The US Department of Justice is funding research aimed atexploring whether there is a link between gender dysphoria and violent crime.
Last month, the National Institute of Justice (NIJ), the research arm of the justice department, said it would grant up to $1m for studies into the frequency and type of violence committed by people who have been diagnosed and treated for gender dysphoria.
The notice comes as the Trump administration has aggressively sought to curtail the rights of transgender people in the US, limiting their access to healthcare and identification documents with their correct gender identity on them. It also comes more than a year after the administration has cut funding to research into hate-fueled and extremist violence.
The Trump administration has repeatedly sought to falsely portray transgender people as more likely to commit extremist violence, said Wendy Via, the co-founder and CEO of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE). By doing this, the administration diverts attention from violence driven by far-right extremist ideologies such as the “great replacement” theory, which several high-profile shooters have cited in their manifestos, she added.
“What the administration is doing is very dangerous,” Via said.
Experts and LGBTQ+ advocates call these attempts to link trans people and violence “pseudoscience”, because they depart from a growing body of academic literature showing that it is impossible to link a single characteristic, such as race, political affiliation or gender, as the prime reason for violence. Instead, researchers say the most common thread between most high-profile attackers is not their identity, but their views, which often include racism, homophobia, misogyny and nihilism.
That has not stopped public speculation around the role gender identity plays in violence.
After conservative activist Charlie Kirk was shot and killed in September 2025, rightwing influencers arguedthat the suspected shooter was motivated in part by what they call “transgender ideology”, a term often used by those on the right to falsely suggest that being trans is a political ideology, not an identity.
Theidea that being trans or that being an ally to trans people represents a dangerous political ideologywas included in a White House counter-terrorism report this year. Part of its counter-terrorism approach is to address leftwing violence and “transgender ideologies”.
The vast majority of mass shootings in the US have been carried out by cisgender people, although transgender and non-binarypeople have committed some mass shootings, including ones at Annunciation Catholic school in Minneapolis, Club Q in Colorado Springs, and Tumbler Ridge elementary school in British Columbia in Canada. In these cases, transgender shooters shared characteristics of modern high-profilemass shooters, such as idolizing other killers and online radicalization.
“We don’t know exactly why a person decides to commit mass violence, because they’ve all had things in their lives that have led them to it,” Via said. “Being trans or being straight likely doesn’t have anything to do with it.”
The NIJ’s new funding priorities will shift attention away from the dangers posed by far-right extremists and toward trans people, said Zane McNeill, a staff attorney with Lawyers for Good Government.
“I see it as a part of this larger apparatus to distract from who’s propagating the violence,” McNeill said. “It’s also about weaponizing funding decisions. They’ve been undermining projects while diverting taxpayer dollars for far-right pseudoscience.”
The NIJ is not the only part of the government trying to find links between transgender people and violence. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recently published the report, Where the Clinic Meets the Movement: Does Gender Ideology Arm Left-Wing Authoritarian Psychology?
The report was commissioned by HHS and authored by researchers from Rutgers University, the Manhattan Institute and the Network Contagion Research Institute. It’s based on a survey of about 1,200 adults in the US and suggests that people who receive or support gender-affirming care are more likely to support political violence.
Last month, McNeill sent a letter to HHS requesting several corrections to the report, and argued that it violated the agency’s own guidelines. McNeill and other researchers are trying to obtain access to the survey data so they can offer their own analysis.
“This research is so flawed that it should not be published,” McNeill said. “It’s obvious that it’s extremely biased.”
The NIJ and the institutions affiliated with the HHS report did not respond to the Guardian’s request for comment.
In a statement to the Guardian, HHS press secretary Grace Davis Jamison said that the department’s report will help the government better understand how “political radicalization develops”.
“The findings should be evaluated based on the evidence, and under the Trump administration, HHS will not shy away from asking important questions to protect the health and safety of the American people,” she said.
