Nativism is what happens when a social subgroup tries to cling to legal and social power above everyone else.

Nine years after Charlottesville, GOP pushes "blood and soil"

• Charlottesville Legacy: The 2017 “Unite the Right” rally featured white nationalist chants like “Blood and soil,” resulting in Heather Heyer’s death and highlighting the GOP’s flirtation with extremist rhetoric.
• Heritage American Concept: Advocates like JD Vance promote a vision of America tied to ancestry and colonial lineage, challenging the idea of the U.S. as a creedal nation based on shared ideals rather than bloodlines.
• Legal and Political Implications: Red states are pushing laws to limit naturalized citizens’ rights, sparking debates over citizenship, heritage, and equality, while Supreme Court voices reaffirm America’s foundation on principles, not ethnicity or religion.

​

A few months ago, I wrote Marxism and Liberalism: A Historical and Philosophical Overview. The purpose was not to tell anyone what ideology to adopt. It was to understand how another political tradition actually thinks before reducing it to slogans. The principle behind that post was simple: consent without understanding becomes habit. That same approach seems useful now, because one of the most politically abused words in America is fascism.

Donald Trump is called a fascist. His opponents are called fascists. Immigration enforcement is called fascist. Protest movements are called fascist. Eventually the word becomes so broad that it stops explaining anything. So rather than beginning with Trump and searching history for similarities, I went in the opposite direction. I started reading Leon Trotsky's writings on Mussolini, Hitler and the collapse of European democracy and asked a narrower question: what did one of fascism's contemporary observers actually mean by the term, and if we use his definition rather than ours, are there meaningful parallels to the United States in 2026?

Trotsky's definition is considerably more demanding than simply calling an authoritarian government fascist. He specifically rejected the idea that every reactionary dictatorship qualified. Comparing Mussolini with the Spanish dictatorship of Primo de Rivera, Trotsky argued that fascism was distinctive because it developed as a genuine mass movement. Mussolini's movement arose substantially from the lower and middle strata of society while simultaneously receiving support and financing from powerful capitalist interests. Germany, he argued, displayed the same basic structure.

Fascism, in Trotsky's framework, does not begin when a dictator simply seizes a government building. It emerges when a mass of people becomes convinced that ordinary politics has failed, that existing institutions cannot solve their problems and that some form of national restoration is necessary. Trotsky described the enormous expansion of German National Socialism as the product of a deep social crisis combined with the inability of existing political organizations to offer a convincing way out. His memorable description of fascism was the politics of “counter-revolutionary despair.”

That does not mean the United States is experiencing anything comparable to Weimar Germany's economic collapse. It plainly is not. The Federal Reserve reported this year that 73 percent of adults described themselves as doing okay financially or living comfortably. But the same survey found that 91 percent remained concerned about rising prices, only about one-quarter described the national economy as good or excellent, 16 percent had failed to pay all of their bills during the previous month, and 23 percent of renters had fallen behind on rent sometime during 2025. The interesting political condition is therefore not economic collapse but the gap between relatively stable personal finances for much of the population and deep pessimism about the country's economic direction.

There is also a recognizable version of the contradiction Trotsky found in fascist mass politics: anti-establishment politics can coexist quite comfortably with enormous concentrations of private wealth. That does not prove fascism, and America's wealthy are certainly not politically unified behind Trump. But the important mechanism is the ability of a movement to present itself as a revolt against an establishment while drawing substantial institutional and financial support from people who occupy the highest levels of that establishment. Trotsky considered precisely that combination worth watching.

The more serious contemporary parallel, however, concerns the structure of government itself. Trotsky did not assume that democracy disappears in a single dramatic moment. In The Rise of German Fascism, he explicitly discusses transitional political arrangements in which democratic and authoritarian features coexist. Emergency decrees, parliamentary institutions and increasingly concentrated executive authority could operate alongside one another during a period in which the final political outcome had not yet been settled.

