Results from the Ministerial on the Resurgence of Political Terrorism

THE WASHINGTON FOREIGN PRESS CENTER, WASHINGTON, D.C.

MODERATOR:  Good afternoon, and welcome to the Washington Foreign Press Center.  I’m Zina Wolfington, and I will moderate today’s briefing.  It is my pleasure to introduce today’s briefer, Ambassador Gregory LoGerfo, Coordinator and Ambassador-at-Large for Counterterrorism, Bureau of Counterterrorism.  Ambassador LoGerfo will brief on the outcomes of the Ministerial on the Resurgence of Political Terrorism hosted by the United States on July 16.

A reminder that today’s briefing is on the record and the briefing transcript will be posted to our website, fpc.state.gov, later today.

Ambassador, the floors is yours.

AMBASSADOR LOGERFO:  Thank you, Zina.  Good afternoon.  Thank you all for being here, and thanks to the entire team here at the State Department’s Foreign Press Center.

This past Thursday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio convened the Ministerial on the Resurgence of Political Terrorism at the State Department, bringing together delegations from 66 countries – political leaders, experts, and law enforcement officials – to confront the growing transnational danger of far-left political terrorism.  It was a resounding success and a historic event, with a free flow of discussion and ideas throughout the day.  I’m proud of the CT Bureau and the State Department colleagues who worked together to make this ministerial a success.

I’m sure all of you watched or read Secretary Rubio’s speech, along with those of Treasury Secretary Bessent and Homeland Security Advisor Miller.

Allow me to begin with U.S. counterterrorism priorities and how this conference and political terrorism fits into our approach.

As outlined in the United States Counterterrorism Strategy, we currently are addressing three major types of terror groups: narco-terrorists, Islamic or jihadi terrorists, and far-left terrorists.  For all three, we need to identify terror actors and plots before they happen.

Let me say a few words about the first two categories.  To address narco-terrorists and the violence and drugs they have wrought on the homeland, and in support of President Trump’s direction in his inauguration day speech, we have designated 20 cartels and gangs as Foreign Terror Organizations and Specially Designated Terrorist Groups.  On the jihadi threat, for the last 25 years U.S. counterterrorism and that of our partners has meant first and foremost the fight against Islamic terrorism.  This was driven by the September 11th attacks and subsequent jihadist attacks in Bali, and Madrid, and London, and Mumbai, and elsewhere.  Together we countered the rise of ISIS in the heart of the Middle East, defending the territorial – defeating the territorial caliphate during the first Trump administration, and building an 80-plus member coalition that remains active today.

Our sustained campaign against Islamic terrorists has been very effective – through global diplomacy and cooperation, a unified attack on terrorist financial networks, and military action by the United States and our partners.  But jihadist groups remain a danger and we remain vigilant in our efforts to counter them.  At President Trump’s direction and leadership, we have taken strikes against jihadi adversaries, including in Syria, Somalia, and Nigeria.

Turning to far-left terrorism:  It is a resurgent threat, with a clear upward trendline.  We are committed to addressing it before it metastasizes.  To that end, the ministerial on Thursday enabled a frank discussion with participants from across the globe on the resurgence of political terrorism, with a focus on far-left terrorism.  Far-left terrorist violence is not new.  In fact, it was for most of the post-World War II era the dominant form of political terrorism in the West.  The historical record reminds us of the potential for this particular terrorist threat in our time, and we are increasingly concerned – based on hard facts – that far-left terrorism and violence is once again on the upswing, that it is resurgent.  And this ministerial was convened to call a halt to this scourge before it grows into something larger, more unified, and more deadly.

Secretary Rubio presented some tragic examples.  In January, Berlin experienced its longest blackout since World War II.  In February, a 23-year-old was beaten to death on the streets of Leon.  And a few weeks ago, a 72-year-old woman burned to death in a firebomb attack in Greece.

