Donald Trump Has Made the U.S. Vulnerable to Attacks in the Homeland

 

The risk of Iranian-linked retaliation and terrorist activity is higher today than it has been in years. Iran has long relied on asymmetric warfare – including terrorism, cyberattacks, and covert operations – as a central pillar of its foreign policy against its adversaries. 

In just the past five years, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has disrupted many Iranian-linked plots, including assassination attempts and other attacks directed at targets in the United States. After the killing of Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani in 2020, Iran vowed revenge, named 51 Americans as targets – including former military and civilian leaders – that it claimed were involved in the killing, and escalated efforts to target U.S. officials and interests. Iran is highly likely to attempt a similar wave of retaliation following the recent killing of Iran’s supreme leader.

Alarmingly, this heightened threat is emerging at a time when the Trump administration has significantly dismantled the nation’s counterterrorism infrastructure and reduced America’s ability to detect and stop attacks before they occur.

Mass Firings at DOJ & The FBI: 

  • Over the past year, mass firings, forced departures, and reassignments at the DOJ and FBI have hollowed out decades of counterterrorism and national security expertise. The losses have been widespread, hitting U.S. Attorneys’ Offices, FBI field offices, and critical headquarters divisions responsible for investigating foreign threats.

  • FBI Director Kash Patel has ordered the termination of scores of agents and field office leaders, often without explanation. Just days before the war with Iran began, Kash Patel reportedly dismissed agents with specialized experience in Iranian counterterrorism investigations because they previously worked on the Mar-a-Lago case – something they had been assigned as career public servants.

  • The career leadership at DOJ’s National Security Division – which leads the government’s counterterrorism investigations and prosecutions – has been largely forced out. Senior prosecutors and intelligence officials with decades of terrorism-related experience were fired or reassigned to other parts of the department.

  • The lost expertise is critical to effectively identifying, investigating, and prosecuting Iranian plotting and other terrorism-related threats. The loss of this expertise creates a dangerous gap at a moment when Iran and its proxies are increasingly likely to pursue retaliation or asymmetric attacks.

Mass Firings at ODNI and NCTC: 

  • The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) – which helps oversee intelligence gathering critical to identifying and understanding early threat streams – has undergone one of the largest downsizings in its history. As of August 2025, it cut about one-third of its staff and vowed to make even more cuts before the start of this year.

  • The National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), which plays a critical role in identifying and assessing potential terrorist plotting, has also been deeply weakened by these cuts. To make matters worse, already limited resources are increasingly being shifted away from counterterrorism to support counternarcotics efforts. The Center’s Director also recently resigned his post effective immediately citing his inability to support the ongoing war in Iran, which he said posed no imminent threat to our nation. 

  • Among those deeply affected: the Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center and the National Counterproliferation and Biosecurity Center, both of which play key roles in tracking and protecting Americans from terrorist threats, including threats from hostile states like Iran. 

  • Weakening these institutions reduces the intelligence community’s ability to fuse information across agencies and detect emerging plots — precisely the type of early warning capability needed to identify and prevent retaliatory attacks from Iranian or Iranian-inspired actors.

Politicization of Intelligence Assessments:

  • The White House has blocked the nation’s top intelligence agencies, including the NCTC, FBI, and Department of Homeland Security (DHS), from issuing a warning to state and local law enforcement about the increased terrorism threat due to the war in Iran. 

  • DHS officials have not issued an updated National Terrorism Advisory since the most recent one expired in September. And they have not published a Homeland Threat Assessment, an annual report which highlights “the most direct, pressing threats” to the nation, since President Donald Trump took office.

Diversion of Law Enforcement & Intelligence into Immigration Enforcement:

  • Federal law enforcement resources have been diverted toward large-scale immigration enforcement operations, pulling personnel away from core national security and other criminal missions.

  • In August, 42,153 federal employees were reassigned to support Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations, including 28,390 officers from federal law enforcement agencies with expertise in investigations and threat monitoring. That represents roughly 20 percent of all federal law enforcement officials. 

