A study commissioned under the Trump administration and released Wednesday by federal health officials reports a correlation between support for transgender-affirming care and willingness to justify left-wing political violence, including scenarios involving the killings of Charlie Kirk and UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. The research queried 1,208 U.S. adults and asked them to weigh in on everything from pronoun usage and parental support for transgender youth to whether they believed a genocide of transgender-identifying people is currently underway.
The findings were published by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which described the study, titled Where the Clinic Meets the Movement: Does Gender Ideology Arm Left-Wing Authoritarian Psychology?, as warranting serious scrutiny. According to Health.gov, Assistant Secretary for Health Admiral Brian Christine said the results deserve close examination of what happens when ideology is given medical authority. Christine, who was appointed by the Trump administration in late 2025 to lead the U.S. Public Health Service, framed the study as a scientific inquiry into the intersection of clinical guidance and political belief.
The study's central tool, called the Clinical Gender Affirmation Scale, evaluated agreement with five specific clinical positions on transgender identity, pronoun use, and parental support, drawn from guidance issued by the American Psychological Association, the American Psychiatric Association, and the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, per the same HHS release. Researchers from Rutgers University, the Manhattan Institute, and the Network Contagion Research Institute jointly developed the scale and used the questionnaire results to build it out further.
What the Survey Asked
Beyond gauging support for gender-affirming clinical guidance, the researchers queried respondents about anti-democratic behaviors, including whether they believed transgender people should be shielded from perceived threats posed by groups such as white supremacists, men generally, and the Supreme Court. The survey also assessed support for censoring or punishing people who oppose transgender-related positions and for ignoring Supreme Court rulings on gender-identity issues, according to the New York Post's original report on the study's release.
Respondents were also asked to weigh in on support for specific violent scenarios, including the killing of Charlie Kirk, the killing of Brian Thompson, the killing of Donald Trump, arson attacks on ICE buildings, violence against police, and damage to wealthy people's property, the Post's report states. Researchers reported that people who scored higher on measures normalizing transgender beliefs were more likely to support these forms of political violence.
Statistical Link Persists After Controls, Daily Signal Reports
Regression analysis described by the Daily Signal found that the correlation between support for gender-affirming care positions and left-wing authoritarianism remained statistically significant even after controlling for political identity and age. The outlet reported that the study's authors argued gender ideology functions as an accelerant to existing authoritarian tendencies rather than a simple stand-in for Democratic party affiliation.
The study itself concluded that gender ideology is associated with left-wing authoritarianism and a willingness to justify political violence, and that it may function as an ideological accelerant for left-wing authoritarian psychology, per the Post's account. The researchers wrote that gender ideology may identify an enemy, create urgency, and legitimize violence among people already disposed toward using force. Even so, the study's authors were careful to state that the predictive relationships remain empirical questions still being answered in ongoing analysis, and that left-wing authoritarianism and the Clinical Gender Affirmation Scale are expected to predict support for anti-democratic beliefs more broadly. They added that experimental research is still needed to determine causality.
Biologist Colin Wright Offers a Theory, With Caveats
Evolutionary biologist Colin Wright, cited in the Post's report, suggested the possible relationship may stem from the fact that gender ideology frames the world in terms of oppressed classes and oppressors. Wright said accepting gender ideology appeared to augment authoritarian attitudes that support political violence, but he also cautioned that the explanation linking gender ideology to violence remains speculative.
The study's release comes amid several high-profile prosecutions the researchers cited as real-world reference points for their violence scenarios. Charlie Kirk, the 31-year-old founder of Turning Point USA, was shot at a Utah university campus in Orem while speaking about transgender violence and died at a local hospital, according to the Post's account of the case. Tyler Robinson has been accused of fatally shooting Kirk and allegedly had a transgender lover, the Post reported, though prosecutors have not attributed a specific ideological rationale beyond an August evidentiary presentation. Utah prosecutors seeking the death penalty against the 23-year-old Robinson presented evidence this month showing a bullet casing engraved with the phrase “Hey Facist! CATCH!”, using it, as reported by CBS News, to argue political animus as a death penalty aggravator.
Kavanaugh Plot and Mangione Case Also Referenced
The study also references the 2022 plot to assassinate Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, an attempt the Post's report says was later attributed to a transgender woman. Nicholas Roske, now known as Sophie Roske, was captured on Department of Justice footage at a gun shop before the attempt and was later identified as the would-be assassin. Roske was sentenced in October 2025 to 97 months in federal prison after calling 911 on herself before carrying out the plan, according to the Associated Press, with U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman citing that voluntary abandonment as a key mitigating factor. The U.S. Department of Justice under Attorney General Pamela Bondi appealed the sentence that same month, arguing the term was insufficient given federal guidelines recommending 30 years to life for an attempted judicial assassination, per the department's own statement.
Luigi Mangione, whose case was also cited among the study's violence scenarios involving Brian Thompson, pleaded guilty in Manhattan federal court in August to federal stalking charges tied to the December 2024 murder of the UnitedHealthcare CEO. The U.S. Department of Justice said Mangione admitted to the shooting while his defense sought dismissal of pending state charges under New York's double jeopardy law; he now faces up to life in federal prison. The Post's report also noted that school shootings in Minnesota and Tennessee were carried out by trans-identifying individuals, according to the article.
Context: Executive Policy and Victimization Data
The study lands amid an aggressive federal policy push against gender-affirming care. In March, Christine issued HHS guidance declaring that gender-affirming medical treatments for youth carry an unfavorable risk-benefit profile, a stance that has led to ongoing federal court injunctions against several Trump administration restrictions, according to Fierce Healthcare.
Public health and law enforcement data continue to show that transgender individuals are far more frequently victims of violent crime than perpetrators, with anti-transgender violent hate crime incidents reaching record levels in major jurisdictions including Los Angeles County in 2024, as Hoodline previously reported. Civil rights groups have noted that the vast majority of anti-trans homicides involve trans women of color. Separately, prior research from the Network Contagion Research Institute in April 2025 surveyed 1,264 U.S. adults and found that more than half of self-identified left-of-center respondents viewed lethal violence against prominent conservative targets as at least somewhat justified, a trend NCRI researchers described as an emerging digital assassination culture, according to Hoodline's earlier coverage of the group's findings.
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