It was a significant omission in a memo that was long on hyperbole and short on strategy, and offered little more than a call for aggressive, violent action against terrorism. As ProPublica reported, in other contexts Gorka has described “U.S. operations turning suspected terrorists into ‘red mist’ and stacking bodies ‘like cordwood.’” He has also sported a lanyard with the letters “WWFY & WWKY,” which stands for “We will find you and we will kill you.” Obviously, Gorka, who was fired from the White House in Donald Trump’s first term but was allowed to return to the fold in the second, is a very serious and sober person — a first-rate choice to head counterterrorism efforts.

It’s not surprising that the report, if you want to call it that, would name narco-terrorists and Islamic terrorism. Those are perennial threats named in reports by both Democratic and Republican administrations. But the focus on left-wing terrorism is new. And now the Trump administration, led by Secretary of State — and likely 2028 presidential candidate — Marco Rubio is leading the charge to take the far-left terror crusade global.

Left-wing terrorism hasn’t been a focus until now for good reason. As TIME reported in September, “In the last five years, 81 people have been killed by political violence in the United States. Right-wing terrorists account for over half of those murders, some 54%, according to research by the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank. Islamists account for 21%, and left-wingers for 22%.” Going back to 1975, excluding the 9/11 attacks, right-wing terrorism has accounted for 63% of deaths from political violence, while only 10% came from the left.

Colin Clark, the director of the Soufan Center, a nonprofit that focuses on foreign policy and terrorism, pointed out in an interview with PBS that the term “narco-terrorism” is a misnomer. Cartels and drug gangs are motivated by profits, not ideology, which is what defines the term. Not that the groups aren’t a threat, but they require a different approach — although the report’s emphasis on “kinetic” (violent) response is currently being enacted in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, where the military is wantonly murdering people in small boats without evidence.

That’s not to say there hasn’t been an uptick in left-wing violence in the last few years. But as Clark points out, “any time you have a rise in the far right, you’re going to have a rise in the far left. But, on balance and in aggregate, far-right terrorism still poses a far more significant threat than the far left does.”

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Nonetheless, this report wasn’t the first in Trump’s second administration to order a new focus on alleged left-wing violence. In the wake of MAGA influencer Charlie Kirk’s assassination in September, Trump issued a presidential memorandum titled “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence” that ordered a “national strategy to investigate and disrupt networks, entities, and organizations that foment political violence.” These included “anti-Christianity,” “extremism on migration, race, and gender,” and “hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality” which has “created a movement that embraces and elevates violence to achieve policy outcomes.” (One could easily say that the points about “extremism on migration, race, and gender” and violence for political gain are better applied to that right, but that’s another story.)

After Gorka released his own strategy memo that isn’t really a strategy, he said, “We see a threat, we will respond to it, and we will crush it, whether it is the cartels, the jihadists, or violent left-wing extremists like antifa and like the transgender killers, the non-binary, the left-wing radicals who killed my friend Charlie Kirk.” 

Lest you think this is all just another onanistic show for the MAGA cult, the administration is working overtime to enlist foreign countries in its effort. In late May, the State Department held a meeting in The Hague that brought together counterterrorism officials from Europe and elsewhere, and it was not well-received. According to the Washington Post, many of the invitees’ view was “we don’t see it quite the way you do.” They are rightly more concerned with the rise of right-wing violence as seen in the anti-Muslim attacks that were recently on display in Northern Ireland.

Undeterred by this rejection of the administration’s provincial obsession with their own domestic enemies, Rubio, reported the Post, has invited leaders from more than 60 countries to discuss the “resurgence of transnational far-left terrorism” this week —  and his international counterparts are once again unimpressed, as are domestic and foreign terrorism experts. (Even some Trump officials worry that “a Gavin Newsom administration” will turn these tactics on the right.) 

“Antifa” is just not a thing, but apparently, the Trump administration is determined to pretend it is so they can designate the group a transnational terrorist organization and use the extra-constitutional methods they have applied to Islamic terrorism — and, presumably, the kill order they are currently using in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific against alleged narco-terrorists.

We can see the outlines of how this will be handled in the recent case of protesters and vandals involved in an action against an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Texas. One group member who had been convicted of terrorist activities, among other charges, was given a 100-year sentence for attempted murder for wounding a police officer. The others got sentences of 30 to 70 years for “spray-painting anti-police graffiti, slashing tires, destroying a surveillance camera, and setting off fireworks at the building.” 

