Rubio: US will focus counterterrorism efforts on left-wing groups
WASHINGTON - U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told officials from more than 60 countries on Thursday that the United States would seek to refocus international counterterrorism efforts on what he called “far-left terror”, arguing that left-wing violence had long been overlooked.
The conference in Washington has sparked Democratic concerns that the Trump administration is politicizing counterterrorism efforts and diverting resources from other extremist threats.
In a speech, Rubio said the Islamic militancy threat was “severely diminished” due to coordinated international efforts but that rising left-wing violence was a “blind spot.”
“We can and we must identify and map this threat and rebuild our counterterrorism architecture to defeat it,” Rubio said, citing a transnational threat from groups that hate the West and target its politicians and infrastructure.
The conference marks the Trump administration’s most significant effort yet to internationalize a counterterrorism focus that critics say is not supported by data.
President Donald Trump has made countering left-wing groups a priority. Trump singled out the antifa movement on the campaign trail in 2024 and vowed to take action against left-wing groups he accuses of fomenting violence after the killing of conservative activist and Trump ally Charlie Kirk last year.
The Trump administration convened a law enforcement workshop in May to discuss the threat of far-left groups and would co-host a second workshop with Germany, Rubio said.
Latvia’s Foreign Minister Baiba Braze told Reuters on the sidelines of the conference that the forum also allowed countries like hers to discuss threats from Russia-backed groups and new trends in technology use by militants of all stripes.
“What is new is that it’s very much a fluid extremist environment where technology enables various actors to radicalize different groups. Sometimes it’s leftist ideology, sometimes it’s very right-wing ideology,” Braze said.
Since November, Washington has designated four European groups - Antifa Ost, the Informal Anarchist Federation/International Revolutionary Front, Armed Proletarian Justice and Revolutionary Class Self-Defense - as Foreign Terrorist Organizations, offering rewards of up to $10 million for information on their financing. Rubio said there would be more designations soon.
Rubio announced a new visa restriction policy that would target members of groups “who have supported or incited” violence or economic sabotage, but did not say whether any visa bans had been issued under the policy.
The U.S. Treasury is expanding probes into the use of charitable and nonprofit structures to hide foreign influence and allow violence, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told the conference on Thursday.
Eleven Democratic lawmakers wrote to Rubio on Wednesday, questioning the evidence for the new focus on left-wing groups and calling the White House’s May counterterrorism strategy, which did not mention neo-Nazi or other far-right groups, a “politically partisan document.”
The letter, obtained by Reuters, referred to concerns that designating groups as far-left terror organizations risked targeting lawful protests and political opponents.
“We strongly urge the Department to return its focus to a serious mission set that is definitionally apolitical, data-driven, and rooted in reality, instead of rubberstamping the political priorities of extremists within the Administration whose views and policies put U.S. national security – and the American people – at risk,” wrote the lawmakers.
The lawmakers included Representative Gregory Meeks, the ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, and William Keating, the ranking member of the subcommittee on Europe.
The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the letter.
At the conference, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller said leftists were driven by “envy and hatred” and derided antifa demonstrators as “all deformed in some way, in their appearance, in their dress, in their mannerism”.
“Why is there not one normal-looking person among them? Every one of them, through the course of their life and their decisions, has scarred their body and their appearance in many different ways to the point in which their outer appearance becomes a manifestation of their inner hatred,” Miller said.
Rubio cited property damage and looting during demonstrations after the 2020 police killing of George Floyd as an example of left-wing violence that had been ignored, arguing that think tanks and journalists often agree with the goals of left-wing militants.
Rubio also said left-wing groups work with foreign states hostile to the U.S., citing Iranian proxy networks as “increasingly intimately tied to leftist militant groups around the world,” though he did not provide evidence of such links. He also accused Cuba’s Communist leaders of having “helped build the far left” in the United States, without offering evidence to support the claim.
In other political news
Tighter visa restrictions: The Trump administration moved on Thursday to tighten the duration of visas for foreign students, cultural exchange visitors and journalists, according to a government notice.
The new final rule from the Department of Homeland Security creates a fixed time period for F visas for international students, J visas that allow visitors on cultural exchange programs to work in the U.S., and I visas for members of the media. Those visas are currently available for the duration of the program or U.S.-based employment.
The effective date is 60 days from publication in the Federal Register, subject to congressional review.
Trump kicked off a wide-ranging immigration crackdown after taking office in January 2025. The latest action would create new hurdles for international students, exchange workers and foreign journalists.