Political leaders have been attacked, businesses bombed, railways sabotaged, and police officers assaulted, reminiscent of what we experienced in the 1970s.  The numbers tell a grim tale:  Violent far-left actors were responsible for 63 percent of recorded anti-government attacks or plots in the United States in 2025, while far-left violence in Germany rose more than 40 percent in a single year; and in Greece, more than 80 percent of radical violence today comes from far-left and anarchist actors.  At the conference we heard from other delegations facing similar upward trendlines.  This is a transnational threat.  As coordinator for counterterrorism at the State Department, I work with our diplomatic partners to address shared threats.  At Thursday’s conference there was plenty of discussion and agreement on the need to work together going forward.

We have three concrete outcomes from the ministerial; first, on designations and accountability.  The United States has already designated four violent, far-left groups – Antifa Ost, the Informal Anarchist Federation/International Revolutionary Front, Armed Proletarian Justice, and Revolutionary Class Self-Defense – as Foreign Terrorist Organizations and as Specially Designated Global Terrorists, and additional designations are under active review.

At the ministerial, partners discussed prospects to align their own legal frameworks to ensure that these networks cannot simply relocate across borders.  As part of these designations Treasury’s Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence will take steps to dismantle the funding which sustains these groups.  The State Department is offering rewards for justice payments of up to $10 million for information disrupting far-left terrorist financing.

Second, operational cooperation.  Building on the inaugural counterterrorism law enforcement workshop we hosted in May, partners agreed to deepen information sharing, coordinate on travel restrictions, and strengthen protection of critical infrastructure, particularly transportation and energy systems, which have been repeated targets.  At the ministerial, Germany announced that it will host the next workshop, where we expect even greater attendance.  This forum will continue to spur close cooperation among practitioners on the threat.

Third, travel restrictions.  Secretary Rubio has announced new visa restrictions targeting members of far-left terrorists and aligned groups under Section 212(a)(3)(C) of the Immigration and Nationality Act.  We will bar anyone who engages in far-left terrorism or provides it support from entering the United States.

Before I have the opportunity to take your questions, let me be clear about what this ministerial was not.  This was not about policing political viewpoints, abridging the freedom of speech, or preventing peaceful protest.  Rather, it is about keeping ordinary Americans safe from horrific violence, bombings, arson, assassinations, and sabotage of infrastructure at a level that puts lives at risk.

Political terrorism is illegal and unacceptable regardless of the ideology behind it, and that was a shared principal uniting every delegation in that room last Thursday.  Our goal is to keep America safe and secure.  We’re grateful to more than 66 nations that joined us.  This is the beginning of a sustained effort to ensure we address a renewed threat, and we look forward to continuing to work with our partners in the months ahead.

With that, I’m happy to take your questions.

MODERATOR:  Thank you, Ambassador.  We will now open the floor for questions.  For those of you in the room, please raise your hand and wait to be called on; state your name and outlet before your question.  For journalists joining us on Zoom, please be sure your screenname includes your name, outlet, and country, and use the “raise hand” function.  And we will start in the room first.

Please.

QUESTION:  Thank you very much.  Mr. Kurd is here from Kurdistan.  Thank you for this great opportunity.  I do really appreciate your time.  How do you describe the role of the Kurdistan Peshmerga forces in fight against terrorism in Syria and especially in Iraq?

AMBASSADOR LOGERFO:  Well, thank you for that question.  As you may or may not know, I served in Iraq as our deputy chief of mission; I served twice in Iraq, in 2010 and then again in 2021.  Met with the Peshmerga, been up Erbil, been through that part of Iraq, and I can tell you they’re a great partner.  We’ve relied on them, and also I would just say the Peshmerga have sacrificed quite a bit in our shared terrorist objectives.

QUESTION:  And I have another question if possible.  Given the security challenges in the Middle East, how does the United States view the role of the Iraq, Syria, and the Kurdistan region in preventing the return of political terrorism?

AMBASSADOR LOGERFO:  Thank you for that.  One thing I would – I like the framing of your question because as we – I think we get into the discussion here we’ll see that the three elements of our counterterrorism strategy converge in many countries.  In the Levant, if you will, going back, this is where we – with a sustained effort with our partners on the ground, as you mentioned, and also from around the world – defeated the territorial caliphate of ISIS.  And that was a tremendous accomplishment, but there’s always more to be done and there’s more vigilance that we need to maintain.  And I think that with respect to political terrorism, any act that is done to intimidate, any act that is done to deter people from participating in the democratic process or in the processes in their country, is something that we would stand against.