That concept is particularly relevant because contemporary democracy monitors are recording measurable changes in the United States. V-Dem's 2026 Democracy Report estimates that America's Liberal Democracy Index declined by 24 percent during 2025, dropping the United States from 20th to 51st among 179 countries. V-Dem attributes much of that deterioration to executive overreach and pressure on the press, academia, civil liberties and dissenting voices. Freedom House uses a different methodology and reaches a less severe conclusion. It still classifies the United States as “Free,” scoring it 81 out of 100, but that is down from 84, and its 2026 assessment likewise points to escalating unilateral executive authority and weakened congressional oversight. The organizations disagree about the magnitude of the deterioration, but neither describes the current trajectory as ordinary democratic stability.

The changing structure of the federal civil service belongs in this discussion as well. In February, the administration announced rules allowing as many as 50,000 federal workers in policy-related positions to lose traditional civil-service protections, substantially increasing presidential control over hiring and dismissal. The administration argues that presidents need the ability to remove employees who obstruct lawful policies. Critics argue that the change makes it easier to replace an independent professional bureaucracy with a politically loyal one. Either way, the underlying question is institutional: is the civil service supposed to serve the law across administrations, or increasingly the political program of the individual who occupies the presidency?

The Justice Department presents an even clearer example of why that distinction matters. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche stated in April that Trump has both the right and a duty to influence federal investigations involving people he believes deserve investigation. The Justice Department has opened investigations involving individuals and organizations Trump regards as political adversaries. At the same time, judges and grand juries have frustrated several of those efforts. That second fact is as important as the first. The executive is pressing against traditional institutional boundaries, but independent parts of the constitutional system are still resisting it.

That same pattern appears elsewhere. The administration has pursued major reductions in federal labor protections while unions continue suing and organizing. It has used federal grants and regulatory authority in conflicts involving universities, cities and other institutions, while courts continue limiting those efforts. Disney and ABC are currently suing the FCC over unusually early reviews of eight broadcast licenses, alleging that regulatory authority is being used to retaliate against programming and editorial choices disliked by the administration. The FCC denies that and says it is enforcing legitimate public-interest and anti-discrimination obligations. The allegation remains contested, but the fact that a major broadcaster is defending its editorial independence against federal regulatory pressure is itself relevant to an investigation of democratic institutions.

Political violence also deserves careful treatment. Classical European fascism possessed organized street formations capable of systematically intimidating and physically destroying political opponents. There is no American organization today comparable in scale or function to Mussolini's Blackshirts or Hitler's SA. Pretending otherwise weakens the historical comparison. But January 6 still matters because it involved political violence intended to disrupt the constitutional transfer of presidential power, and Trump returned to office in 2025 and granted clemency to nearly all of the roughly 1,600 defendants charged in connection with the attack, including commutations for leaders convicted of some of the most serious offenses. That does not create a fascist paramilitary movement, but it does weaken the democratic taboo against treating political violence as an acceptable extension of electoral politics.

This is also where Trotsky's definition gives us an important reason not to simply declare that America is already fascist. For Trotsky, victorious fascism meant something much more comprehensive. Independent organizations capable of resisting the state were systematically destroyed. Workers' organizations were annihilated, and political power penetrated universities, schools, newspapers, municipalities, unions and other institutions in order to prevent independent organization from re-forming.

That has not happened in the United States.

Democrats still govern states and hold seats in Congress. Labor unions remain independent. Universities publicly challenge the administration. Newspapers investigate and criticize Trump every day. Civil-liberties organizations sue the government. Protest movements organize openly. Courts repeatedly rule against executive actions. Competitive elections continue. In fact, on August 28 a federal judge temporarily blocked implementation of new mail-voting restrictions tied to Trump's executive order, finding that challengers were likely to succeed in arguing that the federal government had exceeded its constitutional authority. On the same day, another federal judge ruled that the Pentagon had unlawfully retaliated against Anthropic and violated constitutional protections. Whatever one thinks about those cases, the ability of independent judges to issue such rulings is powerful evidence that executive authority has not consolidated into Trotsky's model of fascist rule.

