The NPR Politics Podcast - Sources & Methods: Trump's counterterrorism plan

Episode Date: May 25, 2026

From NPR's Sources & Methods:The attack at a mosque in San Diego underscores larger problems: the rise of far right extremism and the rise of Islamophobia. But a new White House document on rising threats make no mention of right-wing extremist groups.Host Mary Louise Kelly speaks with NPR national security correspondent Greg Myre and NPR domestic extremism correspondent Odette Yousef about what radicalized the two teens involved in the San Diego attack. They also look into the latest version of the United States Counterterrorism Strategy, which does not list far-right extremism as a threat to Americans. Plus, an update on Iran and Cuba.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

Hey, it's Tam. Today on the show, we want to bring you the latest from our friends at NPR's National Security podcast, Sources and Methods. It's a great weekly listen every Thursday about some of the big issues in the intelligence community, hosted by NPR's Mary Louise Kelly. If you like it, give them a follow on the NPR app. And we'll be back in your feeds tomorrow as normal. Here's Mary Louise. The attack in San Diego this week has been an illustration of the dangers of not paying attention to violent far-right extremism. If you're trying to wrap your head around NatSEC priorities, under the Trump administration, there are worse places to start than the brand new just unveiled document United States counterterrorism strategy. Among other things, it focuses on the threat from violent left-wing extremists. This is sources and methods for mental. I'm Mary Louise Kelly. It's Thursday, which means on this podcast we're diving into the week's biggest national security stories with NPR reporters who are out in the world covering them.

Two of our finest here this week here in the studio with me, NPR, national security correspondent Greg Myrie. Welcome back. Hi. Thanks, Mary Louise. And Odette Yusuf, who reports on extremism for NPR from her home base in Chicago. Odette, welcome back. Glad to be here. Hey, so it is just afternoon here on this somewhat gloomy Thursday in Washington. Odette, I'm thinking last time you were on the podcast was back in November and now we're practically on summer and Memorial Day is looming. Time flies. It does. Yeah. So let's dive in. We have spent, well, we've spent the last few weeks, the last few months talking about international news, whether war in the Middle East or recently this big summit in Beijing, big elections in Hungary.

Today we are going to switch gears and talk through some Natsakh news closer to home. Yes, we will check on Iran, also some things cooking in Cuba toward the end of this episode, so please make sure you stick around for that. But we're going to begin with San Diego, where on Monday a security guard and two others were killed after two teenagers opened fire at the Islamic center of San Diego. The pair were later found dead of apparent self-inflicted gunshot wounds. The attack is being investigated as a hate crime. Mark Rimmily, special agent in charge of the FBI's San Diego Field Office, said they were radicalized online.

These subjects did not discriminate on who they hated. O'Dek us off, because you've been reporting on this, looking into these two suspects. What do we know about them? So, as you said, Mary Louise, they are two male teenagers, Apparently they made online. Authorities say they were radicalized online. And we know from some of the materials that they appear to have made connected to this attack, that they are part of a global far-right accelerationist movement that's trying to bring about societal collapse

through this kind of violence or attacks on infrastructure. You said global far-right accelerationist movement? What is that? So accelerationism is an ideology that is closely tied with neo-Nazism. And the idea is to bring about the total disintegration of social order. So, you know, often these people are looking to incite a race war. They're looking to basically undermine all elements of the social order that we are familiar with. make it harder for us to get literally electricity to our homes, you know, disrupt supply chains, anything they can do to collapse the social order and the idea is that from the ashes, you know, a new world order would be rebuilt in, you know, sort of a fascist authoritarian regime. You said we know some of this from materials online. Materials like what? Where did you find this?

So specifically, it appears that these two live streamed the attack. And so there is a video of that live stream. And there is also a 75-page document that appears to have been authored by these two teenagers. Now, these were materials that they wanted to reach circulation in the public. And so they were uploaded to an online forum where users, you know, share and view graphic gore videos, you know, and images, things including suicides, torture, rape, murderers. God, yeah. You said an online forum. This is a website that if you, if you. If you know where to look, you can find this stuff? That's right.

