Trump Goes International With Criminalizing Left-Wing Opposition

INSIDE: Paul Friedman ... Pope Leo XIV ... Elbridge Colby

Deputy Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Counterterrorism Sebastian Gorka watches as US President Donald Trump speaks after signing a proclamation honoring the fourth anniversary of the attack at Abbey Gate, a suicide bombing that took place at Kabul International Airport in Kabul, in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC on August 25, 2025. (Photo by Mandel NGAN / AFP) (Photo by MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images)

So THIS Is What Seb Gorka’s Been Up To?

Old TPM fave Sebastian Gorka has been pretty under-the-radar as the senior counterterrorism director on President Trump’s second term National Security Council, but now he pops up in this important New York Times story as a leader of what you might call the internationalization of the administration’s effort to criminalize left-wing opposition:

[Gorka] has pushed to designate more far-left groups abroad as terrorist organizations, to pressure foreign allies to investigate the groups and to search for connections between them and Americans. …

For months, Mr. Gorka has led a regular counterterrorism meeting with dozens of officials from U.S. security agencies. In those meetings, he has pushed for more attention on antifa, as well as other groups, like transgender activists and undocumented migrants.

Trump’s criminalization of left-wing politics, which TPM’s Josh Kovensky has covered closely in our series Creating the Enemy Within, traces back to Trump I, where it really took off during the Black Lives Matter protests in the summer of 2020. Authoritarians like Trump practically need a shadowy, cohesive, violent opposition — at least rhetorically — and if they don’t have one, they’ll set about inventing it.

The beauty, from the MAGA perspective, of the amorphous nature of antifa is that it can be a vessel into which every right-wing fear, conspiracy theory, and fever dream can be poured. What emerges from the NYT story is that Gorka is pushing the myth of an all-encompassing global antifa with purported ties back to American leftists:

Mr. Gorka has repeatedly told U.S. officials that “there are no lone wolves,” according to two officials who have witnessed the comments, in urging them to find links between left-wing extremists abroad and Americans, which could create a legal avenue to investigate U.S. citizens.

That possibility has alarmed current and former U.S. officials who worry the Trump administration is politicizing counterterrorism efforts, with the ultimate aim of punishing Mr. Trump’s opponents at home, potentially with charges of supporting terrorism. The unusually expansive way in which the administration has defined far-left extremism, they warned, could allow investigators to use slender connections to people overseas to go after Americans who have no real history of violence.

Gorka has an ally at the State Department in Thomas G. DiNanno, the undersecretary for arms control and international security. (Gorka called the NYT story “wrong.” DiNanno did not respond to the NYT.) The State Department issued a statement to the NYT confirming it is working with international partners to counter “antifa-aligned terrorism.” It’s offering a $10 million reward for information that disrupts the finances of violent leftist groups.

The whole thing is well worth a read.

Pentagon Denies Pope Threat

After initially issuing a non-denial denial, the Pentagon broadly denied as “grossly false” reports that a top Trump official had dressed down the Vatican ambassador in January for the Pope not being on the administration’s side, including making an ominous reference to the Avignon papacy.

Still, the Pentagon did not address the specifics of the reports. Instead, the U.S. embassy in the Vatican posted a rather odd rebuttal in which the U.S. ambassador to the Holy See purports to quote strained denials of a sort from the Vatican ambassador who was in the January meeting with Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby:

The Cardinal emphatically denied the media’s portrayal of his meeting with Colby. He described the meeting as “frank, but very cordial” and a “normal encounter.” He confirmed that the reporting “does not reflect what happened” and was “just invented to make a story.”

Here’s the full thread:

U.S. in Holy See@USinHolySee

Ambassador Burch spoke today with His Eminence Cardinal Pierre, the outgoing papal nuncio to the United States, regarding his January meeting with Under Secretary Elbridge Colby. 1/4

DOW Rapid Response @DOWResponse

Under Secretary of War for Policy Elbridge Colby @USWPColby had a substantive, respectful, and professional meeting with Cardinal Pierre, the then-Papal Nuncio, and his team on January 22, 2026. During the cordial meeting, they discussed a range of topics, including issues of

6:41 PM · Apr 9, 2026 · 208K Views

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37 Replies · 213 Reposts · 1.02K Likes

Judge: Pentagon Defied My Order

Unlike the slow-motion confrontations in many of the other case where the Trump administration has defied court orders, U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman quickly called out the misconduct and moved to put a stop it.

It took Friedman less than three weeks to rule that the Defense Department had violated his March 20 order to restore press access to the Pentagon. In the case brought by the NYT, Friedman issued a scathing rebuke of the administration’s conduct in the case:

Latest From the Middle East …

• How It’s Going: Trump Demands Reopening of Hormuz Ahead of US-Iran Peace Talks

• Israel: There’s growing evidence that Israel’s operation in Lebanon was understood by the parties to covered by the ceasefire with Iran, but instead Israel ramped up attacks against Hezbollah, complicating diplomatic efforts to such an extent that President Trump gave Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a “stern message” in a brief phone call to “scale back attacks,” according to the WSJ.

• ‘Squirter’: Army survivors of the deadly attack in Kuwait dispute Pentagon’s account, saying the unit “was unprepared” to defend itself, CBS News reports.

The Corruption: In All Its Glory Edition

• DoD: A Pentagon official who oversees the Defense Department’s artificial intelligence efforts made a cool profit of as much as $24 million earlier this year when he sold a private investment in Elon Musk’s AI company, The Guardian reports.

• White House: “The day after President Trump announced a sudden pause of strikes against Iran last month, the White House warned staff against improperly leveraging their positions to place well-timed bets in futures markets,” the WSJ reports.

Trump DOJ Watch

• Bloomberg: Under Trump, DOJ Has Been Making Errors in Court, Testing Judges’ Patience

• The Trump DOJ is putting the finishing touches on a politicized report that will accuse the Biden Justice Department of being anti-Christian in how it enforced Covid regulations and laws protecting abortion clinics.

Thread of the Day

Mass Deportation Watch

• Lawyers for man shot multiple times by ICE during a traffic stop this week in California say their client has already been shot before he tried to flee the scene.

• San Francisco Chronicle: Medical delays and misdiagnoses drive rising death toll in ICE custody

• A California philosophy professor was acquitted by a federal jury after some two hours of deliberation on charges of assaulting federal agents by throwing back a tear gas canister they had deployed against protesters.

Nothing to be Concerned About …

The Trump administration is quietly seeking unprecedented access to personally identifiable medical information in the insurance records of millions of federal workers and retirees, and their families, KFF Health News reports.

Enjoy Your Spring Weekend

See ya back here Monday.

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