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If you use a trans person’s preferred name or call them by their requested pronouns, then you are more likely to support political violence, a new report commissioned by the Department of Health and Human Services claims.
It adds to a growing body of pseudoscientific literature that has been manufactured by the right and used to justify attacks on the LGBTQ community.
The report, titled “Where the Clinic Meets the Movement: Does Gender Ideology Arm Left-
Wing Authoritarian Psychology?”, is based on a survey that polled over 1,200 Americans. It claims to gauge respondents’ support of “the official positions of clinical institutions” on gender-affirming care—institutions like the American Psychiatric Association and the World Professional Association for Transgender Health—and on participants’ propensity towards what these researchers call “left-wing authoritarianism.”
The report draws on these answers to market the argument that “gender ideology” acts as an “accelerant” for “political violence.” But the report doesn’t actually measure what it says it does. Like much of Trumpian science, it uses methodologically indefensible tactics to fuel a transparently predetermined, ideological outcome.
“This so-called study, sponsored by an extreme right-wing advocacy organization, is another example of the outcome leading the research - MAGA Republicans want to sow hatred against our fellow Americans in a desperate attempt to distract from their failures ahead of the midterms,” Kelley Robinson, president of the Human Rights Campaign, said.
The survey does not indicate whether it was governed by oversight from an institutional review board (IRB). It was not published in a journal. It did not undergo peer review. And it is tied to conservative advocacy groups like the Network Contagion Research Institute as well as the Manhattan Institute, whose staffer Leor Sapir also co-authored the HHS’ widely condemned “Gender Dysphoria Report.”
Based on responses, researchers weighed participants’ opinions on a “Clinical Gender Affirmation Scale,” which they claim measures support of major medical groups’ guidelines for treating transgender patients. In actuality, the survey simply asked about the perceived importance of respecting transgender people through name and pronoun usage, not gender-affirming pharmacological or surgical care.
One question does not even contain an opinion at all. It simply states the well-established fact that rejecting a trans person’s gender identity causes “psychological distress.”
Then the study asked respondents to react to a series of statements meant to measure one’s affinity for “left-wing authoritarianism”—as opposed to right wing authoritarianism. This included asking about the killings of figures like Charlie Kirk and United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, but also statements such as, “Anyone who opposes gay marriage must be homophobic.”
They also claim the survey measures a person’s sympathy for “gender ideology,” without ever defining what that is. This might be because there is no established definition for the far-right buzzword. According to Human Rights Watch, however, the notion of “gender ideology” is a “Hydra-like global conspiracy myth,” stemming from the Catholic Church, designed to fearmonger about women’s rights, reproductive justice, and the LGBTQ community.
“These are not scales that have ever been validated. They just made them up on their own,” said Andrew Flores, an associate professor of government at American University and a distinguished visiting scholar at the Williams Institute, during an interview with Erin in the Morning. Flores’ own work on how authoritarian principles intersect with anti-trans bias was explicitly referenced in the report.
“It is very much stacking the deck in favor of trying to find these correlations.”
Nonetheless, researchers use this “data” to make sweeping conclusions. “Taken together, these literatures suggest a common mechanism: ideological content that names an oppressor class, certifies ongoing victimization, and locates remedy in coercive institutional or social action which may supply authoritarian psychology with morally justified targets,” the report reads. “The present study asks whether the official positions of clinical institutions on so-called ‘gender affirmation’ instantiate this process.”
CAPTION: An excerpt from the HHS’ report on “gender ideology” and “left-wing authoritarianism.”
“These findings support the paper’s core claim: gender ideology may function as an ideological accelerant, telling left-wing authoritarian psychology who the enemy is, why the situation is urgent, and—in those already disposed toward force—that violence is legitimate,” it continues. “We also assessed catastrophizing beliefs, such as the perceived likelihood that a genocide of individuals that identify as transgender is currently under way, and associate extremist responses, such as belief in the need to censor and punish those who oppose transgender dogmas and ignore Supreme Court rulings on gender ideology issues.” The report also brands such dissidence “anti-democratic.”
The backlash has been swift. Critics have pointed out, for example, that the study only asks about opinions on targeting people and groups considered targets of “left-wing” violence, such as ICE agents or the rich, creating an automatic and erroneous conflation of all violence with “left-wing” violence. This skews the statistics against those on the left. Even another anti-trans academic took to Twitter to say this amounted “junk” science.
“We’d need valid, new items for right-wing [violence] as well,” that writer said. “Note that a lot of the [left-wing authoritarianism scale] has nothing to do with authoritarianism, like ‘All political conservatives are fools.’ It’s junk.”
The report was penned by Rutgers University students Ohad Fedida and Danit Finkelstein, Rutgers professor Lee Jussim, Network Contagion Research Institute head Joel Finkelstein, and the Manhattan Institute’s Colin Wright, a prolific name in the anti-trans pseudoscience network tied to the Society For Evidence-based Gender Medicine and Genspect, which are Southern Poverty Law Center-designated hate organizations.
It’s not the only time in recent weeks the HHS has circulated anti-trans propaganda tied to current or former hate group actors. The government agency recently published “Wolves in White Coats: How Doctors and Hospitals Pushed and Profited from the Fraud of ‘Gender Medicine,’” which bolstered right-wing talking points with the help of Aaron Baer of the Center for Christian Virtue and Dr. Quentin Van Meter of the American College of Pediatricians, both of which are also classified as anti-LGBTQ groups by the SPLC.
Wright, a principal investigator for the HHS study, took to Twitter to defend the report from criticism, claiming the report “isn’t about trans people at all!” but about views on what he calls “‘gender-affirming’ norms.”
R.G. Cravens, a political scientist and senior manager of research and analysis at the SPLC, told Erin in the Morning these reports are dangerous additions to the right’s anti-trans playbook. The federal government and the anti-LGBTQ movement have been trying to claw their way into validity for years by using (or abusing) the academic publishing industry. Barring that, they’ve sought the seal of approval from a federal agency.
“It is anti-LGBTQ ideology seeking legitimation from the federal government, from HHS,” Cravens said. “The hard right will claim this is evidence that trans people, especially, are violent, terroristic threats. And they’ll try to use that to erode rights and civil liberties.”
These efforts have been turbocharged under Trump. In May 2026, the White House added “pro-transgender” groups to a report on its counterterrorism strategy. Conservative behemoths like the Heritage Foundation created the idea of “Transgender Ideology-Inspired Violent Extremism” to target trans people in the aftermath of the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Project 2025, the Foundation’s widely circulated blueprint for establishing an authoritarian theocracy, argues transgender expressions should be classified as “pornographic,” and that teachers or librarians who address the topic should be put on the sex offender registry.
“To what extent will this be used to justify the pursuit of criminal cases against doctors, or against LGBTQ people directly?” Cravens asks. “That’s an open question.”
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