Key Takeaways:
- A newly published Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)-sponsored study that claims “gender ideology” predicts support for political violence is methodologically unsound and driven by unvalidated, biased measures.
- The study’s authors have undisclosed ties to advocacy organizations with a track record of targeting the administration’s political opponents, and personal histories of anti-transgender activism. Two authors listed only as Rutgers-affiliated are also affiliated with the Network Contagion Research Institute, which has published reports branding groups like the DSA and CAIR as foreign agents or extremist-aligned; a third author, from the Manhattan Institute, has publicly celebrated being named the “#1 anti-trans academic in the US.”
- The far right has repeatedly blamed transgender people for mass shootings that they had no connection to, with no evidence to support the claims. Far-right figures and outlets have rushed to falsely label perpetrators “trans terrorists,” even when the actual evidence pointed to far-right extremism.
- Transgender people are among the most vulnerable populations in the country, not a violent threat to it. Making up roughly one percent of Americans over 13 and already more than four times as likely as cisgender people to experience violence, transgender people are being cast by this study and the broader NSPM-7/Heritage Foundation “Transgender Ideology-Inspired Violent Extremism” push, as a national security threat despite being a population in need of protection.
On August 26, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced the release of a commissioned study they claim shows that individuals with “left-wing authoritarian beliefs” and “radical gender ideology” are more likely to justify political violence. This study is just the latest effort by the Trump Administration to paint their political opponents as inherently violent and a national security threat.
The study, written by individuals affiliated with the far-right Manhattan Institute and the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI), argues that there has been little attention or research done on how “gender ideology” is associated with a willingness to justify political violence. Of course, following the release by HHS, the report was immediately parroted by far-right news outlets and influencers, including Daily Signal, Daily Caller, and the Washington Examiner. Even the Christian nationalist Billy Graham Evangelistic Association shared it on their website.
However, a closer look at its methodology, its authors, and the political moment tells a clear story of an administration doing all it can to target vulnerable groups. It is just the latest move by the Trump administration to lay the institutional groundwork to treat transgender people, their supporters, and the medical consensus behind their care, as a national security threat.
The Study
The study has a few glaring issues. First, and most basically, the study itself was published independently by HHS, not in any journal or periodical, meaning it likely bypassed any rigorous peer-review process or validation by independent authorities. The paper’s language also departs from clinical neutrality throughout, describing mainstream medical guidance as “gender ideology” and a “moralized project” even in sections meant to report findings rather than argue a position.
For the study, the authors created what they called the “Clinical Gender Affirmation Scale,” or CGAS, to judge someone’s “endorsement of consensus positions from the American Psychological Association, American Psychiatric Association, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, and the American Academy of Pediatrics.” The study argues that these organizations have structured their clinical guidance in a way that “activat[es] threat, resentment, punitive certainty, and defensive group identification.”
This scale presents two problems; first, it is not validated or peer reviewed. The CGAS has no independent validation or validity testing against known psychological constructs, like liberalism, empathy, or trust in medical authority organizations. The scale itself does not appear to measure anything distinct from support for gender-affirming healthcare. Second, the CGAS has bias included in its creation. The authors explicitly premise the scale on the claim that these many medical organizations’ clinical consensus is “ideologically structured in a specific way,” built around the same grievance/oppressor framework they argue drives political violence elsewhere in the paper.
The study’s other key measure, the 13-item Brief Left-Wing Authoritarianism (LWA) Scale, is a relatively new and largely untested instrument rather than an established, settled construct. Several of its items don’t measure psychological disposition so much as agreement with specific left-of-center policy positions, including “university authorities are right to ban hateful speech from campus,” “anyone who opposes gay marriage must be homophobic,” and “I am in favor of allowing the government to shut down right-wing internet sites and blogs that promote nutty, hateful positions.” The broader academic literature reflects this, as even researchers sympathetic to the LWA construct have debated whether it’s a real, independent trait or largely reducible to left-wing identity strength (a debate the study itself acknowledges by citing Nilsson & Jost’s 2024 critical review of LWA theory and measurement).
The study does not publish how they asked participants about specific acts of violence, but it is notable that it only asked about support for violence against far-right figures or individuals and organizations associated with the political right. The study does not ask questions about support for violence against left-leaning figures, even when there are recent examples: the assassination of Minnesota State Senator Melissa Hortman, the attack on former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul, or politically motivated attacks on people of color and minority groups.
The Study’s Authors
A cursory glance into the authors and organizations involved in this study also shows a clear sign of bias. While NCRI purports to be an unbiased, neutral research organization, recently published works by the organization show an increasing bend toward the right. Of recent interest are reports that target some of the administration’s enemies. For example, in February 2026, NCRI published a report claiming that the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) is acting as an unregistered foreign agent for Cuba in the United States, a claim that was later echoed by the State Department in their 100-page report on Cuba.
A post from NCRI discussing their report claiming the DSA is acting as an unregistered foreign agent inside the United States. (Source: X).
The report also interestingly listed Ohad Fedida, Danit Finkelstein, and Lee Jussim as affiliated with Rutgers University, but fails to disclose that both Fedida and Finkelstein are also affiliated with NCRI. Finkelstein identifies herself as a “co-founder” of NCRI on her Substack, and Fedida’s biography on X says “research fellowship @ncri_io.” Fedida shared an NCRI report to his X account and claimed: “CAIR is financially supporting extremism.”
A post from HHS report author Ohad Fedida claiming that CAIR is financially supporting extremism. (Source: X).
