In May, the Trump administration unveiled its new United States Counterterrorism Strategy, an alarming document that openly lays the groundwork for expanded state violence, political repression, and violations of international law. While purporting to break from deeply unpopular and delegitimized “forever wars” and the “weaponization” of the national security state, the strategy accelerates the U.S. down precisely the same path: "targeted" killings, military force untethered from accountability, sweeping surveillance, and the branding of disfavored communities and political movements as terrorist threats.
The strategy lauds lethal and illegal military attacks and repeatedly frames extraordinary acts of violence and repression - military strikes, renditions, cyber attacks, and digital surveillance - as ordinary tools of counterterrorism. The administration claims to condemn prior abuses, but instead preserves and expands on the very powers that enabled them. Far from repudiating the lawless and anti-democratic architecture developed in the post-9/11 era, the document glorifies and revels in it, calling for “rapid identification and neutralization of violent secular political groups whose ideology is anti-American, radically pro-transgender, and anarchist.” President Trump threatens these groups in the document’s forward: “[W]e will find you and we will kill you.”
On July 16, the administration doubled down with the announcement of a new international campaign against “far-left terrorism.” At a summit of officials from more than 60 governments, Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned of “antifa militants” traveling internationally, exchanging information through encrypted channels, and relying on supposed networks of safe houses and transnational financing. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced that the department would examine whether tax-exempt organizations and charities have become conduits for “foreign influence,” while White House adviser Stephen Miller dismissed civil-liberties objections as inherently deceptive appeals made by “enemies of civilization.” The White House described the initiative as a sustained global campaign to treat left-wing movements with the same “seriousness and ferocity the world has long reserved for jihadist terrorism.”
State Department documents use a new acronym for this purported threat: FLT, or “Far-Left Terrorism.” This classification is fancifully described as a “convergence between violent far-left and anarchist networks and other violent extremist actors, including violent pro-Iranian and antisemitic networks, as well as militant anti-tech and eco-terrorist movements.” A newly announced visa policy targets “far-left terrorist and other aligned groups” suspected of “economic sabotage,” including actions directed against public or private property.
The broad and undefined nature of these accusations is designed to apply to anyone and everyone that the government wishes to target. “Aligned groups” could encompass any collection of people. “Economic sabotage” could refer to property destruction but also labor disruption, occupations, divestment campaigns, or boycotts. “Logistical support” might mean transportation, housing, fundraising, communications, or legal assistance. “Incitement” could be stretched to cover political speech, journalism, protest slogans, or expressions of solidarity. “Convergence” requires no formal organization at all, only the government’s assertion that separate people, causes, or movements share tactics, adversaries, communication platforms, or ideals. All these efforts are unconstitutional, but that is never an impediment to this administration.
In the latest example of this, a recent hundred page State Department report on Cuba baselessly identifies a broad group of American activists, labor organizers, elected officials, and journalists, including Ben Cohen of Ben & Jerry’s, Amazon Labor Union founder Chris Smalls, Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!, and New York mayor Zohran Mamdani, as Cuban “front groups and fellow travelers.” Most of the listed figures have simply opposed suffocating U.S. economic sanctions and the unlawful blockade of Cuba, but this “shared political analysis” with the Cuban government has become sufficient pretext for the use of terrorism labels and due process circumventions.
The administration is using this same method to connect left-wing movements to Iran, alleged antisemitic networks, “Islamists,” anarchists, environmentalists, immigrants, and drug cartels. In this way, Palestine solidarity can be portrayed as Iranian influence or antisemitism. Immigrant rights activism can be linked to cartels or “narco-terrorism.” Environmental protest can be described as critical infrastructure sabotage. Labor organizing can be framed as economic subversion. Placed inside the same counterterrorism frame, all are depicted as foreign, dangerous, and beyond the protections of ordinary law.
These broad designations have already produced devastating real world consequences. After a 2025 protest outside the Prairieland ICE detention center in Texas, prosecutors used encrypted Signal communications, black clothing, political writings, protest participation, and defendants’ physical presence as evidence of a coordinated “antifa cell,” resulting in decades-long sentences for eight people for crimes such as moving a box of zines.
The administration is also reviving institutions built for precisely this purpose. In July, the Justice Department filed the first-ever application before the Alien Terrorist Removal Court, a secretive tribunal created in the wake of the state’s failure to deport Palestinian activists known as the “L.A. Eight”. This court allows the government to seek the deportation of noncitizens accused of terrorism while relying on classified information that may be withheld from them.
These profoundly anti-democratic institutions and processes were originally formed in the name of combating foreign terrorism and were often driven by animus toward Palestinians. Predictably, the government now seeks to turn them inward against its perceived domestic enemies. The designation may say “far-left,” but the targets include anyone advocating for human rights, dignity, social justice, fair access to resources, or demilitarization. Anyone who has marched for Palestine, supported a strike, opposed a war, defended immigrants, criticized sanctions, donated to a legal-defense fund, used Signal, or attended a protest where someone else damaged property can be placed somewhere within the government’s sprawling web of “alignment.” Our people, in other words, and the movements we are so proud to stand alongside. And as a reader of this blog post, you could fall under the nebulous non-definition of a purported threat to national security.
As history shows us, counterterrorism powers never remain confined to the most extreme cases offered to try to justify them. They metastatize, expanding their targets from violence to support, from support to association, from association to ideology, and from ideology to shared concern. Muslim, Arab, Palestinian, Black, immigrant, and Indigenous communities have spent decades warning that “terrorism” is not a neutral description of violence. It is a political category through which governments decide whose grievances are illegitimate, whose communities may be surveilled, and whose rights can be suspended. Its purpose is to provide a pretext not only for targeting political opponents but also for expanding government power. It is all too easy to imagine the Trump administration using the bogus threat of “FLT” to nullify elections or otherwise undermine democracy.
The administration is constructing an enemy broad enough to include everyone it wants to silence. Our task is not to prove that we stand outside that category. It is to dismantle the machinery that allows the government to create political targets in the first place. As we approach the 25th anniversary of the post-9/11 national security state, the Center or Constitutional Rights is doing its part by supporting Mahmoud Khalil’s lawsuit against the forces attempting to use his persecution as a warning to others, and by challenging forced deportations, illegal detentions, murderous boat strikes, and environmental racism. We hope you’ll join us in our fights, and we stand ready to support you in yours.
Samer Araabi is the Associate Director of Political Education and Research at the Center for Constitutional Rights