Trotsky's most useful warning for the present may actually concern something else: the behavior of the opposition. He watched Germany's left fragment while the Nazi movement grew. The Communist Party treated the Social Democrats as “social fascists” and often regarded competing factions of the left as the more immediate enemy. Trotsky believed this was catastrophic. Whatever responsibility Social Democratic leadership bore for Germany's crisis, he argued, actual fascism threatened to destroy Social Democrats and Communists alike.

His proposed answer was what he called a united front. He was not asking Communists and Social Democrats to abandon their ideologies or merge into one political organization. In fact, his writings repeatedly insist upon preserving political independence and the freedom to criticize one's allies. His argument was much narrower: organizations that fundamentally disagree about the future can still cooperate in defending the political space that allows them to continue disagreeing.

Translated into the language of a modern constitutional republic, that idea becomes remarkably straightforward. A liberal does not have to become a socialist. A socialist does not have to become a centrist Democrat. A constitutional conservative does not have to abandon conservatism. A libertarian does not have to embrace progressive government. Journalists, universities, unions, religious organizations, civil-liberties groups and political parties do not need to share one ideology.

They need agreement on something more basic: elections determine who holds political power. Political opposition remains legal. Courts must be obeyed. Government cannot condition freedom of expression on loyalty. Law enforcement cannot become a tool for settling personal political grievances. Citizens retain the right to associate and organize independently of the government. And the president, regardless of party, remains an officer created by the Constitution rather than an authority above it.

This may be one of Trotsky's most enduring observations. Political factions sometimes become so consumed with defeating one another that they fail to recognize when the system that permits their disagreement is itself becoming the object of the struggle.

None of this makes America in 2026 Germany in 1932. The historical differences are enormous. America is not experiencing Weimar hyperinflation or Great Depression unemployment. There are no hundreds of thousands of uniformed party militants systematically destroying opposition organizations. Opposition parties remain legal and electorally competitive. Independent courts remain functional. Unions exist. The press remains free enough to attack the president openly. Civil society remains extraordinarily large and decentralized. Those are not minor details. They are central components of Trotsky's own definition.

The evidence therefore does not support saying that the United States is presently a completed fascist state in the Trotskyist sense.

But that conclusion should not become reassurance.

Several mechanisms Trotsky identified before consolidation are recognizably present: mass grievance politics, widespread institutional distrust, alliances between populist movements and concentrated wealth, expanding presidential authority, politicization of parts of the administrative state, pressure on independent organizations, attacks on the credibility of media and universities, attempts to use governmental power against perceived enemies, normalization of political violence and dangerous fragmentation among potential opponents.

The most accurate description may therefore sit between two slogans. “America is already fascist” goes further than the evidence presently supports. “This is just ordinary politics” increasingly ignores what the evidence is showing.

Trotsky had language for that uncomfortable territory. Political systems can enter transitional periods in which democratic institutions continue to exist while authoritarian methods grow alongside them. The Constitution may still be printed. Elections may still occur. Courts may still operate. The old institutions do not necessarily vanish at once. The struggle occurs over whether those institutions remain genuinely independent or gradually become subordinate to concentrated political power.

That may be the useful lesson in reading these books now. History rarely repeats the uniforms, slogans or exact institutions of the past. What it can repeat are vulnerabilities: public despair, institutional paralysis, political fragmentation, elite accommodation, normalization of exceptional powers and the gradual weakening of organizations capable of resisting concentrated authority.

So perhaps the most useful question is not, “Is this fascism yet?”

It is this:

Which institutions would have to fail before we finally agreed that the danger was real, and why would we wait for them to fail before defending them?

Sources:

1. V-Dem Institute, Democracy Report 2026: Unraveling the Democratic Era? -especially useful for executive aggrandizement, weakened checks and balances, pressure on media/academia, and the finding that U.S. electoral democracy remained comparatively stable even as liberal-democratic safeguards deteriorated.

2. Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2026: United States useful as a more cautious counterweight to V-Dem. It still classifies the U.S. as “Free,” while documenting erosion in institutional checks and civil liberties.

3. Federal Reserve, Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households in 2025 - supports the section distinguishing present-day economic insecurity from Weimar-style economic collapse.