MODERATOR:  Yes.

QUESTION:  Thank you.  I’m Janne Pak with the USA Journal, with the USA Journal Korea, with South Korea. And do you think that the fact reporting by their far-left media and the political verbal abuse against politician are also a form of political terrorism, and how will you suspend these?

AMBASSADOR LOGERFO:  Thank you for that question.  First thing is Korea was ably represented at the forum, and we were grateful for their participation and the intervention that the delegation had in the afternoon.  I would say – and also thank you for – one of the things I think that we’ve observed is that far left terrorism, which is on an upward trend by our estimation and by that of most of the participants at the ministerial, needs greater journalistic attention.  So thank you for all of you for being here today and thank you for your question.  I would also say that we’re focused on acts of violence, and as I said in my remarks, we always value freedom of expression and we always value freedom of political views.

MODERATOR:  Barbara.

QUESTION:  Welcome.  The Dutch Financieele daily.*

AMBASSADOR LOGERFO:  (In Dutch.)

QUESTION:  Hi.  Can you elaborate as to why you think the left-wing terrorism is on the rise?  Why is it happening?

AMBASSADOR LOGERFO:  Yeah, well, I can tell you that we’ve accounted that it is rising, and that was something that we talked about at the ministerial.  I’d refer you to the Secretary’s remarks and that of Stephen Miller and Secretary Bessent.  The ideology we’ve observed – and again, I’m a counter-terrorism practitioner focusing how to prevent things mostly – but basically a culture of politics, the politics of envy, the politics of grievance, provide an ideological motivation, it seems, for people to take violent acts here in the United States.  And then also, certainly, in listening to our European friends, and also very emphatically from our Western Hemisphere friends, that this brand of political terrorism is something we need to address.

And I would just say we see that there is an up – a clear trend up.  And as someone who’s been in this business for a little while, and for all Americans going back to September 11th and the things that we, as a government, have been able to confront in the counter-terrorism space, what we’re really trying to do here is address something before it metastasizes, before it gets worse, not after something truly catastrophic.  And we stand for that prospect.  Under the leadership were President Trump and Secretary Rubio, convening 66 countries just last week to get at something in this way which as a counter-terrorism sort of matter would be remarkable, and we’re really hopeful we can do that.  We made great progress.  We’re going to have a follow-on meeting in Germany.  I think – and I can tell you informally from many of the delegations that were present, we’re going to have really, really strong attendance at that next working group.

MODERATOR:  Please.

QUESTION:  Hi.  My name is Jim Cason.  I write for a newspaper that’s published in Mexico called La Jornada.  And I just had two questions as well.  One was the Mexican Government has said they were invited to this conference and the president said she declined to attend because, in her words, it was a theme from the – from our perspective that was more political than really related to combating criminal groups.  So I wonder A, how do you respond to that, and B, are you going to invite Mexico again?

AMBASSADOR LOGERFO:  Yeah, thank you for the question.  Well, I would respond by keeping the invitation open.  We believe, especially with our neighbor, that we’re confronting a threat, among other threats, as you know, in the hemisphere.  I can tell you it’s a closed session.  Jim, your name, yeah?

QUESTION:  Yeah.

AMBASSADOR LOGERFO:  The emphatic interventions by ministers from the Western Hemisphere on this issue was, frankly, inspiring.  Not just on far-left terrorism, but the confluence of the three pillars of Secretary Rubio and President Trumps’ counterterrorism strategy: narcoterrorism, far-left terrorism, and the jihadist threat.  We have designations from our Western Hemisphere partners since the beginning of the Trump Administration of the IRGC, of Hizballah, of Hamas.  We’ve designated 20 narcoterrorist groups, and comingled in all of this – and we heard these presentations from senior law enforcement officials from the West – from South America who talk about the interconnection between all three of these from the practitioner’s perspective, and that – those presentations were made to the entire 66-member conference.  And so we think we’re on the right track here.  We’ll keep the invitation open.  Thank you.

