White House puts trans rights groups in counterterrorism crosshairs

As part of a Trump administration counterterrorism strategy targeting left-wing groups, federal officials will also target pro-trans rights organizations.

A new directive released by the White House cites the assassination of anti-LGBTQ+ activist Charlie Kirk to justify the approach. Prosecutors say Tyler Robinson, the 22-year-old accused of killing Kirk in September, recently began dating a trans woman before the shooting and had recently begun frequently criticizing Kirk’s rhetoric.

“As real threats were ignored or underplayed, Americans have witnessed the politically motivated killings of Christians and conservatives committed by violent left-wing extremists, including the assassination of Charlie Kirk by a radical who espoused extreme transgender Ideologies,” the White House directive states.

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Sebastian Gorka, White House senior director for counterterrorism, also listed school shootings by allegedly transgender shooters Audrey Hale and Robin Westman as examples of violence by trans activists, according to The Washington Times. Notably, neither those shooters nor Robinson appeared to be part of any political organization.

The assertion that Robinson’s actions justify targeting the trans rights movement more broadly comes even as the strategy document insists the intelligence community should not devote resources to surveilling political interests.

“Whether plotting against conservative Catholics attending traditional mass in Virginia, parents standing up for their children at schoolboard meetings, Members of Congress, or President Trump and his associates, this Administration will continue to prohibit the IC from being used politically against innocent Americans,” the strategy memo states.

Despite repeated political claims portraying transgender people as threats, available research shows transgender Americans are far more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators of it. Data reviewed by the Gun Violence Archive and researchers cited by Reuters found that transgender people account for only a tiny fraction of mass shooters in the United States, generally well under 1 percent of recorded incidents, depending on how mass shootings are defined.

Researchers studying public mass shootings have consistently found that the overwhelming majority of perpetrators are cisgender men. Experts have also warned there is no evidence that transgender identity itself predicts violent behavior, and LGBTQ+ advocates say rhetoric framing trans people as inherently dangerous risks fueling stigma, harassment, and political scapegoating

Related: The Heritage Foundation wants transgender people and allies designated as terrorists

Related: Heritage Foundation uses false data to smear trans people as school shooters

According to the Human Rights Campaign and the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law, transgender people, particularly Black trans women, face disproportionately high rates of assault, harassment, and homicide in the United States,

The document says intelligence officials should direct resources toward international threats, including drug cartels and Islamic extremists, but also says agents should identify and neutralize violent political groups in the United States that espouse ideologies deemed “anti-American, radically pro-transgender, and anarchist.”

The 16-page memo makes no mention of right-wing groups but references “left-wing” organizations seven times. Westman, one of the shooters Gorka cited in remarks to the press, had posted several pro-Nazi and racist messages online and had expressed sympathy for right-wing Oklahoma City bombing terrorist Timothy McVeigh before the shooting in which they killed two schoolchildren. Their full motivation remains unclear because they died by suicide at the scene, but authorities found ammunition magazines bearing slurs, including anti-LGBTQ+ messaging.

The memo specifically calls for intelligence agencies to target “Anti-Fascists” and implies an international coalition of anarchists is connected through “Antifa.” President Donald Trump last year promised to designate antifa as a terrorist organization, something he also attempted in 2020 during the George Floyd protests, despite the decentralized movement lacking any central organization.