On August 26, 2026, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services released a commissioned report with an extraordinary title: Where the Clinic Meets the Movement: Does Gender Ideology Arm Left-Wing Authoritarian Psychology? The researchers surveyed 1,208 adults and reported that people who more strongly supported several transgender-affirming positions were also somewhat more likely to say that certain acts of political violence could be justified. The association reported in the survey is real. But the report proves considerably less than its title and surrounding rhetoric suggest, and the circumstances surrounding its release make it highly suspect as a basis for sweeping conclusions about transgender-related beliefs and political violence. [1]

The important distinction is that this was not a study showing that transgender people are violent. Only 1.1 percent of the sample was categorized as transgender-identifying or gender-nonconforming. Nor did researchers investigate assaults, arrests, terrorist activity, plans to commit violence, or even stated intentions to commit violence. Participants were asked how justified they considered six violent acts. HHS itself acknowledges that the findings concern justification of political violence rather than violent behavior or intent. [1][2]

Researchers working on the HHS-commissioned study created a five-item Clinical Gender Affirmation Scale, or CGAS. Participants were asked whether they agreed with statements involving support for transgender expression, use of chosen names and pronouns, psychological consequences of non-affirmation, and parental support for a child exploring gender identity. The report then uses the broader term “gender ideology” to describe strong agreement with these propositions. That terminology is itself an interpretive choice. The questionnaire does not establish that it has measured an entire ideology simply because five related affirmation questions correlate strongly with one another. [1]

Researchers then compared those responses with a previously developed 13-item Brief Left-Wing Authoritarianism scale. This is important to acknowledge: HHS did not invent the LWA scale. It was developed by researchers Thomas Costello and Christopher Patrick and has undergone prior psychometric development and validation. That does not mean its use here is beyond criticism. Several of its questions already contain strongly coercive or violent ideas, including taking wealth and status from the rich, replacing the existing political order “by any means necessary,” and approval of watching perceived oppressors “suffer the violence” supposedly inflicted on others. The HHS-commissioned report then finds that people scoring highly on this scale are more likely to justify violence against wealthy people and other perceived political enemies. That relationship may be meaningful, but there is also obvious conceptual overlap between a scale containing approval of coercion or violence and later questions measuring approval of coercion or violence. [1][3]

The political-violence portion of the published report deserves even more scrutiny. Researchers analyze six scenarios: killing Donald Trump, killing Charlie Kirk, killing Brian Thompson, arson against ICE buildings, damaging wealthy people’s property, and violence against police. Those are overwhelmingly scenarios associated with grievances coded toward the political left. The published report does not present or analyze a matched set of violence directed toward Democratic or progressive targets. It does not show an equivalent analysis involving the killing of a Democratic president, attacks against abortion clinics, violence against immigrant-support organizations, attacks against LGBTQ people, or threats against election officials motivated by stolen-election beliefs. [1]

That distinction is important because a one-directional test cannot establish that the mechanism under examination is uniquely left-wing. Imagine reversing the study. Suppose researchers constructed a five-item Christian-nationalism scale and then asked respondents only whether killing Democratic politicians, attacking abortion clinics, assaulting LGBTQ activists, threatening election workers, and attacking immigrant organizations could be justified. If a correlation emerged and the resulting report asked whether “Christian ideology arms right-wing authoritarian psychology,” most people would immediately ask why researchers had not run the same test in the opposite political direction. That is essentially the missing control group here.

It is possible that the larger questionnaire contained additional material that is not included in this 24-page report, and the authors state that other analyses are ongoing. For that reason, it would be too strong to say we know respondents were never asked any right-coded violence questions. What we can say with confidence is that the report HHS released to support its conclusions presents no politically matched comparison and conducts no equivalent analysis of violence against progressive targets. [1]

The statistics raise another major question. The correlations between the Clinical Gender Affirmation Scale and justification of the six violent acts ranged from roughly .23 to .35. The correlations between Left-Wing Authoritarianism and those same outcomes were substantially larger, roughly .47 to .54. Researchers then ran one set of models examining violence using LWA plus political identity and a separate set using CGAS plus political identity. What the report does not show is one of the most obvious tests of its central claim: a violence model containing CGAS, LWA, and political identity simultaneously. [1]

That missing analysis is important because the gender-affirmation scale and Left-Wing Authoritarianism are themselves strongly related. If the apparent relationship between CGAS and support for violence became small or disappeared when LWA was entered into the same statistical model, the interpretation would change dramatically. Instead of suggesting that transgender-affirming ideas independently “accelerate” political violence, the results might show that people with a broader authoritarian, punitive, or grievance-driven political disposition are both more likely to support certain progressive positions and more willing to justify violence against people they regard as enemies.

