The Biden administration’s National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism was never about protecting Americans. It was about targeting them. From the day it was released, the strategy became a political weapon used against political opponents and anyone who dared to challenge government overreach.
Now, four years after this deeply troubling document, one thing is clear: President Trump must immediately rescind this unconstitutional abomination. The bureaucracy should not have the power to label law-abiding citizens as potential terrorists under vague and intentionally undefined terms such as “anti-government” and “anti-authority.”
This unprecedented strategy marked a shift in how the federal government views American citizens. Notice how it uses ambiguous terms as indicators of potential terrorism, yet it makes no mention of “anti-American sentiment.” That glaring omission says it all. The true purpose was to criminalize dissent against the government rather than protect the nation.
Recently declassified documents from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence show how the FBI and Department of Homeland Security “respond[ed] to incidents of concerning non-criminal behavior,” reinforcing concerns about the weaponized agencies opening probes on Americans who weren’t breaking the law.
The abuses of power were widespread. Consider who was targeted: parents who spoke at school board meetings, MAGA supporters, and Catholics who dared to hold traditional beliefs about the sanctity of life and the sexes, just to name a few. The FBI created threat tag systems to track these Americans and opened investigative files on citizens engaged in constitutionally protected activity.
These actions are unconstitutional and extend well beyond the statutory authority granted to these agencies by Congress. The National Strategy and the mechanisms laid out in the Strategic Implementation Plan operate in a legal gray area where bureaucrats act independently and use vague, undefined criteria to investigate and target Americans with little oversight or accountability.
This lack of oversight allowed millions of taxpayer dollars to be funneled to censorship initiatives such as Stanford’s Election Integrity Partnership, which collaborated with government agencies to flag and suppress online speech under the pretext of combating “misinformation.” Americans shouldn’t have to pay to have their own voices silenced, especially by a government that was created to protect our God-given liberties, not undermine them.
Today, as anti-ICE riots ravage Los Angeles, with vehicles burned, property vandalized, police attacked with rocks, and foreign flags waving in the streets, the same media, bureaucrats, and Democrat activists who once claimed concerned parents were domestic extremists are suddenly silent.
Now that Trump is back in office, their hypocrisy and hierarchy are on full display. The narrative of domestic extremism conveniently disappears as violence erupts from the political left. The very people who weaponized government power against peaceful Americans now look the other way as real political violence unfolds.
The National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism isn’t just an attack on one group of people. It’s an attack on our way of life and the core principles of our republic. The chilling effect is real, and the consequences are dangerous, cutting across the political spectrum. It breeds fear and self-censorship. If we are afraid to express our views or question those in power in a peaceful manner, tyranny is not far behind.
The president and Congress must reassert their authority against an out-of-control bureaucracy that has emerged as the fourth branch of government, unconstrained by constitutional checks. The president should immediately issue an executive order that revokes and dismantles Biden’s entire National Strategy framework. This would demonstrate Trump’s commitment to “drain the swamp.” Moreover, Trump should issue a directive to all federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies prohibiting the use of benign political or religious beliefs as criteria for investigations.
While Biden’s National Strategy itself is an executive policy document, Congress should immediately defund any program that brings the strategy to life. Congress controls the power of the purse and should eliminate all funding for related programs, including private-public censorship collaborations and any domestic terrorism initiatives that lack clear definitions. Federal efforts to outsource surveillance to third-party institutions and organizations should be abolished.
If we want a government that is accountable to the people it was created to serve, then Congress must rein it in. Our Founding Fathers warned about the dangers of an all-powerful centralized bureaucracy, and as President Ronald Reagan stated, “As government expands, liberty contracts.” It is long past time that so-called public servants are reminded that they exist to serve the public, not rule over them.
Together, these actions would restore the standard that investigative activity must be based on specific, articulable facts and evidence of criminal wrongdoing, not ideological profiling. More importantly, they would prevent future efforts to revive the National Strategy. All Americans, including Democrats, should support this effort because there is nothing to stop the Trump administration, or any future administration, from simply changing the examples in the strategy and targeting the other side of the political aisle.
This would send a clear message to the swamp that the era of weaponizing government against law-abiding Americans is over.