MODERATOR:  Any other questions, please?

QUESTION:  Sagar Kulkani from the Press Trust of India.  I just wanted to ask how many ministers attended the meeting?  You said 66 representation countries were present.  How many were represented at a ministerial level?

AMBASSADOR LOGERFO:  Yeah, great question.  So we had – first of all, the conference had 17 ministers.  We had practitioners, senior practitioners, senior police chief – senior chief of the Hellenic Police, for example, from Greece, and others at that rank at the conference.  And so we’ve always – it kind of gets at something we try to do with this.  We want to build this up from the practitioner level and we did that with our first practitioners group because people on the front lines, people who are seeing acts of terrorism or threats from terrorism day to day, we brought them to this forum.  And we also had a good amount of ministers, and they provided sort of the policy side.  And so in the end what we got was a convergence of practitioners and senior policymakers, and that really contributed to the discussion.

MODERATOR:  Any other questions?  Seeing no more questions, this concludes the Q&A portion.  Thank you –

AMBASSADOR LOGERFO:  Nothing from the Skype, or what do you call it?

MODERATOR:  From Zoom, yes.  If you have question online, please raise your hand.  All right, go ahead.

QUESTION:  You mentioned trying to protect freedom of speech.

AMBASSADOR LOGERFO:  Yeah.

QUESTION:  And I’ve had a chance to talk to a former Trump Administration official, Miles Taylor, who you may know.  And he suggested that although this is crafted as an international effort, that the goal is actually to establish a predicate to go after groups in the United States using the material support laws that are pretty broad and would allow one to go after people who were not actually engaged in violent actions in the United States but were, in your view, supporting groups internationally that were on your terrorism list.  How do you respond to that?

AMBASSADOR LOGERFO:  Yeah, well, sometimes when I present things to my teenage boys they just look at me and they say, “Theory, Dad.”  So no, of course not.  We – first of all, the material support statute relates to Foreign Terrorist Organizations, and we’ve used that extraordinarily effectively against narcoterrorists, against jihadis, and against the four groups that we designated that have connections with Antifa.  So that’s one thing, and that we’re going to keep at it.

The goal of this conference was on the face of it, and you heard it from the Secretary.  We see a clear trend upward on far-left terrorism, both in our country, and by the way validated by the majority of participants.  Not everyone agrees, but that’s okay.  That’s why we come together.  And we would – I would say we emphatically support freedom of speech.  The people who are conducting these far-left attacks, they’re seeking to intimidate people from expressing their freedoms.  And that’s something they’re doing through acts of violence, and that’s what we’re trying to get at.  Thank you.

MODERATOR:  Barbara, wait, since you didn’t ask a question.  Go ahead, please, Fayaz. 

QUESTION:  Thank you for having this briefing.  And this is Fayaz Naich from Pakistan, WTN Pakistan.  What is the position of current U.S. Government on Taliban?  Because Pakistan is facing terrorism threats (inaudible) on continuous basis, which Pakistan Government claims that they are being supported by the Afghanistan regime, and sometimes Pakistan Government say they are also supported by the India.  So what is the position of the U.S. Government?  Because U.S. Government was partnered with Pakistan and Afghanistan for decades.

AMBASSADOR LOGERFO:  Yeah.  So we have a very solid counterterrorism partnership with Pakistan.  I’ve been to Islamabad.  We had a great dialogue last year, facing shared threats.  With respect to the Taliban, we engage them selectively when it’s in the U.S. interest with respect to very discrete security issues.  Pakistan is a great partner, as I said.  Thank you.

MODERATOR:  I see one question online.  Lotte, I believe it’s you.  Please unmute yourself, introduce yourself, and ask a question.

QUESTION:  Yes, thank you so much.  Can you hear me?

MODERATOR:  Yes.

QUESTION:  Yes, this is Lotte Mejlhede from TV 2 Denmark.  I just have a question.  What is your focus on right-wing political terrorism in this regard?  Thank you.