Some might find it odd that Rubio, allegedly the last grown-up standing in the Trump administration, would jump on this bandwagon. Not only is it unconstitutional, it’s also flagrantly authoritarian. The secretary is supposedly planning to run as the “sane” candidate against Vice President JD Vance in 2028, and this has to be one of the least sane of Stephen Miller’s initiatives. The fact that Rubio is leading the charge here says very clearly that when Donald Trump is finally shuffled off the stage, his insane brand of politics isn’t going anywhere.

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Racism and white supremacy — not “working class” anxiety — lifted Trump to the White House twice. The president is fluent in crude racism and white racist conspiracy theories, and he has been explicit about his role as defender and champion of White America and MAGA.

But racism is much more than words, intent or what is in a person’s heart. It is also determined by outcomes and policies. By that standard, Donald Trump is engaging in economic warfare against Black America, and it will take generations to recover from the damage.

Trump’s policies have, both directly and indirectly, increased the unemployment rate for Black Americans, who are approximately 13% of the U.S. population and have long faced disproportionate levels of unemployment and lack of access to employment and high-wage jobs. While the national unemployment rate stands at approximately 4.3%, the Black unemployment rate is almost double. At 7.3%, it is approaching Covid-19 pandemic-era levels. The reality is far bleaker. Because of how the data is collected and analyzed, the true unemployment rate is usually (at least) twice the official unemployment rate. 

In an interview with TheGrio, Trump was asked about the increase in Black unemployment since he took office. “We’re doing very well with the Black jobs, African-American jobs,” he said. “We saw some numbers that we’re doing really well.” 

A 7.3% unemployment rate among white Americans would be considered a national emergency.

The real numbers are quite different. Black unemployment did hit a record low of 5.3% during Trump’s first term — the lowest the Bureau of Labor Statistics had ever recorded — until Joe Biden brought it down to 4.8%. Since Trump returned to office, the Black unemployment rate has only gone up from 6.2% in January 2025 to 8% last fall, according to the New York Times.

A large portion of the blame for that can be laid directly at the feet of the president and congressional Republicans. Government employment has long been a ladder to economic security for Black Americans, but Trump kicked it out from under them. Draconian budget cuts and other policies by MAGA Republicans have devastated the Black professional and managerial class. Black women have suffered a disproportionate amount of this pain; more than 300,000 have left the labor force since June 2025.

This is part of a broader assault on the legacy of the Civil Rights Movement. The administration has basically stopped enforcing anti-discrimination laws that protect the rights of minorities and other marginalized groups in the workplace and employment. Instead, it is focusing on the phantasm of reverse discrimination and racism against white people, specifically white men.

Race and class overlap in America. As sociologists and other experts have repeatedly demonstrated, a person is not poor because they are Black or brown. However, being Black or brown makes a person far more likely to be poor and materially disadvantaged — and to stay poor across generations.

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Despite this reality, and even as the ladder is being kicked out from under them, Black and brown Americans have not abandoned the idea of America.

This is the paradox at the center of the color line and the American story: The people paying the highest price for Trump’s economy are also among the most invested in the promise of America.

A new report from Navigator Research found that over 80% of Black and Latino Americans say being American is central to their identity, a figure that is on par with white Americans. But belief in the American dream is fading. Only 20% of Blacks and Latinos think it remains achievable, compared with 27% of white Americans.

If the current trends hold, there will be many more economically precarious Black and brown Americans — and more on both sides of the color line — at the end of Trump’s second term than at its beginning.

Black America’s economic challenges are not just a Black problem. It is an American problem, and its costs will not be limited to Black people.

Black America is the miner’s canary.

In a 2001 speech at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, legal scholar Lani Guinier made this very point, arguing that the country has “tried to locate the problem in the canary, when in fact the canary is signaling to us a much bigger problem with the atmosphere in the mine that is affecting all of us.”

“The challenge,” she continued, “is not to pathologize the canary, not to outfit the canary with a little pint-sized gas mask so that it can withstand the toxic atmosphere in the mine. The challenge is to fix the atmosphere in the mine so all of us can breathe cleaner air.”

The American people desperately need that clean air right now. Getting it will take social democracy and real populism, not the fake populism and racial authoritarianism of Donald Trump and his MAGA experiment. Their politics is toxic and smothering for nearly everyone breathing it, including the president’s own followers who inhale it the deepest, confusing poison for life-nurturing oxygen.

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Calling in to Sean Hannity’s radio show Wednesday, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz offered a blunt warning cry to his party: Democratic state Rep. James Talarico has a legitimate shot at flipping Texas this year.

