This story originally appeared in Advocate.
The architects of the Project 2025 agenda now want the federal government to monitor and label transgender people and those close to them as terrorists.
The Heritage Foundation urged the FBI to add a new designation to its list of domestic violent extremist groups for Transgender Ideology-Inspired Violent Extremism, falsely claiming violence from trans people and allies is increasing.
“TIVE is based on the belief that violence is justified against those who do not share radical views of transgender ideology. It has led to an increasing trend of TIVE domestic terrorist events across the country,” reads a release from the organization.
Trans people make up less than a percent of mass shooters. They are much more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators. Mass shooters tend to be cisgender men.
The new policy directive follows the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, who frequently criticized transgender people and opposed their rights through his work at Turning Point USA. Prosecutors in Utah say shooting suspect Tyler Robinson was in a romantic relationship with a transgender roommate.
Transgender advocates immediately criticized the new Heritage Foundation proposal.
“Heritage Foundation has released an absolutely insane policy proposal to label all trans people as domestic terrorists. It uses completely made up instances of terrorism and made up statistics but facts don’t matter to them,” Alejandra Caraballo, a Harvard law instructor and trans legal expert, posted on BlueSky. “They want us all eradicated.”
The Heritage Foundation policy release wrongly asserts that “TIVE has played a role in the majority of mass shootings at schools.” While there have been instances of transgender individuals arrested for such shootings, including one in Minneapolis in August, research by groups like FactCheck.org found the number of transgender shooting suspects was “exceedingly small.”
Importantly, Robinson, the man suspected of killing Kirk, was not transgender, and his roommate has cooperated with police, immediately providing text messages to authorities.
The Heritage Foundation published Project 2025, a blueprint for a conservative takeover of government if Donald Trump won a second term as president. The infamous right-wing instruction manual includes numerous anti-LGBTQ initiatives.
While Trump distanced himself from the effort on the campaign trail last year, his presidency has executed many of the proposals, including issuing an executive order saying there are only two sexes and ending the collection and processing of data on gender identity.
“The bottom line is that this is another example of escalating attacks targeting trans people,” Cathy Renna, the National LGBTQ Task Force communications director, told The Advocate. “It’s another use of lies and misinformation to justify [the right’s] actions.”
Renna added that the list of lies and misinformation is getting longer each day.
“I think this degree of targeting and surveillance and scapegoating is just continuing to erode our sense of safety in this country. And that’s a tremendous concern; that’s something we all need to be engaged in, speaking out about when what their goal is to silence us. But at the end of the day, those of us who can need to be speaking out as much and as loudly as we can.”
Alex Cooper contributed reporting.
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