Tomorrow, Marco Rubio will open a summit unveiling a new designation branding his political opponents as terrorists, documents leaked to me reveal.
The unveil will happen on the opening day of the over 60-nation summit — which I reported on here — called the Ministerial on the Resurgence of Political Terrorism.
That this summit is happening at a time when the Iran war is literally exploding, and while so much else in the world seems to be on fire, is a baffling way for the Secretary of State (and National Security Advisor!) to spend his precious time.
Welcome to the War on FLT, short for “Far-Left Terrorism,” a new acronym appearing in State Department documents about the summit and which I obtained.
A three-letter acronym for an imaginary threat that could be radioactive to a politician’s presidential ambitions. Sound familiar? It’s this generation’s WMD. And it’s going to haunt him.
Rubio, who fancies himself a deep thinker and is already being anointed as the experienced middle-of-the-road alternative to JD Vance, is revealing his true stripes: Trump flunkey, oblivious, and lost in the sauce of the bureaucracy’s ideological hotbox.
Far-left is hard enough to define (who decides what’s “far”?) but to add terrorism takes it to another level of crazy. Not that Rubio cares. The summit will introduce a new visa policy under which State targets “far-left terrorist and other aligned groups” not just for violence against actual people but also “economic sabotage including against public and private property” — a phrase broad enough to cover a broken window or a boycott.
Rubio has spent a decade cultivating the image of the responsible statesman — fourteen years on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the grown-up steadying a chaotic administration. The FLT designation is a good place to watch that image dissolve. The State Department is being turned into another clown car, and Rubio seems happy to be the driver.
State’s talking points drop any pretense that this is a politically neutral endeavor. Officials are instructed to rely on the following talking points (per the leaked documents):
“We go where the threat is. Political terrorism is resurgent, and far-left terrorism specifically poses a unique and distinctive threat today. Addressing and defeating that is the focus of the Ministerial.”
“The United States has observed a concerning convergence between violent far-left and anarchist networks and other violent extremist actors, including violent pro-Iranian and antisemitic networks, as well as militant anti-tech and eco-terrorist movements. This is a trend we are monitoring closely and engaging partners to address.”
“The Ministerial will focus world attention on the resurgence of political terrorism and bring together the United States and foreign partners to address the terrorist actors, particularly far-left terrorist networks, operating across Europe, Asia, the Western Hemisphere, and beyond. It focuses on improving coordination, information sharing, and practical law enforcement cooperation to counter political terrorism, including violent far-left attacks on law enforcement, critical infrastructure, political figures, and state institutions.”
“Political terrorism is resurgent, particularly among far-left terrorist networks that have grown more sophisticated. They leverage decentralized cell structures, encrypted communications, and transnational coordination to carry out attacks on rail, energy, and telecommunications infrastructure, as well as targeted violence against political figures and their families. In 2024 alone, there were 21 far-left and anarchist terrorist attacks in the EU — nearly matching the number of jihadist attacks that year.”
“These are not isolated incidents, but are part of a sustained, transnational campaign of political terrorism that is growing in sophistication and lethality, aimed at dismantling the foundations of self-governing societies.”
“The Department of State is committed to confronting organized political violence, including from far-left terrorist and other aligned groups that engage in or support terrorist or criminal activities, economic sabotage, or support far-left terrorist-led violent actions.”
“In support of this effort, the Department of State is announcing a new visa restriction policy that targets members of far-left terrorist and other aligned groups who have supported or incited acts of terrorism; supported violent criminal activity; participated in economic sabotage including against public and private property; financed, recruited, or provided logistical support for violent or criminal actions committed by far-left terrorist and other aligned groups; and/or facilitated the convergence of far left terrorist and other aligned networks for the purposes of economic sabotage.”
“…this policy will protect U.S. citizens and safeguard the American homeland by restricting entry of foreign nationals who finance, recruit, incite, or otherwise enable terrorist, violent, and criminal far-left terrorist networks — closing the visa pathways that far-left terrorists and other aligned groups could exploit to threaten American lives, undermine economic stability, and coordinate violent actions on U.S. soil.”
Consider who Rubio is comfortable putting in charge of the summit, names I gleaned from an internal State Department roster detailing the event.
Tera Dahl, a senior advisor in State’s Bureau of Counterterrorism, is a Michael Flynn colleague from the first Trump administration who was pushed out of the National Security Council by H.R. McMaster. Before that, she wrote for Steve Bannon’s Breitbart, co-founded the now-defunct Council on Global Security — a think tank devoted to warning about the dangers of Islam. There, she worked with Katharine Gorka, wife of current Trump terrorism czar Sebastian Gorka, authoring a string of pieces praising Egypt’s strongman Abdel Fattah el-Sisi for “leading Egypt towards democracy” as he jailed his critics.
Dahl got her start as a staffer for then-Representative Michele Bachmann — which is its own kind of full circle. In 2012, Bachmann and four House colleagues sent letters to federal inspectors general alleging that the Muslim Brotherhood had infiltrated the U.S. government, singling out longtime Clinton aide Huma Abedin. The claim was baseless enough that John McCain went to the Senate floor to rebuke a member of his own party.
Then there’s Monica Jacobsen, another senior official at State’s Counterrorism Bureau, a holy warrior who emphasizes the defense of global Christians. She testified to Congress this year that her agency would “hold governments’ feet to the fire when they fail to address terrorist threats that undermine religious freedom.”
Then there’s Brent Munyon, Senior Adviser to the Deputy Secretary of Management and Resources. A few years ago, he was a partisan dirt digger for the Republican National Committee. Finally, there’s Oscar Buynevich, Special Advisor for the Office of the Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy, another partisan commentator whose career amounted to shoveling culture war slop at right-wing campus watchdogs like Campus Reform and *The College Fix. *
It’s a rogues’ gallery befitting the imaginary Iraqi WMD fiasco, the main contributor to the mess we are still in more than 20 years later. Think Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle.
Welcome to Rubio 2028.
— Edited by William M. Arkin
