President Donald Trump signed a new counterterrorism strategy Wednesday that includes domestic left-wing groups like antifa and drug cartels in its definition of terrorist organizations.
The strategy follows moves earlier this year to designate several Latin American cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, allowing the administration to implement financial sanctions on them and levy criminal penalties for material support. The inclusion of drug cartels in U.S. antiterror strategy complements the administration’s more militarized U.S. posture in Latin America, which has relied heavily on the methods pioneered in the Middle East during the War on Terror.
The inclusion of left-wing groups like antifa is a reversal from the Biden administration’s policy, which was heavily focused on disrupting right-wing groups it argued were the main danger for domestic terrorism. Recent years have seen a surge of left-wing political violence, including the assassination of Turning Point USA’s founder Charlie Kirk and a series of attempted assassinations of Trump.