AMBASSADOR LOGERFO:  Thanks.  Well, we will – we are postured in the Trump Administration to address political terrorism wherever it comes from.  What we’re trying to draw attention to is what we see – and we heard this from practitioners in the international meeting two months ago, and we heard it on Thursday – a blind spot with respect to far-left terrorism.  Right-wing terrorism is something that – as you identified, is something that seems to be covered in the media pretty extensively, and many governments that we talk to certainly are focused on it.  And we applaud focusing on any threat, any counterterrorism threat, that manifests itself against our partners or against – certainly against the United States.  We will take action.

We just think, and it’s based on the data, it’s based on what we hear from our practitioner friends, and from the leaders and ministers at the event, that we are missing something, potentially, with respect to far-left terrorism.  That’s why we convened everyone at this forum.

AMBASSADOR LOGERFO:  Barbara, you still have a question?

QUESTION:  Yes.  I was – I’ve been – my – what I know about Antifa is that doesn’t really exist.  And you just named Antifa Ost.  I was wondering, is that a different group or what is the intelligence that the U.S. has that Antifa does exist?

AMBASSADOR LOGERFO:  Yeah, well, we have those designations.  They’re designations on the on the basis of our statutes, on the basis of violent acts that members of those groups committed.  By the way, I think they’re all also designated as terrorist groups by countries in Europe.  And so the other thing about this is, I mean, basically a foreign terrorist organization, we have to have these three components:  It has to be foreign; it has to be terrorist; it has to be an organization.  And all four of these groups met that test.  And we see this as something that will keep America safe and secure, and we’re looking at – actively at more designations.

QUESTION:  And is there also an Antifa West, for instance, or why especially Antifa?

AMBASSADOR LOGERFO:  I think that’s just the name of the group.  But if there is an Antifa West, please send me the information.

MODERATOR:  We have time for one last question.  Rahim.

QUESTION:  Thank you.  Sir Ambassador, how concerned is the United States about the growing use of online platform and AI by terrorist organization for recruitment, propaganda, and financing?  And what new measures are being considered?

Why I’m asking this question?  We see many people from Iran, for example, they’re super fan of IRGC, super anti-Israel and anti-America, and they live in United States and publicly use platforms.  How you can handle with this threat?

AMBASSADOR LOGERFO:  Yeah, so it’s a great question.  We focus – if someone is acting in any forum committing a crime, terrorist financing, anything that’s against U.S. laws, whatever forum they’re in, if they’re breaking the law, they’re breaking the law.  And that’s something that we work with our partners on.  Obviously, there’s different laws in different countries, but when people threaten the United States, whatever the mode of communication is – if it’s terror financing, if it’s conspiring for acts of terrorism or anything that would hurt the United States – we’ll take action on that.

QUESTION:  How can people let you know about them?

AMBASSADOR LOGERFO:  Well, certainly they can always communicate with the U.S. Government.  And we have – I think we have ways to do that through our website, through the State Department, and through our embassies.  And yeah, I’d say that.  So – yeah.

MODERATOR:  This concludes Q&A portion of this briefing.  Would you like to share any closing remarks?

AMBASSADOR LOGERFO:  Yeah, just thank you.  This is a really important issue.  It’s important to the Secretary and the President.  We, again, want to get at a threat before it really metastasizes.  And far-left terrorism is something – we’ve seen it in the past, seen it in the middle of the 20th century, in the ‘70s in the United States, and just be able to be here in a few years or five years and say, well, look, we got on top of it, we got on top of it with 66 partners in that July of 2026, had follow-on meetings, and addressed this threat.

And that’s the leadership prospect that President Trump and Secretary Rubio bring to this.  We’ve got a great – the other thing I just want to say is we have a great counterterrorism team across the interagency with Sebastian Gorka, with colleagues at Treasury and at the Pentagon.  Look forward to continuing to work with them, and thank you for all your questions today.

MODERATOR:  Thank you, Ambassador, for your time, and thank you to journalists for joining us.  This concludes today’s briefing.