignores the U.S. role in the immigration it rails against.<\/p>\n

\u201cTrump officials are clearly weaponizing anti-Muslim bigotry in their campaign to heap pressure on Europe. They are baselessly insinuating that European policies that welcomed migrants \u2014 who largely fled their home countries due to the impact of U.S. backed wars and regime changes \u2014 created an incubator for terrorism,\u201d Erik Sperling, the executive director of Just Foreign Policy, told The Intercept. \u201cAt the same time, however, the White House continues to implement the exact kind of violent, interventionist policies that drove mass migration and generated extremism in the first place.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is this kind of praising of Western culture and values, the denigration of \u2018alien cultures,\u2019\u201d said Jones. \u201cWhat\u2019s behind those is really a sense of European superiority, and that gets translated into the U.S. in racial terms. So it really is a white Christian worldview here that\u2019s being projected and protected.\u201d<\/p>\n

A Bid to \u201cProtect Christians\u201d<\/h2>\n

Experts on white supremacy and Christian nationalism told The Intercept that the Trump administration is spreading misinformation about a Christian genocide in Africa in order to stoke white Christian nationalist and anti-immigrant sentiments at home. \u201cIn Nigeria, it\u2019s genocide against Christians, and in South Africa, it\u2019s the supposed genocide against these white Afrikaners,\u201d Christine Reyna, a professor of psychology at DePaul University, told The Intercept. \u201cAnd so in absence of an actual genocide in the United States against either of these two groups, you can keep that narrative of that existential fear of extermination and genocide and oppression that is alive and well within a certain subset of white Americans.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to using the conflicts in Africa to spread propaganda domestically, experts on Christian nationalism tell The Intercept that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth believes in waging war to achieve Christian supremacy abroad, without respect to international laws or norms. \u201cHegseth believes that he is carrying out a spiritual and actual war to vanquish a Christian nation\u2019s enemies and protect and promote a Christian nation,\u201d Sarah Posner, an investigative journalist covering the Christian right, said on The Intercept Briefing podcast. \u201cFor Hegseth, biblical law is the only law he feels obligated to obey. The law of war, international law governing military conflicts, and human rights and civilian rights in war \u2014 he believes don\u2019t apply to him.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s Holy War in Nigeria<\/h2>\n

While Christians have been the victims of violence in Nigeria, they have not been the primary target, and experts overwhelmingly reject the idea that a Christian genocide is occurring in that country. Research from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data, an independent global monitor of conflict and protest data, found that of the 1,923 attacks on civilians in Nigeria that occurred as of November of last year; 50 of those attacks targeted Christians because of their religion. According to experts, the majority of the violence has focused on land disputes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s Christmas Day attack was another in a long string of failed and futile U.S. counterterrorism efforts in Africa documented by The Intercept over the last decade This includes blowback from U.S. operations and failed secret wars, civilians killed in drone strikes, coups by U.S. trained officers, increases in the reach of terror groups, surging fatalities from militant violence, human rights abuses by allies, massacres\u00a0of civilians by partner forces, and a catalogue of other fiascos.<\/p>\n

Doubling Down on Failures in Africa<\/h2>\n

The document casts Trump\u2019s strategy as a departure from the failed forever war interventions of Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden. But Sarah Harrison \u2014 who served as an associate general counsel at the Pentagon\u2019s Office of General Counsel, International Affairs, where she oversaw the Africa portfolio, and as counsel to the deputy assistant secretary of defense for African affairs \u2014 sees little difference. \u201cSetting aside the bombast about protecting Christians, the fundamentals of Trump\u2019s Africa CT policy isn\u2019t that distinct from his predecessors: a light military footprint to facilitate intel sharing and drone strikes with an emphasis on supporting the partner nation. These policies fail because they ignore the drivers of conflict and refuse to acknowledge the need for a political solution,\u201d she told The Intercept.<\/p>\n

The U.S. government\u2019s own statistics bear out this record of futility and failure. Throughout all of Africa, the State Department counted 23 deaths from terrorist violence in\u00a02002 and 2003, as U.S. counterterrorism efforts began to ramp up on the continent in the wake of 9\/11. Last year, there were 22,307 fatalities from militant Islamist violence in Africa, according\u00a0to the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, a Pentagon research institution. This represents an almost 97,000 percent increase since the early 2000s, with the areas of greatest U.S. involvement \u2014 Somalia and the West African Sahel \u2014 suffering the worst outcomes.<\/p>\n

\u201cReality-Based\u201d Counterterrorism <\/h2>\n

The document ends as it began, with unserious bombast that reads like little more than AI slop fashioned from administration talking points. Evoking the administration\u2019s 2025 National Security Strategy, which called for a restoration of \u201c,\u201d the Trump administration appears to be making up for its own insecurities with claims that the president has restored America\u2019s \u201ccivilizational confidence\u201d through a baptism of fire. In reality, the document projects a heady blend of weakness and anxiety and espouses a counterterrorism strategy akin to a 12-year-old boy\u2019s vision of foreign policy: boasts about killing one\u2019s way to victory.<\/p>\n

In a post-release media tour where he spoke with MAGA outlets and administration sycophants, Gorka expressed amazement at how little negative reporting there was about the new counterterrorism strategy. \u201cEven the left, they\u2019re so on their heels. I did a kind of press call when we released the strategy,\u201d said Gorka. \u201cFifty articles were written. \u2026 Only one of them \u2026 was even slightly negative.\u201d (The Intercept\u2019s invite must have been lost in the mail.)\u00a0He continued: \u201cWe are moving so fast, they just can\u2019t keep up with us \u2014 which is delicious.\u201d His interviewer, Dean Cain, best known for playing second fiddle in \u201cLois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman,\u201d responded, \u201cThat\u2019s wonderful.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the U.S. government counterterrorism enterprise hadn\u2019t jumped the shark before, it certainly has now,\u201d said Finucane. \u201cThe administration has repurposed the terrorism framing and applied it not only to alleged narcos but also perceived domestic political opponents \u2014 as we saw with the way the administration baselessly smeared Renee Good and Alex Pretti as \u2018terrorists\u2019 after gunning them down. The whole situation would be much funnier if the Trump administration wasn\u2019t currently engaged in a lawless killing spree under the guise of \u2018counterterrorism.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more CDC Didn\u2019t Tell New York About Resident on Hantavirus-Plagued Cruise<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Intercept annotated the \u201c2026 Counterterrorism Strategy\u201d document to show how the U.S. government is bringing its war on terror home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newhomeamerica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newhomeamerica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newhomeamerica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newhomeamerica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newhomeamerica.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newhomeamerica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newhomeamerica.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newhomeamerica.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newhomeamerica.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newhomeamerica.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}