There is a threat to the United States beyond adversaries like China, Iran and Russia—and it's coming from one side of the domestic political aisle.
That's according to U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who gathered political leaders, law enforcement officials and counterterrorism experts from 66 countries at the State Department on July 16 to build an international campaign against what the Trump administration calls transnational far-left political terrorism.
The Ministerial on the Resurgence of Political Terrorism focused on expanding intelligence sharing, tracing funding across borders, coordinating investigations, and supporting terrorist designations against organizations accused of political violence. Rubio argued that left-wing extremists can raise money, communicate, recruit and train in different countries before attacking elsewhere.
Rubio said counterterrorism policy had developed a “blind spot” toward violence from the political left. He grouped communists, anarchists, Marxists and anti-capitalists into what he described as a movement driven by hostility toward Western civilization, calling its members “enemies of civilization.”
In 2025, President Donald Trump designated Antifa a domestic terrorist organization while Rubio separately designated four European antifa-linked groups as foreign terrorist organizations and specially designated global terrorists.
Stephen Miller and the Treasury's Role
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller told participating governments that left-wing extremists use civil liberties arguments to escape punishment.
He said those appeals “must fall on deaf ears,” dismissing claims of rights violations as attempts to generate public sympathy.
Miller’s remarks went beyond advocating prosecution for specific violent crimes. Like Rubio, Miller called the targets of the initiative “enemies of civilization,” describing “the leftist” broadly as driven by envy, hatred and jealousy and urging governments to remain “unflinching” in confronting them.
Miller took a markedly different position when President Joe Biden’s administration introduced its domestic terrorism strategy. While president of America First Legal in 2021, Miller warned that federal surveillance and cooperation with technology companies could produce censorship and serious abuses against Americans “potentially just for having conservative or traditional beliefs.”
He said the strategy could become a “speech code to enforce progressive orthodoxy” and called for protecting Americans from “Orwellian suppression.”
His warning closely resembles current concerns that the Trump administration could use counterterrorism tools against people based partly on left-wing beliefs or associations.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the department would deploy the Office of Foreign Assets Control, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, and the IRS Criminal Investigation to identify funding behind political violence.
The Treasury will examine nonprofits, charities and tax-exempt organizations suspected of serving as conduits for illicit money or foreign influence.
Bessent included an important limitation that Rubio and Miller did not emphasize. He said the Treasury would act based on suspected unlawful conduct rather than beliefs or ideologies and must respect Americans’ constitutional rights to speech, association and assembly.
The Domestic Policy Behind the Campaign
The administration’s international campaign expands an enforcement strategy established under National Security Presidential Memorandum 7.
The 2025 directive ordered Joint Terrorism Task Forces to investigate organizations, individuals and financial networks connected to political violence. It also directed the Treasury Department to trace suspected funding and the IRS to refer tax-exempt organizations and their officers for possible investigation and prosecution.
The memorandum lists anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, anti-Christianity and views involving migration, race, gender, family and religion among the recurring motivations it associates with violent activity.
Although it directs authorities to investigate crimes and conspiracies, critics contend that incorporating political and cultural beliefs into the government’s threat assessment risks drawing lawful speech and association into federal investigations.
Available data supports increased attention to left-wing political violence. The Center for Strategic and International Studies recorded 16 left-wing terrorist attacks or disrupted plots in 2025, up from five in 2024.
During the same period, right-wing incidents fell from 18 to nine while jihadist incidents declined from 11 to seven. CSIS counted more left-wing incidents than either category in 2025, although its dataset tracks terrorist attacks and disrupted plots rather than every extremist crime, protest or act of political violence. This was the first time left-wing violence was more frequent than right-wing violence in 30 years.
Rubio previously imposed visa restrictions on foreign nationals accused of censoring Americans. He said Americans should not be fined, harassed or charged for expressing their views—calling free speech an American birthright beyond the authority of foreign governments.