And so a source found these there and sent them to me. But, you know, the fact that they were there is itself important to talk about because, you know, this kind of follows a script that is well established among far-right extremists who are seeking what they call sainthood in this sort of subculture of white nationalist neo-Nazi accelerator. What about this speaks to the far right? What's the far right influence here? So these are people who embrace neo-Nazi ideology and Nazi ideology. This is, you know, this comes from notions of rigid hierarchy based on race, based on gender. And so this has always been conceived of as a far-right movement. So this is white supremacy, male supremacy, and so far-right. Correct. Okay. You also mentioned they live streamed, and this, of course, was an attack on an Islamic center. Are there similarities to, I'm remembering that the mosque shootings in New Zealand in Christ Church back in 2019? Yes. And, you know, I think similarities is a way of sort of undercutting actually what this is. So if we look at just the very first page of that 75-page document, it features the words, Sons of Tarrant, Tarrant being Brenton. Terrant, the perpetrator of that attack in Christchurch. And then at the bottom of that page, it says a Sons of Terrant debut manifesto. So for the most part, this was an attack formulated to replicate what happened in Christchurch as closely as possible. One more to you, Oda.

You're saying there appears to be direct lengths, direct a playbook from the Christchurch, New Zealand shootings. How common are these type attacks here in the United States? Well, you know, I think that we've seen the Christchurch attack as inspiration for many other attacks. I'm thinking certainly of the attack in 2022 in Buffalo, New York, where a young white nationalist killed 10 people at atop's friendly markets in and was certainly drawing inspiration from the Christ's church attack. But I think it's important to know that, like, these attacks are committed by people who are not just looking domestically.

You know, they very much are building on a global movement where these attacks have happened all over the world. And I want to bring, you know, something that I heard from Heidi Byrick while I was reporting this out. she's the co-founder of the global project against hate and extremism. These movements, they're not confined by borders. They are truly transnational. There have been killings in multiple countries motivated by this same idea. In Germany, in Norway, in the United States, in New Zealand, in Serbia, not that long ago, in Bratislava, in Slovakia.

But if I can just add one last point here, Mary Louise, you know, at the same time, This attack feels to me and to others that I've spoken to about it a bit strange. It's, I hate to say this, but it almost feels like a kind of throwback. Because the violent extremism space has really evolved over the last few years to be something a bit different. You know, one where we've seen the sort of aesthetic elements of neo-Nazism and accelerationism. but without a grounded ideological underpinning of white nationalist that really is driving the violence. It's been more of sort of an incoherent mishmash of different ideologies and more of violence for the sake of violence. So this attack actually was a bit surprising because it reflects back on, dare I say,

it's sort of an older model of violent white extremism. Terrifying. We're going to take a break when we come back how the attack in San Diego plays into a bigger conversation on counterterrorism. That's ahead on sources and methods from NPR. We're back. The attack in San Diego underscores bigger problems, the rise of far-right extremism, the rise of Islamophobia. But a new White House document on rising threats makes no mention of right-wing extremist groups. Greg, I am talking about the latest version of the United States counterterrorism strategy. This is a 16-page document. It's brand new hot off the presses, came out earlier this month. Start with the architect, the man behind us. His name is Sebastian Gorka. Who is he? Right. So Sebastian Gorka is this big hulking guy, and he has a booming voice. So he certainly has a presence. You tend to notice him pretty quickly.

He's got a bit of a British accent. He has roots in Britain and Hungary. He immigrated to the U.S., legally, he likes to say, less than two decades ago. And he made his name by talking a lot about terrorism, counterterrorism, with a real emphasis on Islamic extremism. And so that's really where you would see him commentating publicly. He caught the attention of President Trump. So he'd been in this country less than a decade. And in Trump's first term, he named him as a presidential advisor. Now, a lot of chaos at the beginning of Trump's first term, a lot of people coming and going. Gorka was out. Lasted only a matter of months, I believe, seven months or so. And so he kind of disappeared.