The Trump administration has increased scrutiny of legal immigration, revoking student visas and green cards of university students over their ideological views and stripping legal status from hundreds of thousands of migrants.
Under the new regulation, the student and exchange visa periods would be no longer than four years. The visa for journalists - which currently can last years - would be up to 240 days or, in the case of Chinese nationals, 90 days.
The visa holders could apply for extensions, it said.
The department cited a dramatic rise in such visas in the posting. It said there were more than 1.8 million student visa admissions in 2024, a more than 11% increase over the previous year.
The U.S. granted visas to more than 500,000 exchange visitors and 37,300 members of the media in fiscal year 2024, which began on October 1, 2023, it said.
Visa holders who want to stay in the United States beyond their fixed period of admission will need to apply to DHS for an extension or gain readmission by traveling abroad and then re-entering the United States, the new rule said.
Insider trading allegations: Trump’s longtime teleprompter operator, Gabriel Perez, is under investigation by federal regulators over potential insider trading on prediction market platform Kalshi, according to two sources familiar with the matter.
Kalshi identified the suspicious trading activity through information collected as part of its customer onboarding and market surveillance processes and referred the matter to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, one of the sources said.
“Our surveillance team promptly flagged and referred these trades to the CFTC after an exchange investigation. We have been assisting regulators on this matter and provided evidence we collected, as we do in any referral,” Robert DeNault, head of enforcement at Kalshi, told Reuters in a statement.
Perez, the teleprompter operator, is fully cooperating with the CFTC on this matter, the second person said. The sources requested anonymity because the matter is confidential.
“The president is aware of the teleprompter operator, and the staffer is now on unpaid leave,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Thursday. Leavitt later added that Perez will no longer be working at the White House.
Asked if other White House staffers had access to Kalshi and Polymarket on their government devices, Leavitt said she did not know. She added that there were no other White House or administration staffers to her knowledge who were suspected of using privileged information to place bets.
Several officials and executives have recently been investigated over potential insider trading on prediction market platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi.
Earlier this year, a U.S. Army soldier was charged with placing bets tied to the capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro on Polymarket. In June, federal regulators began an investigation into former Representative George Santos over potential insider trading on Kalshi.
Kalshi’s so-called “mention markets” include contracts that allow traders to wager on whether a specific word or phrase will be said during public events such as speeches, broadcasts or corporate earnings calls.
Such markets have faced regulatory scrutiny, including from the CFTC, over concerns that they could be vulnerable to insider trading or manipulation by people with advance access to prepared remarks or speech transcripts.
Kalshi froze Perez’s account before the profits, which amounted to more than $90,000, were taken off the platform, the sources said.
Kalshi had said in June that it would mandate employment disclosures for users trading on sensitive contracts and launch a whistleblower portal, steps aimed at aligning the platform with regulatory expectations for market integrity.
White House helipad: The landing pad under construction on the White House South Lawn will allow the new Lockheed Martin Corp. VH-92 helicopter, designed to carry the president, to meet a key unmet performance requirement — not damaging the grass, the U.S. Navy said.
In a Thursday statement, the Navy stopped short of explicitly saying Lockheed failed to meet that demand. Still, the service said it is confident the pad will prevent “damage to the landing site” and “maintain safe obstacle clearance during all phases of approach, landing, take-off, and departure from the South Lawn.”
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
Lockheed completed delivery of the Sikorsky Aircraft helicopters in 2024 for use as the new Marine One. But Trump and his predecessor, Joe Biden, had been forced to use older helicopters when traveling to and from the White House because the new model’s exhaust burned the lawn.
Trump confirmed earlier this month that a stone helipad was being built on the South Lawn to accommodate the newer helicopters. The older model landed directly on the grass and used temporary landing plates to protect the surface.
While the helipad is under construction, Trump has departed on Marine One from the Ellipse, a park just south of the White House.
The scorching issue is just one problem dogging the fleet of presidential aircraft. Amid years of delays at Boeing Co. for delivering a new Air Force One model, Trump turned to a luxury 747-8 gifted by Qatar to serve as a stopgap.
The Navy said that the contractor, and not the U.S. government, funded “aircraft modifications related to Landing Zone suitability.”
The intractable problem, first identified in 2018, involved the helicopter’s spinning rotors and engine exhaust that damaged the grass where it landed. The helicopter is powered by a General Electric Co. engine.