Sebastian Gorka runs counterterrorism policy at the National Security Council. He has the president's ear. And last month, on a podcast almost nobody was listening to, he laid out who America's enemies are: jihadists, fentanyl cartels, Democratic Socialists, and, in his words, "mentally imbalanced transgender, non-binary extremists."
The mainstream press missed it (obviously). Independent national security reporter Ken Klippenstein didn't, and his report is the reason you're here reading this. (You’re probably tired of us repeating this, but it’s true: Klippenstein’s Substack is the number one source for national security news, particularly the kind of stories legacy media won't touch.)
What Gorka said
Gorka sat down in August with Rabbi Michael Barclay, a conservative commentator who hosts The Rabbi's Table. Asked about threats to the country, Gorka ran through his list and landed on trans and nonbinary people, tying them to the August 2025 massacre at Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis, where two children were killed during a back-to-school Mass.
Nonbinary means a person who doesn't identify as exclusively a man or a woman. The Williams Institute at UCLA estimates about 1.2 million American adults fit that description. Most are under 30. Many use they/them pronouns. Most are trying to get through another stressful workday, just like everyone else.
Gorka now considers them to be as (if not more) dangerous than drug cartels.
Klippenstein believes this is the first time a national security official has invoked "nonbinary extremism." It wasn't a slip, though. Gorka used the same term in May.
At the rollout of Gorka’s counterterrorism strategy, he promised to take down "the transgender killers, the nonbinary, the left-wing radicals," LGBTQ Nation reported. (Sounds like a “you problem.”)
It’s written policy, not just podcast talk
An official government report supports the rhetoric.
In September 2025, Trump signed NSPM-7, a national security memo directing the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force to pursue "domestic terrorism" defined by beliefs like: "anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity," plus "extremism on migration, race, and gender." Those “beliefs” sound more like personal opinions to us.
The ACLU warned the memo was written to allow the administration to go after nonprofits and activists. It never defines what "extremism on gender" means, which is the point. Vague categories are flexible categories.
In May 2026, Sebastian Gorka released the 2026 National Counterterrorism Strategy, which he called his "life's work." It names "extreme transgender ideologies" as a threat and promises the "rapid identification and neutralization" of groups it labels "radically pro-transgender."
Is it just us? Doesn’t the term “neutralize” mean “kill, eliminate, or wipe off the face of the earth” in certain circles?
Those are tactics the country used to map al Qaeda cells, now targeting American citizens.The document never mentions far-right violence, even though, as Rep. Bennie Thompson pointed out, years of federal data show right-wing extremists are the deadliest domestic threat in the country.
Last week, HHS released a taxpayer-funded report claiming that supporting trans people predicts "left-wing authoritarianism" and sympathy for political violence. Its own authors concede it proves no cause and effect, and it surveyed just 13 trans or gender-nonconforming people out of 1,208 respondents.
Memo, strategy, "science," podcast. Each step broadens the target to include more of this administration’s left-wing political opponents.
The evidence Sebastian Gorka refers to isn't there
Start with the case the Counterterrorism Czar keeps citing. The Annunciation shooter, Robin Westman, was transgender, not nonbinary.
Federal prosecutors who went through Westman's writings said the shooter expressed hatred for nearly every group imaginable, including Black people, Mexicans, Christians, Jews, and an individual, Donald Trump. Westman idolized other mass shooters.
The acting U.S. attorney provided the Cliff Notes version: the shooter "appeared to hate all of us." None of the evidence in that case points to gender identity as the motive.
Gorka has been caught inflating numbers before. Days after the shooting, he claimed on CNN that there had been "seven" transgender mass shooters in just a couple of years.
Anchor Brianna Keilar shut him down on air with Secret Service data showing 96% of mass shooters between 2016 and 2020 were cisgender men (straight men for all the “non-lefties” reading this).
FactCheck.org and PolitiFact later found that Gorka’s list was padded with cases where the shooter's identity was unverified or explicitly not trans.
As for nonbinary violence specifically, Klippenstein looked for examples and found exactly one case: the Zizians, a small cult-like offshoot of the Bay Area "rationalist" scene linked to six killings, including a Border Patrol agent inVermont.
Many of the members are trans or gender-nonconforming. Their ideology, however, is a conspiratorial “Q-adjacent” stew of veganism, artificial intelligence doom, and fringe theories about the brain.
That’s the "threat" an actual White House official thinks should be in the same category as fentanyl-smuggling drug cartels.
The category keeps expanding
This week, the FBI announced it had charged a 17-year-old in Maine as the first juvenile prosecuted under the "nihilistic violent extremism" label, a category the Trump administration invented last year. (first it’s “antifa terrorist,” now it’s “nihilistic extremist,” which basically describes every black-pilled teenage boy with raging hormones and undiagnosed depression.)
The Maine teen's alleged crimes, including sexual exploitation of a child and cyberstalking, are serious and should be prosecuted. Whether they belong in a national security threat bucket is a different question.
The Bureau says it now has more than 500 open "Nihilistic Violent Extremism (NVE)" investigations, up from 350 in December.
See the pattern? Trans people. Nonbinary people. Anarchists. Anti-fascists. Democratic Socialists. "Nihilists." Every few months, the list of Americans the counterterrorism machine is instructed to hunt down gets longer, and the definition of terrorism more blurry.
Who's the extremist here?
Gorka told Barclay the "question of our age" is whether the West has the will to "fight and defeat those who wish to destroy our civilization." He described a "war to the death where only one side can win."
If you think a bunch of peace-loving, social justice-seeking, wish-equality-for-all Americans, or those who just don’t conform to either society-enforced concept of gender, are trying to “destroy our civilization,” you’re either a liar, or you should contact a mental health crisis professional (sorry, but sometimes it just gets to the point when something is so absurd that it's dangerous).
A man who has access to the most powerful surveillance and law enforcement tools on Earth is describing more than a million of his fellow citizens as combatants in a holy war. These are people's kids, coworkers, and neighbors. Nonbinary Americans already face higher rates of assault, poverty, and psychological distress than the general public, and now their own government is telling them they're a danger to society.
That should help with the harassment and threats of violence some people experience due to their gender identity or sexual orientation. *Sarcasm*
Can’t we all just — in the words of Tim Walz — mind our “own goddamn business?”
Klippenstein ended his piece on Substack with a question: Who’s the real extremist here?