He was doing more commentating in the interim. But he's been brought back again to the White House. Second administration, he's back. That's right. And as an advisor, and now he's emerged as the point person on counterterrorism at the National Security Council. So official post, he is officially a member of the National Security Council in the White House. That's right. And he's taken over as the counterterrorism person. And with this report that's come out, it's drawn attention to him and he's given interviews. And so there's a lot of focus on him and the approach, which is different and emphasizes the thing that President Trump likes to talk about and not what we've often heard about in the past 10, 20 years when it comes to counterterrorism. And just one more thing on Gorka personally, he has been in the headlines. quite recently because the head of the National Counterterrorism Center, Joe Kent, resigned in protest over the Iran war.

Sebastian Gorka has been in the news, people wondering if he is perhaps angling for that job. So expanding on his White House portfolio and taking over the whole National Counterterrorism Center? Yeah, it seems so that is certainly the talk. Now, at the White House, he's more involved in the policy aspect of it to run the National Counterterrorism Centers, really the operational. Where would you put resources? What cases would you be following most closely? And so that would have more actual clout generally seen as the operational person. It would also be a Senate confirmable post. And so this is, we don't know where that may go. Watch this space. We do know, I just want to people to get to hear from Gorka directly.

We dug out an interview that he gave last year to Politico, in which he was asked about counterterrorism and he was asked, what's your mandate? Very simply to protect the innocent and to deal earthly justice to evil doers, the individuals who threaten our U.S. citizens, whether here or abroad, the global jihadi movement, be it Sunni or Shia, our job in the Directorate for Counterterrorism is to suppress that threat until these organizations, the Tier 1 threat groups are incapable of executing mass casualty attacks against Americans. It's a very simple mission. So a taste there of Sebastian Gorka and his approach to his mission.

Greg, to focus on this new strategy document that he has produced, it identifies three main types of terror groups that threaten the U.S. according to the Trump White House. They are narco-terrorists, number one, Islamist terrorists, and left wing. extremists, left-wing. What do we make of that? Yeah, so it's certainly an expansion and a different point of emphasis than we've seen in the past. Certainly the Islamist groups, the Al-Qaeda, ISIS, they're still there, although they're not as been as active as they have been in the past. The narco-terrorists, we've seen that being acted upon in terms of these U.S. air strikes on suspected drug traffickers in the Caribbean and the Pacific. And the part that really is

entirely new is violent left-wing extremists. He's mentioned Antifa, LGBT, transgender ideology. So things we just have not dealt with in terms of tying it into counterterrorism, completely unprecedented. Odette, what about the emphasis on left-wing extremists? Unless I missed it, I didn't see a lot of emphasis on the other side, on right-wing extremism. Yes, there is no mention, really, of right-wing extremism. And that is, I think, what's causing the greatest amount of concern for people who work in this field, right? So we've seen, it's no surprise that the document would focus on, quote, violent left-wing extremists. You know, we've already seen the State Department designate certain European-based groups as violent,

left-wing extremist groups. The fact is that we haven't seen a body count, frankly, of people who are killed by left-wing extremist activity, the way that we have seen with violent far-right movements. And so there's a lot of concern that this is simply turning away from where the problem really lies. And I think that the attack in San Diego this week, has been an illustration of the dangers of not paying attention to violent far-right extremism. Do we know what they're doing with this document, Greg? Are there any concrete steps or signs that they are overhauling counterterrorism efforts, diverting resources from one area to another to act on the priorities outlined in this document?

