President Donald Trump’s administration is ramping up global efforts to track and prevent leftist terrorism following the April attempt on his life in Washington, State Department officials told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
The U.S. government now treats left-wing political violence as a global problem requiring a transnational response rather than isolated incidents, according to State Department spokesperson Tommy Pigott and two other department officials. The gunman arrested at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in an alleged attempt to kill Trump reflects rising insurrectionist trends from the left that the West must take seriously, the administration believes.
“From the United States to Germany to Spain, left-wing terrorists have targeted democratically elected political leaders in an attempt to undermine the will of the people, destabilize societies, and intimidate members of the public,” Pigott told the DCNF. “The State Department is actively tracking the rise in far-left political violence and is committed to identifying and disrupting terrorist networks that wage terror campaigns in service of a revolutionary political project.”
A State Department official familiar with the operations pointed to several recent incidents to establish the problem: masked attackers beating a German right-wing politician in 2019, an Italian anarchist group mailing a bomb to a defense contractor in 2022, a leftist anarchist caught preparing bombs to kill 50 people in the United Kingdom in 2023 and other cases. Most recently in Europe, French authorities charged alleged adherents of a leftist group with beating a right-wing activist to death in a February brawl.
The European Union found 21 attacks linked to leftist ideology in 2024, rivaling 24 attacks from jihadists, the State Department official noted. The fact that leftist extermists increasingly make common cause with “pro-Hamas, Muslim Brotherhood, and Iranian-aligned groups” makes matters worse for the West, the official said.
Trump’s State Department has pursued greater collaboration with other countries to counter the threat, the official told the DCNF. State Department leaders convened with foreign partners to improve data-sharing with the U.S. and prompted them to use tools similar to the department’s “Rewards for Justice” program to seek information from the public, the official said.
The State Department will also strategize with allies to counter terror networks such as Antifa at a May workshop in the Netherlands and host an international Washington summit on “The Resurgence of Political Terrorism” in July, according to the employee.
Trump’s administration previously globalized its efforts by hitting four European Antifa-aligned groups with terrorism sanctions and offering cash rewards for information on their funding. At home, the Department of Justice won 16 convictions in America’s first Antifa terrorism trial over a July 2025 attack on a Texas immigration detention center.
“This kind of targeted political violence is not unique to the United States but is a global phenomenon and a preferred tactic of radical far-left and anarchist networks,” a State Department counterterrorism expert said, referring to the D.C. shooting.
“These networks inspire and recruit violent actors to not only intimidate, maim, or kill high-profile individuals but to interrupt supply chains, sabotage critical infrastructure, and otherwise exhaust law enforcement capacity through criminal and terrorist acts,” the analyst said. “Such actions all serve the same purpose: to break down law and order, undermine the foundations of Western societies, and incite insurrection against elected governments.”
All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact [email protected].
