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On the day anti-LGBTQ+ activist Charlie Kirk was shot, fear rippled through the left that the far right would seize the moment to consolidate power. Nowhere was that fear more acute than in the transgender community.
Within hours, Republicans were already blaming trans people; one commentator even claimed the bullets carried “transgender symbols”, a claim investigators quickly debunked. But the deeper fear wasn’t misinformation – it was the crackdown that would follow. With fragile rights hanging by the thread of court rulings and blue-state protections, trans people braced for the worst. And they were right: The right has seized on the shooting as its own Reichstag fire, accelerating a campaign to target transgender existence – now with the full weight of the Trump administration behind it.
The stage was already set for a crackdown. Kirk had been one of the right’s loudest anti-LGBTQ+ crusaders, and his anti-trans rhetoric was reflected in the 2024 campaign as Trump and other Republicans leaned into hate-filled ads. Kirk’s record was clear: he called for Nuremberg trials of doctors who provide gender-affirming care, branded transgender people “abominations unto God”, urged men to “take care of” trans people “like they did in the ’50s and ’60s”, and railed against high schoolers coming out as gay or bisexual as part of some LGBTQ+ “agenda”. He championed “Don’t Say Gay” laws while blasting Disney as “degenerates … held hostage by their gay employees” for opposing them. If Republicans could pin his killing on a transgender person, they could elevate him as a martyr to justify the crackdown.
And within hours, the first justification arrived. Conservative influencer Stephen Crowder claimed “sources” told him the bullets had transgender symbols etched onto them. The Wall Street Journal laundered the claim, only to quietly walk it back a day later – after the Utah governor, Spencer Cox, read the etchings himself and confirmed none carried any such markings. Still, the narrative couldn’t end with a white cisgender man as the shooter. Republicans quickly seized on reports that Kirk’s killer had a transgender girlfriend. Never mind that she cooperated fully with police and helped secure the indictment by turning over incriminating texts. Her mere proximity to the story was enough to let the right pour gasoline on its crusade against transgender people.
In the days since Kirk’s killing, we have seen an escalation of rhetoric and policies targeting transgender people. Representative Nancy Mace of South Carolina, famous for her efforts to ban the first transgender congresswoman Sarah McBride of Delaware from the bathroom in Congress, quickly called for the institutionalization of transgender people. The same day, representative Ronny Jackson of Texas advocated for the same, saying: “We have to treat these people … we have to get them off the streets and we have to get them off the internet and we can’t let them communicate with one another. I’m all about free speech, but this is a virus. This is a cancer that is spreading across this country.”
The targeting of transgender people didn’t stop at rhetoric. Concrete policy followed almost immediately. House Republicans began advancing appropriations bills stuffed with anti-LGBTQ+ riders. The National Defense Authorization Act cleared the chamber with provisions banning Pride flags on military bases, blocking transgender bathroom access, and more. Additional spending bills carried the same playbook: a sweeping federal funding ban on transgender healthcare at any age that could threaten hospitals nationwide, restrictions on incarcerated trans people, a Pride flag ban, and even provisions undermining Washington DC’s protections for transgender care.
To be sure, many of these riders were already baked into Republican appropriations bills, the product of months of Republican wishlist politics. But this time something new is happening: Trump is personally digging in on the anti-trans provisions and using them as leverage to drive the government toward a shutdown. In past standoffs, high-level talks between Trump, congressional Republicans, and Democrats centered on broad fiscal issues. Now, with an October shutdown looming, Trump has zeroed in on Democrats’ push to strip anti-LGBTQ+ riders – especially the anti-trans measures – as his pretext to cancel negotiations at the 11th hour.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration has filed an emergency motion with the supreme court to overturn lower court rulings that allow transgender people to correct the gender markers on their passports. Emergency motions are meant for true crises of national importance. Yet the White House is arguing that a transgender woman carrying an “F” on her passport qualifies. If the court grants Trump a win, the administration has already signaled it will revoke and reissue passports obtained through the class-action suit – which could plunge transgender travelers into chaos.
More broadly, fear is mounting that Trump will weaponize federal agencies against trans and queer people – and the organizations that support them – under the banner of counterterrorism. In the wake of the shooting, White House policy chief Stephen Miller, JD Vance, and Trump himself all signaled plans to target non-profits for “messaging designed to trigger and incite violence”; notably, these same kinds of steps were used in Russia to crack down on LGBTQ+ organizations.
At the same time, the Heritage Foundation – architects of Project 2025 and closely tied to the administration – rolled out a proposal to brand transgender rights activists as domestic terror groups, complete with calls for infiltration and surveillance.
For transgender people, Kirk’s killing has unleashed a new wave of anti-trans hate so intense that some are now making plans to leave the country altogether. Those of us who have tracked this movement for years can see the shift: the far right, led by Trump and his administration, has seized on the shooting as a rallying cry. Trans people did not shoot Charlie Kirk. Yet we are forced to bear the weight of the right’s reaction – turned into scapegoats for a tragedy that was never ours.
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Erin Reed is a transgender journalist based in Washington DC. She tracks LGBTQ+ legislation around the United States for her subscription newsletter, Erin in the Morning
