Trump’s HHS built a survey linking trans acceptance to violence. Its authors undercut the conclusions

The Trump administration decided that support for transgender people belonged in the nation’s counterterrorism apparatus. Months later, it commissioned a study that appears designed to tell the government it was right.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on Wednesday released a 24-page report claiming that people who support transgender identities, chosen names, pronouns, and parental acceptance are more likely to hold “left-wing authoritarian” beliefs and consider certain acts of political violence justified.

HHS promoted the findings under a headline declaring that people associated with “radical gender ideology” are more likely to justify political violence. Assistant Secretary for Health Adm. Brian Christine said the study raises questions about “what happens when ideology is given the authority of medicine.”

The report does not establish that affirming transgender people causes violent attitudes. It does not measure whether anyone committed, planned, or intended to commit violence. It does not compare left- and right-wing violence. It does not demonstrate that transgender people are disproportionately violent. Only 13 of its 1,208 respondents identified as transgender or gender-nonconforming.

And its authors acknowledge that the correlations they found cannot establish causation. A person’s politics could influence both sets of answers, authoritarian tendencies could influence their views about transgender people, or some unmeasured factor could affect both.

In other words, the study cannot answer the inflammatory question its title poses: “Does Gender Ideology Arm Left-Wing Authoritarian Psychology?”

Related: CNN anchor embarrasses White House counterterrorism chief over false transgender mass shooter stats

What HHS labeled ‘radical gender ideology’

Researchers affiliated with Rutgers University, the conservative Manhattan Institute, and the Network Contagion Research Institute created their own five-question “Clinical Gender Affirmation Scale."

The questions asked respondents whether failing to affirm a transgender person could cause psychological distress, whether transgender people should be supported in expressing their identities, whether using a person’s chosen name and pronouns is necessary support, and whether parents should support children exploring their gender.

None of the questions asked about puberty blockers, hormones, surgery, or any other medical intervention. The supposedly radical clinical positions largely amounted to treating transgender people respectfully and supporting families as they navigate a child’s questions about gender.

Those positions are also supported by research. A peer-reviewed Journal of Adolescent Health study found that transgender youth who could use their chosen names in more settings reported lower levels of depression, suicidal ideation, and suicidal behavior. Research has likewise linked parental support with greater life satisfaction, fewer depressive symptoms, and a lower perceived burden among transgender adolescents.

The American Academy of Pediatrics has said discrimination based on gender identity or expression harms children’s social and emotional health. Its policy supporting comprehensive care for transgender and gender-diverse young people was reaffirmed in 2023.

“These are not scales that have ever been validated. They just made them up on their own,” Andrew Flores, an American University political scientist and distinguished visiting scholar at the Williams Institute, told Erin in the Morning. Flores said the design was “stacking the deck in favor of trying to find these correlations.”

The report was not published in an academic journal or subjected to conventional peer review before HHS released it. It identifies no institutional review board approval and provides no conflict-of-interest statement. It says only that HHS commissioned the work.

Related: White House puts trans rights groups in counterterrorism crosshairs

A test in which all the violence points left

The report’s six violence scenarios asked respondents about killing Donald Trump, killing conservative activist Charlie Kirk, killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, setting fire to Immigration and Customs Enforcement buildings, damaging wealthy people’s property and committing violence against police.

There were no parallel questions about right-wing violence: attacking the Capitol to overturn an election, bombing an abortion clinic, assaulting immigrants, targeting Black or Jewish Americans, or attacking LGBTQ+ people and Pride events.

The broader concept of “left-wing authoritarianism” is itself disputed. A 2024 review in Political Psychology warned that some research conflates authoritarianism with the much broader category of antidemocratic attitudes, obscuring meaningful differences between political movements.

Survey findings about political violence also require particular caution. A 2022 study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, based on four survey experiments involving 4,904 respondents, found that ambiguous questions and disengaged participants can substantially inflate apparent support for violence.

Related: Anti-transgender hate crimes spike, leading to calls for a public health emergency

What actual political violence data show

Left-wing violence exists, and credible researchers say its recent increase deserves attention. But the longer record does not resemble the threat picture HHS presented.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies found that left-wing attacks and plots rose from a very low baseline and, through July 4, 2025, outnumbered far-right incidents for the first time in more than 30 years. That amounted to five left-wing attacks or plots in the first half of 2025, amid a sharp decline in far-right activity.

The same CSIS analysis found that left-wing attacks remained far less lethal. From 2016 through mid-2025, left-wing terrorist attacks killed 13 people. Right-wing attacks killed 112, while jihadist attacks killed 82.

The Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism separately found that all 13 extremist-related murders identified in 2024 were connected to right-wing extremism. Over the decade covered by its report, far-right extremists committed 328 of 429 extremist-related killings, or 76 percent.

The violence surrounding transgender people also runs predominantly in the other direction.

As The Advocate reported in January, GLAAD documented 1,042 anti-LGBTQ+ incidents in 2025, including 76 assaults, 22 threats of mass violence and 15 arson attempts. More than half — 532 — targeted transgender and gender-nonconforming people.

FBI data for 2024 recorded 2,278 single-bias hate crimes motivated by sexual orientation and 527 motivated by gender identity. Nearly three-quarters of the gender-identity offenses were specifically anti-transgender.

The administration has repeatedly tried to reverse the victim-and-perpetrator reality. In September 2025, White House counterterrorism official Sebastian Gorka falsely suggested transgender people were disproportionately responsible for mass shootings. Among more than 4,600 mass shootings documented from 2014 through 2024, at most six involved transgender suspects, or about 0.13 percent.

The government reached its conclusion first

After Kirk’s killing in September 2025, the Heritage Foundation urged the FBI to create a category called “Transgender Ideology-Inspired Violent Extremism,” The Advocate reported.

By December, Attorney General Pam Bondi had directed the FBI to explore cash rewards for information leading to leaders of organizations the Justice Department labeled domestic terrorist groups. The department’s list of suspect beliefs included “radical gender ideology."

In April, Trump requested an additional $166 million for FBI counterterrorism programs targeting what his administration called extremism involving migration, race and gender. The proposal also sought a new federal center focused partly on left-wing political violence.

In May, the White House explicitly placed “radically pro-transgender” organizations within its counterterrorism strategy, citing Kirk’s assassination even though the defendants and shooters it named did not appear to belong to a transgender political organization.

HHS has also used government reports to attack transgender health care. A previous department document promoted a rebranded form of conversion therapy and rejected mainstream clinical guidance. Experts told The Advocate in December that the earlier report was “a political document pretending to be science.”

The new survey supplies the same campaign with a scientific-looking bridge between accepting transgender people and treating their supporters as security threats.

“This so-called study, sponsored by an extreme right-wing advocacy organization, is another example of the outcome leading the research - MAGA Republicans want to sow hatred against our fellow Americans in a desperate attempt to distract from their failures ahead of the midterms,” Human Rights Campaign President Kelley Robinson said in a statement.