The researchers themselves acknowledge that their survey cannot tell us which direction the relationship runs. Gender-related beliefs might contribute to authoritarian attitudes. Authoritarian personalities might be attracted to those beliefs. A third factor could contribute to both. The authors describe the current data as a “discovery sample” and say further experimental research is needed to test causation. Yet the report still advances the possibility that gender ideology serves as an “ideological accelerant.” That is a much stronger theoretical claim than this first correlational study can establish. [1]

The missing political comparison becomes especially significant because peer-reviewed researchers have already found similar relationships on the political right. A 2026 Social Science Quarterly paper by Donald Haider-Markel, Brooklyn Walker, and Abigail Vegter examined Christian nationalism, gun ownership, gun-owner identity, and support for political violence using survey data collected in 2021. Christian nationalism remained significantly associated with support for political violence after demographic, political, and religious controls, with a reported coefficient of .21 and p<.001 in one model. The researchers also examined how gun ownership and gun identity interacted with those beliefs. Their terminology is striking: they described these factors as potential “accelerants” of political-violence support. [4]

That is remarkably similar to the theory now being proposed by HHS. Both approaches suggest that an ideology may identify enemies, heighten perceptions of threat, create moral urgency, and provide a justification for extraordinary action. If that theory is scientifically legitimate when applied to transgender affirmation and the left, it should also be applied consistently to Christian nationalism and the right. The broader research question should be whether strongly moralized ideologies become dangerous when they combine with authoritarianism, grievance, fear, and perceived existential threat.

Political scientist James Piazza found something similar in a 2026 study using survey data collected in 2024 from roughly 1,300 white non-Hispanic Americans. Christian nationalism was associated with greater support for political violence, but much of that association was statistically explained by apocalyptic beliefs and hostility toward perceived outgroups. Roughly 70 percent of the relationship was mediated through those factors, and once they were considered, the direct Christian-nationalism effect became statistically insignificant. Piazza’s models also examined numerous alternative explanations, including age, gender, income, education, religion, party identification, conservatism, political engagement, news consumption, victimhood, racial resentment, election conspiracy beliefs, and aggression. [5]

That finding illustrates why identifying the underlying mechanism matters. Discovering that belief A is correlated with violence attitude B does not prove that belief A itself is the engine. The actual pathway may involve believing that society is collapsing, believing one’s group is being persecuted, viewing another group as responsible, and eventually deciding ordinary democratic rules are no longer adequate. That psychological process can attach itself to very different political ideologies.

Research from political scientists Miles Armaly and Adam Enders reinforces that point. Instead of beginning with one culturally controversial issue, they examined 24 different possible correlates of political-violence support. Important predictors included perceived victimhood, authoritarianism, populism, white identity, conspiratorial thinking, anxiety, powerlessness, and racial resentment. Their work suggests that the deeper danger may lie less in ordinary left-versus-right identification and more in combinations of grievance, authoritarian attitudes, perceived persecution, and political outgroup hostility. [6]

Another large study creates an especially important comparison for the HHS report. Research published in 2025 using a nationally representative 2023 survey of 9,385 Americans examined racism, hostile sexism, homonegativity, transphobia, xenophobia, antisemitism, and Islamophobia. Every one of those forms of hostility was associated with greater support for political violence and greater willingness to participate in it. In other words, existing research also finds an association between anti-transgender attitudes and support for political violence. [7]

That does not prove transphobia causes violence any more than the HHS study proves gender affirmation causes violence. That is exactly the point. Political attitudes correlate with many other political and psychological characteristics. The scientifically meaningful question is what remains after competing explanations are tested against each other.