“Unfortunately, I do think he has a real chance,” Cruz told Gov. Greg Abbott, who guest hosted the three-hour talk radio program. “I think this is a real race. I think it’s going to be close. I think we’re going to win, I think we’re going to keep Texas red, but the polling right now shows this is a 1- or 2-point race.”

Cruz went on to call the Austin Democrat “radical” and “extreme” for labeling God nonbinary, saying there are six recognized sexes and previously running a “non-meat” reelection campaign, all part of the trove of attacks Republicans have unfurled against the Democratic Senate nominee.

Cruz, Texas’ future senior senator, speaks from some experience. At 2.6 points, his 2018 reelection margin marked Texas’ closest statewide race this millennium. Recent public polling has shown Talarico running neck and neck with the GOP nominee, Attorney General Ken Paxton — well ahead of where the polls had Cruz’s opponent, Beto O’Rourke, at the same point six years ago.

As in 2018, the national environment looks ripe for Democrats given voter backlash to President Donald Trump, whose approval rating has settled just under 40% since late April. And once again, Texas Democrats are running a candidate who hopes to appeal to middle-of-the-road voters.

“This guy is also charming,” Cruz warned. “He is affable, he sounds like a preacher, and I worry about the voters who may not be paying close attention to the issues, who just turn on the TV and say, ‘Oh, he seems like a nice young man.’”

Abbott was more optimistic.

“I personally think Talarico is going to be very beatable once Texans get to know who he really is,” the governor said, pointing to the litany of attack lines Cruz recounted. Abbott, who is up for reelection in November, has trained his early fire on Talarico, repeatedly calling him “Jimmy Talarico” while ignoring his actual opponent, state Rep. Gina Hinojosa, D-Austin.

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Paxton has faced his own share of attack ads, including from Republicans hoping to stop him from ousting U.S. Sen. John Cornyn in the primary. Cruz encouraged Republicans and “ordinary commonsense Texans” to vote, echoing concerns Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has raised repeatedly about the prospect of a divided GOP spelling the party’s defeat. In particular, Patrick has called on Cornyn to do more to help Paxton.

Cornyn has said he will support the Republican ticket but told reporters he will not campaign for Paxton.

“We need John to come around,” Patrick told conservative radio host Mark Davis on Wednesday morning, while also questioning whether acting Comptroller Kelly Hancock had officially endorsed his successor, GOP nominee Don Huffines, since losing the primary. Hancock announced his resignation last month, and Abbott said he would tap Huffines, Abbott’s one-time gubernatorial challenger, to fill the remainder of the term.

Cruz, meanwhile, was not the only guest to bash Talarico during Abbott’s run as talk radio host. Later in the show, National Republican Senatorial Committee Chair Tim Scott, a senator from South Carolina, likened Talarico’s values to the “amorality” of embattled Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner, who has described himself as a democratic socialist. Platner suspended his campaign Wednesday amid accusations of rape and sexual misconduct.

“Democrats are bound and determined to turn the page to socialism today and communism tomorrow,” Scott said.

Abbott, a former Texas Supreme Court justice, and Cruz, a former state solicitor general, also discussed the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision rejecting Trump’s executive order banning birthright citizenship. The pair discussed ways around the ruling outside of a constitutional amendment, including passing a federal law or executive order denying visas to women who are visibly pregnant.

“If it’s someone coming before there’s any indication they’re pregnant, that’s one thing, but if someone is seven, eight, nine months pregnant and visibly pregnant, I think the administration ought to say we will not grant a tourist visa, visitor visa or any other visa to anyone who is pregnant,” Cruz said. “That makes sense, and there’s no legal impediment to doing that.”

The governor’s other guests included White House border czar Tom Homan, newly anointed trillionaire Elon Musk, Buc’ee’s founder and CEO Arch “Beaver” Aplin III and Longhorns Football Coach Steve Sarkisian. Notably, neither Homan nor Abbott addressed the fatal shooting of a man in Houston on Tuesday by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer.

Humoring the governor, Musk told Abbott he’d try to get a Texas flag emoji on his social media platform, X, drawing a round of applause from the governor over the air.

This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.

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Graham’s office announced his death in a statement early Sunday, saying he died Saturday evening. No cause of death was immediately released beyond describing it as a “brief and sudden illness.” His family asked for privacy and thanked the public for its prayers.

