U.S. counterterrorism strategy takes aim at ‘pro-transgender’ groups

The United States government’s new counterterrorism strategy includes targeting groups who are “radically pro-transgender.”

Last week, the Trump administration released its updated counterterrorism strategy, a document used to identify the most concerning threats facing the country. And one of the administration’s three high-priority threats is trans people. 

The updated strategy identifies “violent left-wing extremists” and political groups with “extremist transgender ideologies” as national security threats. The administration says it will “prioritize the rapid identification and neutralization of violent secular political groups whose ideology is anti-American, radically pro-transgender, and anarchist.”

Following the release of the new directive, White House “counterterrorism czar” Sebastian Gorka told reporters that the administration would “crush” any threat, including “transgender killers, the nonbinary,” and “the left-wing radicals who killed my friend Charlie Kirk.”

It’s important to note that the language being used here is heavily based on misinformation about trans people and disproven claims of increased left-wing violence.

In 2023, Trump claimed there was an “incredible rise” in the number of trans shooters—despite there being no evidence of this—which has allowed for anti-trans actors to falsely claim that mass shooters are disproportionately trans. The Heritage Foundation, the far-right think tank behind Project 2025, campaigned last year for trans people to be labelled as violent extremists by the FBI.

Notably, this document does not mention or identify far-right violence as a national security threat. In a statement, Homeland Security Ranking Member Rep. Bennie G. Thompson criticized the focus on left-wing violence in the face of “years of data proving that right-wing extremism has presented the most persistent and deadly threats to Americans for decades.”