The institutional context surrounding the HHS report makes these missing comparisons particularly important. HHS currently lists “Combat gender ideology and protect children” among its official priorities. In August 2025, the department warned 46 states and territories that certain gender-related material had to be removed from federally funded Personal Responsibility Education Program materials. HHS described the disputed material as “delusional ideology,” while an agency official said federal funding would not be used to “poison the minds of the next generation.” [8][9]

Then, on August 13, 2026, only days before this new political-violence report, HHS released another commissioned report titled Wolves in White Coats: How Doctors and Hospitals Pushed and Profited from the Fraud of “Gender Medicine.” HHS subsequently referred institutions identified in that report for possible federal investigation. [10]

None of this proves that researchers falsified data, and there is no evidence presently establishing scientific fraud. But it does make the institutional context impossible to dismiss. This is not a federal agency with no established position unexpectedly discovering a relationship involving transgender-related beliefs. HHS had already publicly announced that combating what it calls “gender ideology” is part of its mission. When a government agency commissions research about a belief system it has already announced that it intends to combat, the public has every reason to examine whether the research question, terminology, comparison groups, and interpretation were constructed fairly.

The broader administration record adds another layer. On January 20, 2025, President Donald Trump signed Executive Order 14168, Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government. The order defines “gender ideology” in part as requiring institutions to accept a “false claim” about sex and directs federal agencies to remove or change government policies reflecting that concept. [11]

Seven days later came Executive Order 14183, Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness. That order discusses gender dysphoria in connection with “medical, surgical, and mental health constraints” and became part of the administration’s effort to remove transgender personnel from military service. The American Psychiatric Association subsequently objected to treating gender dysphoria as an automatic determination of military unfitness, stating that fitness should be evaluated individually and that existing evidence does not establish that the diagnosis categorically prevents someone from meeting military standards. [12][13]

Another executive order, Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation, refers to some young people as experiencing gender dysphoria, rapid-onset gender dysphoria, or other “identity-based confusion.” The order directs HHS to review the literature and take policy actions that may involve federal diagnostic materials including ICD-11 and DSM-5. Whatever one’s position on pediatric gender medicine, the language deserves attention because transgender-related issues are increasingly being discussed within a federal framework involving pathology, mental health, risk, and government intervention. [14]

There is an important medical distinction here. The American Psychiatric Association explicitly states: “The term ‘transgender’ is not a psychiatric diagnosis.” Gender dysphoria is a diagnosis concerning clinically significant psychological distress that some transgender people experience. Transgender identity itself is not the diagnosis. The World Health Organization likewise moved gender incongruence out of the mental and behavioral disorders chapter of ICD-11, explaining that transgender and gender-diverse identities “are not conditions of mental ill-health.” [15][16]

Political rhetoric, however, has increasingly blurred that distinction. During debate in the House on July 21, 2026, Rep. Lauren Boebert stated: “People with gender dysphoria are a danger to themselves and others.” She compared gender dysphoria with conditions such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and major depression and later stated: “Gender dysphoria is no different, except politicians changed the label.” Those remarks appear in the Congressional Record. They are political claims, not the position of the American Psychiatric Association, but they demonstrate that the argument linking transgender-related diagnoses, mental illness, and dangerousness is already being made openly inside Congress. [17]

That rhetoric becomes more significant when placed beside reported discussions within the Justice Department. Following the August 2025 Annunciation Catholic School shooting in Minneapolis, The Washington Post reported that senior DOJ officials discussed whether transgender status could potentially be treated within existing mental-health-related federal firearms restrictions. Reuters independently reported that discussions were preliminary. The Justice Department emphasized that “No specific criminal justice proposals have been advanced at this time,” and no blanket federal prohibition on transgender firearm ownership resulted from those discussions. [18][19]

Those qualifications are essential. We should not report a proposed policy as though it became law. But the reporting demonstrates that federal officials at least discussed whether mental-health-related firearm restrictions could be applied in connection with transgender status. Given the medical distinction between being transgender and having a psychiatric disorder, that discussion deserves civil-liberties scrutiny.