Well, I would say that we've seen, very broadly speaking, whether it's going after the drug traffickers, that we mentioned in the Caribbean or the Pacific. The emphasis on the Western Hemisphere, as opposed to, say, the Middle East when it comes to counterterrorism, the actions that Trump has taken against Venezuela and is threatening against Cuba, not specifically counterterrorism actions, but part of his broader efforts in terms of national security and the points of emphasis he wants to make. So it does seem to fold into at least the narco-terrorists that they talk about. And again, you could even question whether drug smugglers are terrorists. I mean, that's something that the Trump administration has certainly emphasized. But there's no real overt political component to drug traffickers. They seem to be criminals who want to make money and have

certainly inflicted all sorts of suffering on this country, whether it's the drug overdose, deaths, or the violence or whatever, but lumping it in as terrorism is something that's been new. And eight groups with ties to drug trafficking or gang activity have been added to the State Department's list of foreign terrorist organizations. FTO list, yeah. Right. And that would include the Sinaloa cartel in Mexico, the MS-13 gangs, Trinde Aragua. So groups that had not previously been on the terrorist list, but the Trump administration,

says, no, no, no, these are terrorist groups, and we're going to spend a lot of resources focused on them. I mean, just to pause and sit for a second, Greg, with the fact that we are this deep into a discussion about a counterterrorism policy document, and we have barely mentioned Al-Qaeda, ISIS. You and I have been around covering all this stuff since 9-11 and before. That's quite extraordinary. It's quite a pivot.

It is absolutely a pivot. Now, you could argue that in some ways it's a success. The fact that al-Qaeda is not the threat that it was, that ISIS, while still existing in numerous countries, is not at the level of threat that it has been. So we're approaching the 25th anniversary of 9-11. Those groups simply are not capable of doing what they could. So you could argue that's a success. And the focus should be shifting, should be changing. I guess the question is, you know, is it political? then. Joe Biden talked about the threat of right-wing extremism. Now the Trump administration says it's left-wing extremism that's the threat. So to what extent are we getting away from something that is really a national security issue writ large versus trying to make it a political issue or drawing in other issues like drug trafficking? You know, should that be lumped and should our counterterrorism efforts be focused on an issue like that?

Van Odette. Yeah, I mean, the thing that really stands out about this document more than anything else is sort of the level of partisanship in it. You know, one person I spoke with pointed out that former President Joe Biden's name appears in the document seven times. Lebanese Hezbollah gets mentioned only twice. I was thinking about kind of the same thing. And I noticed the intro to the document. This is page four states, we will not permit the weaponization of America's unparalleled counterterrored. terrorism capabilities for partisan purposes. So that's their statement. That's the goal. But it sounds like some of the people you're reading along with Odette think this document itself is scoring some partisan points. Yeah. I mean, it does say, you know, we're not trying to be partisan. But the fact is that, you know, the folks that are also monitoring sort of what terrorist threats are globally right now feel that this document is highlighting stuff that is not supported by evidence. And more than one person called it an unsurious take on the current, you know, terrorist landscape right now.

Okay, we're going to take a break. We deserve a quick break. After that, an update on Iran and on Cuba. And we're going to open up our reporter's notebooks for OSEN. That's ahead on sources and methods from NPR. We're back with Odette, Yusef, and Greg. A couple other developments we do want to take note of this week. Greg, Iran, the war. Where are we? Holding pattern still? Yeah, in a word, stalemate. There are things happening, but none of them seem to be pointing towards a resolution. Iran's supreme leader, Haminae, has reportedly just said today that Iran's highly enriched uranium should be kept inside the country, not sent outside the country, which. which is what President Trump wants. So that seems for him to state that publicly, while there's still efforts at negotiations, would suggest that it's going to be much more, much harder to get any sort

of agreement on that. We've seen Pakistani officials going to Iran, trying to revive some, some negotiations or carrying messages on the latest proposals from both sides. But both sides seemed to be having their maximalist proposal still on the table, no movement really in the Strait of Hormuz in terms of large numbers of ships coming or going. The head of Central Command, Admiral Brad Cooper, who's in charge of the military operation there. He's been testifying on the hill multiple times, and he noted this week that there were 38 days of fighting. The ceasefire has actually exceeded that now. So we've been in this period of a ceasefire for longer. and we were in the five plus weeks of fighting.

