The Trump administration has been reallocating scarce federal resources to combating drug cartels (“narco-terrorists”), the Venezuelan state (“a foreign terrorist organization”) and leftist groups like antifa (a “violent fifth column of domestic terrorists”). Aside from obvious concerns about legality, these actions also raise serious questions about the administration’s priorities and distribution of resources.
Drug cartels may be evil, but they are ultimately driven by profit and not by a murderous ideology like the Islamic State is. Antifa is a loose-knit group of activists who may be guilty of scattered acts of violence, but they’re not plotting mass casualty events like al-Qaeda does. The Venezuelan regime is complicit in human rights violations and drug trafficking, but it is not a state sponsor of terrorism like, say, Iran.
While the administration focuses on pseudo-terrorists, it risks losing focus on the battle against actual no-kidding terrorists. Just a week ago, a father-son team of ISIS-inspired terrorists killed 15 people at Sydney’s Bondi Beach during a Hanukkah celebration, shortly after an ISIS fighter in Syria killed two U.S. service members and an American civilian. (On Friday, U.S. forces bombed dozens of sites in Syria in retaliation.)
Other recent terrorist attacks by Islamic State adherents include the Jan. 1 truck attack in New Orleans, which killed 14 people, plus the perpetrator; an Oct. 2 attack at a synagogue in England, which killed two, including a man shot by police; a June 22 suicide bombing on a Greek Orthodox church in Syria, which killed 25; and a March 22, 2024, attack on a concert hall in Moscow, which killed more than 140. Many other schemes have been foiled, including a plan last year to attack a Taylor Swift concert in Vienna and a recent alleged vehicle-ramming plot in Germany.
Though the Islamic State has lost its “caliphate” in Syria and Iraq, the organization continues to propagate jihadist ideology, primarily online, with the recent Israel-Gaza war drawing fresh recruits to its cause. It has affiliates from Afghanistan to Africa to the Philippines (where the Bondi Beach suspects traveled last month). Al-Qaeda also has affiliates across the globe, including one that is on the verge of seizing power in Mali.
A March U.S. intelligence report warned that Islamic State “will continue to seek to attack the West, including the United States,” and that al-Qaeda also “maintains its intent to target the United States and U.S. citizens.” Two terrorism experts note that there are now “five times as many Salafi-Jihadi terrorist groups designated by the U.S. Department of State” as there were on Sept. 11, 2001.
Combating jihadist groups requires a comprehensive, long-term strategy; a few U.S. airstrikes, like the ones in Syria on Friday, won’t achieve much. Yet many of the administration’s actions undercut attempts to fight these terrorist groups.
First, resources at the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI have been shifted toward immigration enforcement and away from terrorism and other concerns. Nearly one-fourth of all FBI agents are working on immigration cases, even though most of the people being deported have no criminal record.
Second, the State Department has closed offices dedicating to combating disinformation online, and the Trump administration is pressuring social media sites to scale back content moderation efforts. The administration has even threatened to deny visas to foreign workers involved in content moderation, and it is lobbying the European Union to relax its digital security standards.
This is billed as a fight against “censorship,” and it’s primarily motivated by a desire to stop the deplatforming of right-wing trolls. But it will also have the effect of giving the Islamic State and other militant groups greater leeway online. The organization already uses sites such as Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X, Telegram and WhatsApp to radicalize followers.
Third, the administration’s attempts to close Voice of America, the Middle East Broadcasting Networks, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and other broadcasters — many offering programming in Arabic, Farsi, Urdu and other languages — make it harder for the U.S. government to counter jihadist propaganda.
Fourth, Trump’s drastic reduction in U.S. foreign aid has impeded efforts to assist allies in the Global South to stop the spread of Islamist extremism. Earlier this year, the administration even briefly cut off funding for Kurdish forces in Syria who are guarding prison camps holding 8,000 Islamic State fighters and 27,000 family members. If those detainees are released, the Islamic State threat will metastasize. Though essential funding was resumed, U.S. support is at such a low level that authorities are struggling to hold the camps together. At least Trump, while reducing U.S. troop numbers in Syria, hasn’t pulled them out altogether — as he tried to do in 2018.
Fifth, the administration’s contempt for U.S. allies and international norms imperils the international cooperation needed to fight terrorist networks. For example, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard all but blamed Australia for the Bondi Beach shooting. She wrote on X that it was “the direct result of the massive influx of Islamists to Australia,” and added, “It is probably too late for Europe — and maybe Australia.” That is not the kind of message that someone in Gabbard’s position should be sending to one of America’s closest partners. Some allies are now curtailing intelligence sharing with Washington.
Sixth, and finally, the Trump administration has endangered the counterterrorism fight by appointing so many unqualified officials. Examples include Gabbard herself (she is a conspiracy monger with no intelligence community experience); the ex-podcaster who was appointed FBI deputy director and is now leaving his job after less than a year; and the 22-year-old former intern given a senior terrorism-prevention post at the Department of Homeland Security.
The administration’s preoccupation with ideologically manufactured faux threats leaves America more vulnerable to the very real threat of Islamist militant terrorism.
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