Republican lawmakers Nancy Mace and Ronny Jackson call for transgender people to be institutionalized

In the wake of Charlie Kirk’s killing—committed by a suspect who notably was not transgender—conservative leaders have seized the moment to escalate their war on LGBTQ+ people. Vice President JD Vance and Stephen Miller used the death to demand the dismantling of NGOs critical of Kirk. Far-right influencer Matt Walsh openly called for executions of those he branded “LGBTQ+ terrorists.” And now, two sitting members of Congress have crossed a new threshold, explicitly calling for the institutionalization of transgender people—an escalation even by today’s standards.

First, South Carolina representative Nancy Mace, who has a history of vehement opposition to transgender people in Congress, called for the institutionalization of transgender people in a street interview where she hurled slurs at the community. She first stated of the shooter’s partner, “It was a transgender… It was a [tr*nny].” When she was asked how she would feel if she were called names the way she calls transgender people, she said “these people are violently ill and should be in a straitjacket with a hard steel lock on it.”

Related: Utah prosecutor reads chilling text messages Charlie Kirk’s alleged shooter’s roommate provided to police

Then, on Newsmax, Representative Ronny Jackson, former White House Physician and Texas Congressman, was asked if “bringing back mental institutions could be on the table.” He responded by saying that transgender people have “legitimate psychiatric issues… we have to do something about this, we have to treat these people, we have to get them off the streets and we have to get them off the internet and we can’t let them communicate with one another. I’m all about free speech, but this is a virus. This is a cancer that is spreading across this country.” He also stated in another portion of the interview that transgender people are “a group of domestic terrorists” that “have been bred by the progressives and the liberal media.”

The rhetoric among far-right influencers and financiers has only intensified since the killing of Charlie Kirk. Elon Musk amplified a post to 21 million people on his platform calling for transgender women to be institutionalized “for a long time, some of them indefinitely,” adding himself that “the truth is so awful that they murder to keep the lie” of their gender identity. Laura Loomer urged that the transgender rights movement be declared a “terrorist movement.” Matt Walsh labeled the killing “left-wing LGBT terrorism” and went further, demanding that “the terrorists and their helpers and funders” be “arrested, prosecuted, and put to death.”

These calls don’t emerge in a vacuum. Institutionalization was once a favored tool for erasing transgender people from public life, a way to disappear them rather than recognize their humanity. For sitting members of Congress to revive that rhetoric marks a dangerous escalation. The parallel is just as clear abroad: in Russia, LGBTQ+ movements have been designated “extremist” to justify bans on supportive NGOs and erase entire communities. That is the same playbook Vice President JD Vance and President Trump appeared to nod toward this week—Vance on the Charlie Kirk Show, Trump in a press conference—when they floated targeting NGOs under RICO charges for political dissent.

Related: Trump says he’d consider banning LGBTQ+ Pride flags in alarming Oval Office exchange

There is no evidence that transgender people are “violent” or “terroristic.” The data is unambiguous: the vast majority of killings in the United States are carried out by cisgender men. Even in the case of Charlie Kirk’s death, a cisgender white man pulled the trigger. Yet in the rush to manufacture a narrative, the far right seized on the fact that his roommate and romantic partner was reportedly transitioning—ignoring that she refused to destroy evidence and instead turned text messages over to police. That detail doesn’t fit the story they want to tell. Instead, they continue to pin every act of violence they can on transgender people, exploiting a tragedy to escalate their campaign of fear and extremism.

This article originally appeared on Erin in the Morning.