Radical Right Continue Domestic Terrorism Spree While Trump Regime Looks Elsewhere

In the past month, the United States has been shaken by multiple high-profile acts of political violence. Conservative activist Charlie Kirk was assassinated while speaking at Utah Valley University[1]. Days later, a shooter opened fire on an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Dallas, killing one and injuring others[2]. Over the weekend, a man rammed his vehicle into a Mormon church in Michigan before opening fire and setting the building ablaze[3]. These incidents are part of a longer pattern: the radical right continues to account for the most consistent and lethal threat of domestic terrorism in the United States.

For decades, law enforcement data and independent watchdogs have pointed to white supremacists, anti-government extremists, and other far-right actors as the primary drivers of domestic terrorism (as we documented here). Yet the Trump administration has consistently downplayed these threats. Instead of acknowledging that the violence disproportionately originates from the right, the administration is redirecting the government's most powerful surveillance and policing tools elsewhere.

President Trump's new directive, National Security Presidential Memorandum-7 (NSPM-7), identifies so-called "indicators" of terrorism not as violent acts but as political views: anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, anti-Christianity, and hostility toward "traditional" family or religious values. These are opinions, not crimes.

As Ken Klippenstein's reporting details, NSPM-7 empowers the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Forces to target these indicators, meaning thousands of agents are now instructed to investigate people who hold left-leaning views, even before they commit any act of violence. In effect, the administration is criminalizing dissent while ignoring the actors actually pulling triggers and planting bombs.

The chilling effect is obvious: progressive groups and individuals risk being tied up in costly legal battles, even as they try to engage in constitutionally protected advocacy. Meanwhile, members of Congress have been largely silent. Only Rep. Bennie Thompson has publicly criticized NSPM-7, calling it an excuse to "stifle dissent" and label political enemies as terrorists.

The timing is impossible to ignore. While the radical right is carrying out shootings, assassinations, and attacks across the country both before and in the wake of Charlie Kirk's assassination, the Trump administration is deploying the counterterrorism apparatus against its political opponents. Instead of confronting the demonstrable threat of far-right violence, NSPM-7 reframes left-wing dissent as terrorism and leaves the real perpetrators of bloodshed free to act.