President Donald Trump has a favorite justification for everything he does: “It’s a national security matter.”
After 9/11, the United States built a vast, powerful, and generally unchecked national security apparatus. Twenty-five years later, Trump is using agencies and emergency powers that sprung up in the aftermath of the 2001 attacks—and have never been abolished or repealed—to threaten domestic dissidents and anyone else he views as an enemy, claiming that those who oppose his policies constitute threats to America.
Of course, American presidents have been using “national security” as an excuse to expand surveillance and start wars since before the smoke from the Twin Towers cleared, and Trump is no exception. In his first term, his long list of national security “threats” included Japanese cars, Chinese telecom equipment, and briefly, the gay hookup app Grindr.
But in his second term, Trump—whose constantly shifting stories about his own actions at Ground Zero defy credulity—has taken this tactic to even more absurd, and sometimes catastrophic, extremes. Here are some highlights.
Threatening to annex Greenland: Trump has periodically obsessed over “acquiring” Greenland, and, in various Truth Social posts, he has made his case for annexation. “The National Security of the United States, and the World at large, is at stake,” he wrote in a series of early-morning Truth Social posts in January. “The United States needs Greenland for the purpose of National Security. It is vital for the Golden Dome that we are building. NATO should be leading the way for us to get it. IF WE DON’T, RUSSIA OR CHINA WILL, AND THAT IS NOT GOING TO HAPPEN!” Trump renewed his threats to annex Greenland at the NATO summit in July.
Targeting ICE protesters as terrorists: Trump’s September 2025 National Security Presidential Memorandum-7 formally designates “antifa” as a domestic terrorist organization. Following that directive, dozens of ICE protesters across the country have been taken to trial as national security threats—some of them over things as small as moving a box of zines or wearing a shirt that says “I’m antifa.”
Halting offshore wind development: Since late 2025, administration officials have framed offshore wind turbines as a national security threat. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum has said a classified report from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth proves offshore wind is a national security threat—but has never exactly explained how. The administration has also used national security concerns as a pretext for keeping coal plants online past their planned retirement dates and restarting a problematic California oil pipeline over fierce state and local opposition.
Building more hyperscale data centers: “It is a national security imperative for the United States to achieve and maintain unquestioned and unchallenged global technological dominance,” Trump, who has invested millions of dollars in companies that build data center infrastructure, wrote in a 2025 executive order.
Constructing a $400 million ballroom: After a federal judge in DC ordered Trump to halt construction on his unsanctioned White House ballroom, he unleashed a tirade on social media pitching the project as a military-grade command center. The ballroom wasn’t just a ballroom, apparently, but a “desperately needed National Security structure for the people of the United States of America,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in mid-August. The Supreme Court has, at least for now, allowed construction to move forward.
Stripping union protections from nearly a million federal workers: In a March 2025 executive order, Trump designated more than a dozen government agencies as performing “intelligence, counterintelligence, investigative, or national security work,” thereby robbing about 950,000 federal employees of their collective bargaining rights.
Putting tariffs on musical instruments: The Department of Commerce announced in early August that it plans to implement a 25 percent tariff on brass instruments—including trombones, trumpets, and tubas—citing national security concerns about America’s purported overreliance on foreign copper alloys. The National Association of Music Merchants has condemned the move.
Letting xAI pollute Memphis: NAACP lawyers contend that Elon Musk’s xAI should pay more than $100,000 a day in civil penalties for violating the federal Clean Air Act by operating unpermitted gas turbines in Memphis to keep Musk’s Grok chatbot—a.k.a. “MechaHitler”—online. This past June, the Department of Justice intervened in the case, not to safeguard Memphians, but rather to protect Grok. “Grok’s continued operation and availability is a matter of paramount national security,” the filing said, especially “in the event of armed conflict”—noting that the Department of War used Grok to “deploy over 2,000 munitions to 2,000 distinct targets within 96 hours during Operation Epic Fury.”
Protecting the US drone industry—and his sons’ pocketbooks: Last week, Trump proposed slapping tariffs of up to 100 percent on foreign-made drones, calling reliance on foreign drone components a “national security threat.” His older sons, Eric and Don Jr., have sizable holdings in the US drone industry, so this is probably great news for them.
Excluding trans people from public life: In May, the Trump administration released its latest “counterterrorism” plan, which labels transgender people a threat to the nation’s safety. Counterterrorism czar Sebastian Gorka told reporters at the time that the administration would “crush” any threat, “whether it is the cartels, the jihadists or violent left-wing extremists like antifa—and like the transgender killers, the nonbinary, the left-wing radicals who killed my friend, Charlie Kirk, we will take them on, head on.”