The Trump administration is gearing up to establish a new threat designation for transgender people in a move that left multiple insiders stunned, according to two national security officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
According to the officials, who spoke with journalist Ken Klippenstein in a report published Thursday, the FBI is preparing to label transgender suspects under a new threat category dubbed “Nihilistic Violent Extremists,” a replacement designation for the Biden administration’s “Anti-Authority and Anti-Government Violent Extremists" threat category, established in the wake of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
The new designation, one of the officials said, was established, in part, due to the killing last week of right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk, with many in the MAGA sphere attempting to link Kirk’s suspected killer with transgenderism.
“They are cynically targeting trans people because the shooter’s lover was trans,” one senior national security official told Klippenstein. “The administration has convinced itself that the Charlie Kirk murder exposes some dark conspiracy.”
The officials went on to say that the new designation would provide the Trump administration with “political cover” for its campaign against transgenderism, given the designation’s ambiguous name that doesn’t refer directly to transgender people, and the White House’s frequent use of more generic terms like “gender ideology extremism.”
While Kirk’s suspected killer has been reported to have been in a romantic relationship with a transgender person, no evidence exists that they were motivated to carry out the killing by any form of transgender ideology.
This hasn’t stopped Trump administration officials, however, from claiming that the suspect had engraved bullets with "transgender and anti-fascist ideology" messages, a claim that had to be walked back after further reporting found no evidence of the suspect having engraved pro-transgender messages on any shell casings.
FBI Director Kash Patel has also suggested transgender ideology may have played a role in Kirk's killing, telling the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday that his agency was "looking at the entire spider web for any of these attacks" when asked about shooting by transgender people.