    • This diversion is not a small part of many of these agencies. It includes one in five US marshals (650 of 3,892), one in five FBI agents (2,840 of 13,700), half of Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) agents (2,181 of 4,620), over two-thirds of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) (1,778 of 2,572), and nearly 90 percent of Homeland Security Investigations (6,198 of 7,100). These reassignments have significantly reduced the workforce available for counterterrorism and national security investigations.

  • This redirection of counterterrorism and cyber expertise weakens the federal government’s ability to detect and disrupt foreign plots – a particularly serious risk given Iran’s well-known history of conducting covert operations and assassination attempts inside the United States.

Politicization of Homeland Security and Counterterrorism Grants 

  • In its push to penalize Democratically-led states and cities, the Trump Administration has illegally withheld counterterrorism and homeland security grants from state and local partners, diminishing their capacity to prepare for and respond to major incidents. 

    • The Administration was forced to restore more than $34 million in anti-terror funds that it tried to withhold from New York City’s transit system. 

    • DHS withheld counterterrorism funding from major cities including Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco, Denver and Boston, prompting similar lawsuits. The funding came from the Securing the Cities program, which helps jurisdictions prepare for nuclear or terrorist attacks and major events

Massive Cuts to CISA

  • The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) plays a critical role in identifying and responding to cyberthreats, including those posed by sophisticated nation-state actors like Iran; working with critical infrastructure agencies across the nation to identify and defend against emergent threats; and coordinating internationally to identify and defend against threats.

  • Despite the emergent threats, CISA’s workforce has been cut by some 38% since Donald Trump took office. The Administration’s FY2026 budget proposal would cut even more positions, along with $495 million from its budget.

  • Among the casualties: key public-private information sharing programs that enable early identification of – and thus protection against – both cyber physical threats to critical infrastructure, surface transportation, and the chemical sector. 

  • This comes at a time that ransomware attacks and cyber threats from nation-states and criminal actors, including Iran – which has long relied on cyberattacks as a tool of asymmetric retaliation – are rapidly increasing.

Politicization of Threat Priorities

  • The Trump administration has increasingly redirected law enforcement and intelligence resources toward perceived political opponents – including “antifa” and left-leaning nonprofit groups. 

  • Trump signed a memorandum directing the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, DOJ, and IRS to investigate and dismantle “anti-fascist” and related networks. The directive included potential criminal referrals and tax enforcement actions against nonprofit organizations. 

  • The administration has pushed an effort to overhaul the IRS to enable criminal probes of political groups and other perceived opponents. They have taken steps to restructure the IRS criminal division and install loyal political appointees to more easily open investigations into left-leaning organizations and donors.

  • This focus diverts attention from credible and persistent threats, including foreign adversaries like Iran and organized domestic violent extremist networks.

Leadership Failures: 

  • FBI Director Kash Patel has focused heavily on internal purges and loyalty tests rather than strengthening the bureau’s counterterrorism capabilities, contributing to widespread departures of experienced agents and leaders.

  • Attorney General Pam Bondi has repeatedly used the Justice Department to pursue the president’s domestic political priorities, diverting attention and resources from the department’s core law enforcement and national security responsibilities.

  • Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has reportedly redirected the intelligence community’s attention toward election-related conspiracy theories rather than emerging foreign threats. She has also fired intelligence officials for authoring assessments that didn’t support Trump’s claims and reportedly suppressed intelligence reports about the president’s family. 

  • DHS Secretary Kristi Noem was abruptly fired following concerns about mismanagement. She is set to be replaced by a controversial, combative senator – another example of erratic leadership decisions that put politics over preparedness. Can Americans trust this kind of judgment to keep them safe?

  • At a time when Iran’s use of terrorism and asymmetric retaliation remains a central pillar of its foreign policy, these leadership choices risk weakening the institutions designed to detect and prevent attacks on the American homeland.

Published: March 2026