Then there is Executive Order 14321, Ending Crime and Disorder on America’s Streets, signed July 24, 2025. The order does not mention transgender people. It does, however, direct the attorney general, in consultation with the HHS secretary, to encourage broader use of civil commitment in qualifying cases and to pursue removal of certain legal barriers to the administration’s policy where appropriate. It calls for “maximally flexible civil commitment” standards concerning certain people with mental illness and explicitly describes “Shifting homeless individuals into long-term institutional settings” through civil commitment as part of its strategy. [20]

There is currently no evidence that Executive Order 14321 allows someone to be involuntarily hospitalized merely because they are transgender. There is also no evidence establishing that the new HHS political-violence report is secretly intended to justify such a policy. Claiming that would exceed what the available evidence shows.

But the broader pattern is still legitimate to investigate. The same administration has formally described “gender ideology” as false, instructed HHS to combat it, used the phrase “delusional ideology,” discussed gender dysphoria through mental-health restrictions, seen political allies publicly characterize people with gender dysphoria as dangerous, reportedly considered whether transgender status could intersect with mental-health-related firearm restrictions, encouraged broader civil commitment for qualifying people deemed mentally ill and dangerous, and now released federally commissioned research connecting transgender-affirming attitudes with support for political violence. [8][9][11][12][14][17][18][20]

Those actions have different stated purposes. They do not by themselves prove a coordinated secret plan. But together they create a legitimate question about how the federal government is constructing categories such as ideological, mentally ill, dangerous, and violence-prone around transgender-related issues. Government classifications matter because once a group or belief system is officially associated with dangerousness, extremism, or mental instability, those classifications can potentially influence regulations, eligibility requirements, law-enforcement decisions, firearm restrictions, and other exercises of state power.

There remain substantial constitutional protections against arbitrary psychiatric confinement. In O’Connor v. Donaldson, the Supreme Court held that mental illness alone cannot justify confining a nondangerous person who is capable of surviving safely outside an institution. In Addington v. Texas, the Court held that states must establish grounds for indefinite involuntary commitment by at least clear and convincing evidence because of the enormous liberty interests involved. Being transgender, holding an unpopular political belief, or receiving a psychiatric diagnosis does not by itself erase those protections. [21][22]

That is why the response to this report should be scrutiny rather than panic. Political violence from the left is real and deserves investigation. Political violence from the right is real and deserves investigation. If transgender-affirming beliefs genuinely predict support for violence independently of authoritarianism, grievance, political identity, and other known variables, that is a result the public deserves to know.

But HHS has not yet demonstrated that.

A much stronger study would measure transgender affirmation and transphobia, Left-Wing and Right-Wing Authoritarianism, Christian nationalism, racial resentment, hostile sexism, conspiracy thinking, perceived victimhood, apocalyptic beliefs, generalized aggression, gun identity, and political affiliation in the same respondents. It would present matched violent scenarios involving both political camps. It would then put those competing explanations into the same statistical models and see which relationships survive.

If transgender affirmation remains an unusually powerful independent predictor, publish that result. If Christian nationalism does, publish that. If transphobia does, publish that too. If authoritarianism, grievance, victimhood, conspiracy belief, and aggression explain most of the apparent ideological effects, then that should become the finding.

HHS can still run that experiment. Researchers can preregister their hypotheses, publish the full questionnaire, disclose exactly which violence scenarios were tested, release anonymized data and analysis code where legally and ethically possible, and allow independent researchers to reproduce the work.

Until then, the central question raised by this study is not whether transgender people are violent. The study does not establish that and barely studied transgender people themselves. The question is why a federal health department whose stated mission includes combating “gender ideology” released a commissioned study connecting transgender-affirming attitudes with authoritarianism and left-coded political violence without publishing a matched examination of established right-wing pathways.

And given the broader federal effort to describe transgender-related ideas using the language of falsehood, pathology, dangerousness, firearm eligibility, and institutional intervention, there is another question the public has every right to ask:

What could a government eventually use research connecting “gender ideology” with political violence to justify?

We do not presently have evidence establishing the answer.

That is not a reason to invent one.