Colin Wright, the report author affiliated with the Manhattan Institute, has demonstrated a clear anti-transgender and far-right bias. In late August 2026, Wright posted his support on X for former NBA players Enes Kanter Freedom and Royce White, who have been staging an anti-transgender protest surrounding WNBA eligibility rules. He also celebrated the fact that he was identified as the “#1 ‘anti-trans’ academic in the US” in a project by transgender civil rights attorney and instructor at Harvard Law School, Alejandra Caraballo. Wright also goes an extra step to misgender Caraballo in posts about the project on X.
Posts from HHS report author Colin Wright celebrating being identified as the “#1 ‘anti-trans’ academic in the US.” (Source: X).
Why It Matters
This report is just the latest attempt to paint transgender individuals and their supporters as inherently violent and a threat to society. For years, the far right has spent significant time in the wake of mass shootings or other tragedies attempting to attribute blame for the events to transgender people. In the wake of the assassination of Minnesota State Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, users online were quick to assume the shooter was transgender (in fact, the shooter had a track record of far-right extremism). Even Donald Trump Jr. blamed the “radical transgender movement” for their deaths, going on to say that transgender individuals are the “most violent domestic terror threat” in the United States.
None of that was true, of course, but at that point, the lie had already become “fact” among the far right. This wasn’t the first time that the far right falsely accused a perpetrator of violence of being transgender. Chaya Raichik, known by her online moniker “Libs of TikTok,” called the perpetrator of the 2024 shooting at Joel Olsteen’s Lakewood Church a “trans terrorist.” Former Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene did something similar the year before, falsely claiming that an individual who shot people at a 2024 Independence Day celebration in Philadelphia was “another trans shooter.”
The rhetoric linking transgender individuals to violent action really ramped up in the wake of the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Eight days after Kirk’s death, the Heritage Foundation’s “Oversight Project” released a memo urging the FBI to “designate Transgender Ideology-Inspired Violence and Extremism” as domestic terrorism. The memo outlined that “Transgender Ideology” is a belief that “wholly or partially rejects fundamental science about human sex being biologically determined before birth, binary, and immutable.” It said further that “Transgender Ideology-Inspired Violence and Extremism” is the “use or threat of force or violence, including incitement to unlawful violence in furtherance of ideological agendas derived from Transgender Ideology.”
The cover of the Heritage Foundation’s memo on so-called “Transgender Ideology-Inspired Violent Extremism.” (Source: X).
The Trump Administration clearly heard Heritage’s call but has, thus far, not taken the extreme step of creating an official designation. The National Security Presidential Memo (NSPM) – 7, released September 25, 2026, attributed Kirk’s killing, attacks on Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and facilities, the killing of the CEO of United Healthcare, and the attempted assassinations of Donald Trump and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, to coordinated, organized campaigns orchestrated by far-left groups. Three of these events were cited directly in Heritage’s memo.
NSPM-7 also claims that “common threads animating this violent conduct include anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity; support for the overthrow of the United States Government; extremism on migration, race, and gender; and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.” The FBI cited the same language when asking Congress for FY2027 funding.
The administration’s 16-page “Counterterrorism Strategy,” released in May 2026, again invoked the idea of “transgender ideology.” The strategy claims that the U.S. government previously ignored “real threats” and allowed far-left violence to continue unimpeded. The document references the shooting at Annunciation Catholic School and the killing of Charlie Kirk as examples of far-left terrorism committed by individuals who “espoused extreme transgender ideologies.”
As GPAHE has documented, the motivations of Kirk’s accused killer remain somewhat cloudy. Robin Westman, the Annunciation Church shooter, left behind extensive video and written journals that show an individual who was deeply entrenched in online communities that glorify mass shooters and violence. Westman’s weapons included references to multiple previous far-right terrorists, including Anders Breivik, Brenton Tarrant, and Peyton Gendron. Westman also referenced multiple slurs targeting different groups and racist sayings.
The Fear of What’s Next
Even though claims of “rising transgender violence” are provably false, the fear remains that the Trump administration will do anything in its power to weaponize the full power of the U.S. government against political enemies or individuals it views as “incompatible” with its vision for America.
A study like this could be the first step toward making Heritage’s memo a reality, pushing an already politicized federal law enforcement and national security apparatus to target transgender people, their families, and the clinicians and institutions that support them. All because a government-commissioned report gave officials a rationale to look for a threat that was never there.
This likely isn’t the last junk study we will see demonizing transgender people. An HHS spokesperson even told the Daily Signal that the Department “will continue to pursue rigorous research into the relationships among ideological beliefs, authoritarian attitudes and the justification of political violence, providing the American people with evidence on these important questions.”
Ilan Meyer, a scholar at UCLA’s School of Law, compared this demonization of the transgender community with Hitler’s demonization of Jewish people, saying, “During Hitler’s time, he used this regularly before he was elected to incite people and to blame Jews for whatever ills were experienced. And we’re seeing the same thing with transgender people.” Transgender people account for just one percent of Americans over the age of 13, making them an incredibly vulnerable minority group. Transgender people are also more than four times as likely as cisgender people to experience violence, including assault.
The population being cast as the threat is, by every available measure, the population most likely to need protection. Instead, a study with an unvalidated scale, undisclosed conflicts of interest, and authors who’ve built careers on anti-trans advocacy paired with NSPM-7, the Heritage memo, and a “Counterterrorism Strategy” could be enough to move federal policy and target the transgender community as a national security threat. For this, the study doesn’t need to hold up to scrutiny; it just needs to exist.