The ceasefire is essentially holding, but there's no real movement towards a resolution. Any kind of permanent end. Okay, do Cuba for a minute or two. I have the feeling we may be talking more about Cuba in the coming weeks on this podcast. One thing to note, a visit last week by John Ratcliffe, the director of the CIA. What's going on there? Yeah, it was not announced in advance, but the CIA, did release photos. They were willing to talk about it a little bit afterwards. It's just so strange

when you hear the CIA in Cuba, the immediate notion it pops to mine. Exploding cigars? Is that where you're? Exactly. As far as we know, no cigars exploded on this list. All of these historic attempts by the CIA to undermine the government of Fidel Castro dating back to the 60s. And so, you know, I called Peter Cornblue. He's at the National Security Archive. It's a private group that does research on national security documents. It's based at George Washington University. So he's been following Cuba for decades. And he had some thoughts on this. It is a historical irony that the CI director would be sent on a diplomatic mission to issue a do or die ultimatum to the Cuban government. In many ways, the CIA may end up accomplishing diplomatically what is a do or die ultimatum to the Cuban government. in many ways the CIA may end up accomplishing diplomatically what it is sought to do covertly. Although the CIA director sometimes does get drafted, whether it's John Rottcliffe or his predecessors, to do some diplomacy because they can move more covertly than a secretary of state or other members of an administration. We reporters don't get to go on the plane with them, for example.

Exactly. No, it's true. John Brennan, former CIA director, was involved in the negotiations and the Obama administration to normalize relations with Cuba. So, yes, this does happen, but it's just very unusual, especially given the history with Cuba and the CIA. And speaking of the Castro's, the other twist this week is that the Justice Department has indicted Raul Castro, former president and brother of Fidel, Carl Castro, indicted him with murder. Taken those two things together, CIA director visiting the island, Raul Castro being indicted, signs that the U.S. has designs on something happening in the not too distant future with regard to Cuba? Sure. It certainly seems like Ratcliffe was issuing some sort of ultimatum or, you know, maybe it's being portrayed as negotiations. But really, it's part of a pressure campaign.

That was certainly one part of it. The other piece seems to be this indictment of Raul Castro, who is now 94 years old. It relates to an incident 30 years ago when the Cuban Air Force shot down a civilian U.S. plane by a group of Cuban Americans in Florida who are trying to look for Cubans who might be coming on rafts across the Strait of Florida and helping them. They were also doing provocative things like dropping leaflets over the island. And there's a dispute. Cuba says this plane entered Cuban airspace. The U.S. said it did not. It was shot down. Four people were killed. This was in 1996. Roel Castro was the defense minister at the time. The U.S. argument is he ordered that shootdown of a civilian plane, whether it was doing provocative things or not, and that he will be held accountable. So is the U.S. planning somehow to grab a 94-year-old Raul Castro and bring him to the United States for trial? That's what we're looking at.

I mean, without overthinking the parallels, we will recall that it wasn't that long ago that Nicholas Maduro was indicted in Venezuela. And look, look what has happened in 2026. So signs of Venezuela hanging over all of this. And I'll just add, we keep hearing more and more pronouncements coming from the Trump administration. In fact, Secretary of State, Marco Rubio was talking about it just today. With that, we're going to end with OSENT, open source intelligence, the details, not always secret, but telling details that we stumble across in our reporting Odette kicks off. Okay, so I have a story about swatting, which, if for those who are not familiar, swatting, basically is something where somebody calls in a false report about a crime occurring at a location in order to draw an enormous law enforcement response to that location. And so think, you know,

SWAT teams, many police fully kidded out with guns. And it's also, I should mention, it's a felony and could be quite serious. It's resulted in at least one case in a death. So not really a Laughing matter in general. But this is an interesting case where earlier this week, a woman named Sue Jackwit was swatted. Now, she is 81 years old, and her deal is that she streams herself playing Minecraft. And the whole thing is that she's like trying to raise money to help pay for her grandson's cancer treatment. Now, she was swatted while she was asleep. And interestingly, the video that catches her while she's, you know, like live streaming her playing the video games was actually on at the time.