Statement from the Office of U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina). pic.twitter.com/CQ5yVvqTH1

— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) July 12, 2026

The longtime senator had celebrated his 71st birthday just two days earlier, making his death especially unexpected at a time when many of his Senate colleagues remain in office well into their late 70s and 80s. Graham had served in the Senate since 2003 after four terms in the House of Representatives and was campaigning for another six-year term after winning South Carolina’s Republican primary last month.

A retired Air Force Reserve colonel and military lawyer, Graham built his reputation as one of the Senate’s leading foreign policy hawks, advocating for an aggressive U.S. posture abroad, particularly toward Iran and Russia. He chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee during President Trump’s first term, overseeing some of the administration’s most consequential judicial confirmation battles.

Graham’s political legacy, however, will likely be defined as much by his evolving relationship with Trump as by his legislative record.

During the 2016 Republican presidential primary, Graham was among Trump’s sharpest critics, calling him a “race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot” and warning that nominating him would damage the Republican Party. After Trump won the presidency, however, Graham gradually became one of his closest allies in the Senate, emerging as a frequent defender of Trump’s agenda, judicial nominees and foreign policy priorities. By Trump’s second term, Graham had become one of the president’s most trusted voices on Capitol Hill, particularly on national security issues.

Born July 9, 1955, in Central, South Carolina, Graham endured personal tragedy at a young age. After losing both parents while attending college, he became the legal guardian of his younger sister, an experience he often credited with shaping his sense of responsibility and public service.

He was first elected to the South Carolina House of Representatives in 1992 before winning a seat in the U.S. House in 1994 as part of the Republican wave led by Newt Gingrich. Eight years later, he won election to the Senate, where he would serve for more than two decades.

Throughout his career, Graham cultivated a reputation for his focus on issues like immigration reform, national security and criminal justice, including reaching across the aisle for more bipartisanship politics in his earlier years in office. In later years, however, he became one of Trump’s most visible congressional allies, helping shepherd key nominations and serving as one of the administration’s most vocal defenders.

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Graham’s death leaves South Carolina with a vacant Senate seat and removes one of the Republican Party’s most recognizable and influential voices on foreign policy after more than 30 years in Congress. Under South Carolina law, the vacancy will be filled through the state’s succession process until a special election can be held.

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“1,000 Missiles are Locked and Loaded,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, adding that the military had already received orders to “completely decimate and destroy all areas of Iran” for a one-year period if such an attack were to occur. The president’s comments came amid renewed threats from Iran following the recent U.S.-Iran conflict and reports that Tehran continues to view Trump as a target for retaliation over the 2020 U.S. killing of Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani in addition to the assassination of its most recent leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

But while Trump’s language suggested a preauthorized military response, constitutional experts say no president can predetermine how a successor would respond to such an attack.

Under the Constitution and the Presidential Succession Act, if a president dies in office, the vice president immediately becomes president and commander in chief. In this scenario, Vice President JD Vance—not Trump—would determine whether and how the United States responds militarily. Any existing contingency plans or standing directives would be subject to the new president’s authority, who is known not to have been a fan of the conflict from the beginning.

“The U.S. has, for a whole variety of reasons, never utilized a technical ‘dead man’s switch,’” historian Garrett Graff, an expert on continuity of government, told the Associated Press. While the U.S. military maintains extensive contingency plans for crises ranging from nuclear attacks to the death of senior leaders, those plans do not automatically trigger military action upon a president’s death.

The distinction matters because Trump’s post blurs the line between military planning and presidential authority.

The United States routinely prepares response options for a wide range of national security scenarios, including attacks against American leaders. The existence of contingency plans is not unusual. What is unusual is a sitting president publicly describing what he characterized as “standing military orders” on social media and suggesting it would remain in force after he is no longer commander in chief.

Trump’s post also arrives against a complicated diplomatic backdrop. Earlier, he said the United States had agreed to continue talks with Iran even as he declared a previous ceasefire effectively over, underscoring the volatile state of relations between Washington and Tehran.

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The larger question raised by Trump’s remarks is not whether the United States would respond to an attack on a sitting president. Few national security experts doubt that it would. The constitutional question is who would make that decision.

The answer, experts say, is not the president who issued the order, but the one who succeeds him.

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About 4,500 workers at Mass General Brigham are striking this week, while employees at Mount Nittany Medical Center in Pennsylvania said they would take to the picket line later this month.

The settlement could be the end of a long legal saga for Omnicare, which filed for bankruptcy last year after a judge ordered the company to pay nearly $950 million for fraudulently billing government health programs.

A former executive is claiming that the MA insurer recorded millions of dollars as capital expenditures that should have been operating expenses, inflating its value. Alignment strongly denied the allegations.