So it was recording when police entered her home. And you can see these fully armed officers with their guns walking in. And so she actually, she and one of her grandsons spoke about the experience and put the video online. And here's a little bit of what she shared about it. And these policemen came in the door. The prettiest policewoman I've ever seen, the beautiful eyes, so sweet. But I think she could kick butt as she needed to. And I didn't know what was going on.

But it was kind of fun. It was. Yeah. It was kind of fun. The most gracious reaction effort. of being swatted in the middle of the night. Yeah. So I will also just mention that, you know, she, in addition to raising money for her

grandson's cancer care, she's also raised and donated $10,000 to Phoenix Children's Hospital to help other kids who need help paying for their medical care too. Lovely. Greg. What do you have? I'm going to go big. Last week, we were all talking about President Trump's visit to China. Lots of build-up, Pigo's.

children are waving American flags, lots of ceremony. Eh, not much comes out of it. A little, little overwhelming. Well, this week we weren't paying quite as much attention to China, but Russian President Vladimir Putin was in Beijing. Yes, he was. Children are waving flags, and these are Russian flags now, not American flags, not.

Swap them out. Not clear if it's the same children. New flags, kids. Right. Big ceremony, pomp and circumstance. Eh, not much came out of it. The Russians were hoping for support for a pipeline. They want to build across Siberia further making building ties and links to China and all this talk we've heard in recent years about friendships without limits.

The Chinese seem to think there are some limits and they were not, you know, it was not an overwhelming success either. So Trump and Putin may have something to commiserate about in terms of less than stellar visits to China. Don't let the flag waving kids fool you. That's the takeaway there. All right, here's mine. I got an email this week that contained the following sentence. I'm going to read it verbatim. By day, we were spies, analysts, and East Asia experts. By night, we were singing songs about whiskey in pubs around the Washington area. So I'm reading. I'm thinking, okay, you had me at hello spies singing whiskey. Where is this going? The email was from a. woman named Meredith Kavana, who is ex-CIA. She worked more than two decades at the agency. While she was there, she started a band with two of her fellow CIA officers. They called the band Celtic Underground. It is Irish folk. This is not the first band she started, by the way. She shared that that was back at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina. Her husband was stationed there, and she and a few of the other Marine Corps wives decided to get together and play something once St. Patrick's Day and things proceeded from there.

But this more recent band Celtic Underground just dropped their first single, and it is titled Johnny Jump Up and she sent it to me. No, never, no never, no never again. If I lived to a hundred or a hundred and ten, I fell to the brown and I couldn't get up. After drinking a pint of the Johnny Jump Up Up. There you go, the Johnny Jump Up. The band members have all left CIA, by the way, Greg. So they are free to email with the legs of us. And they picked up a fourth member who is not a spy, or so she says.

It's four people now, twin fiddles, guitar, banjo, and they've got a debut album coming out in June. So there you go. You can add it to your summer playlist. Who knew? Get them on tiny desk. That's awesome. Spy Shanty Tiny Desk. You heard it here first. We'll pitch it. We've been speaking with National Security Correspondent Greg Myrie and fellow national security correspondent covering extremism. Odette Yusuf. Thanks to you both.

My pleasure. Thanks for having us. We've been taking time this month to thank listeners who have taken the time to rate and review this show on your podcast platform of choice listeners like the one who left us this review. on Apple using the moniker Champlain H-O-G. I was involved, Champlain H-O-G writes, I was involved in some pretty interesting intel during my career in the U.S. Navy

and this show is the best. Great guests who know of what they speak rather than uninformed conjecture I often hear on other podcasts. Well, done to Mary Louise Kelly. Aw. Well, we are happy to be of service. Thank you so much for writing.

And if all the rest of you, if you are enjoying this show, Leaving a review like that is a great and a really easy way to support our work. It really does help new listeners find us and keeps this show growing. That's it for today's episode. Thank you for listening. I'm Mary Louise Kelly, and we're back next week with another episode of sources and methods for MNPR.