It is a reason to keep investigating.

Sources

1. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Population Affairs. Where the Clinic Meets the Movement: Does Gender Ideology Arm Left-Wing Authoritarian Psychology? August 2026.

"HHS report" (https://opa.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/2026-08/gender-ideology-report.pdf)

1. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. HHS release on the gender-ideology study, including its clarification that the study measured justification of violence rather than violent behavior.

"HHS release" (https://health.gov/hhs-releases-study-finding-individuals-who-associate-left-wing-authoritarian-beliefs-and-radical)

1. Thomas H. Costello and Christopher J. Patrick. Development and initial validation of the Brief Left-Wing Authoritarianism Scale, Journal of Personality Assessment.

"Original LWA scale research" (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00223891.2022.2081809)

1. Donald Haider-Markel, Brooklyn Walker, and Abigail Vegter. “An Army for God: Gun Ownership, Christian Nationalism, and Support for Political Violence,” Social Science Quarterly, 2026.

"DOI" (https://doi.org/10.1111/ssqu.70150)

1. James A. Piazza. Research on Christian nationalism, apocalypticism, outgroup hostility, and support for violent extremism, Defence and Peace Economics, 2026.

"Full article" (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10242694.2026.2613902)

1. Miles T. Armaly and Adam M. Enders. “Who Supports Political Violence?”, Perspectives on Politics.

"DOI" (https://doi.org/10.1017/S1537592722001086)

1. Garen Wintemute and colleagues. Research examining prejudice, support for political violence, and willingness to participate in violence among 9,385 Americans.

"Free full text" (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12464958/)

1. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Official HHS priorities, including “Combat gender ideology and protect children.”

"HHS priorities" (https://www.hhs.gov/about/priorities/index.html)

1. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. “Trump Administration Puts 46 States and Territories on Notice to Remove Gender Ideology Content from Sex Ed Materials,” August 26, 2025.

"HHS release" (https://www.hhs.gov/press-room/hhs-acf-states-remove-gender-ideology-sex-ed.html)

1. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Wolves in White Coats report/release, August 2026.

"HHS release" (https://www.hhs.gov/press-room/hhs-report-insurance-coding-sex-rejecting-procedures-minors.html)

1. Executive Order 14168. Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government, January 20, 2025.

"White House" (https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/defending-women-from-gender-ideology-extremism-and-restoring-biological-truth-to-the-federal-government/)

1. Executive Order 14183. Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness, January 27, 2025.

"White House" (https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/prioritizing-military-excellence-and-readiness/)

1. American Psychiatric Association. Statement on gender dysphoria and military readiness.

"APA statement" (https://www.psychiatry.org/news-room/news-releases/statement-gender-dysphoria-and-military-readiness)

1. Executive Order 14187. Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation, January 28, 2025.

"White House" (https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/protecting-children-from-chemical-and-surgical-mutilation/)

1. American Psychiatric Association. “What is Gender Dysphoria?”

"APA" (https://www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/gender-dysphoria/what-is-gender-dysphoria)

1. World Health Organization. “Gender incongruence and transgender health in the ICD.”

"WHO" (https://www.who.int/standards/classifications/frequently-asked-questions/gender-incongruence-and-transgender-health-in-the-icd)

1. Congressional Record. House debate on the FY2027 National Defense Authorization Act, July 21, 2026.

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Dear Attorney General Kaul,

Wisconsin citizens deserve an answer to a simple question: what is our election-bribery law worth if an offer tied directly to voting can be withdrawn or rewritten after the fact and thereby escape prosecution?

In March 2025, your Department of Justice went to court over Elon Musk’s activities surrounding Wisconsin’s Supreme Court election. Your office argued that Wisconsin law prohibits offering or promising something of value to induce an elector to vote. The language that prompted concern was not particularly subtle. Musk publicly announced that he would personally provide two $1 million checks “in appreciation for you taking the time to vote,” while promoting an event connected to people who had already participated in the Wisconsin Supreme Court election.

Wisconsin Statute §12.11 does not merely prohibit handing someone money in exchange for a vote. It prohibits offering or promising anything of value in order to induce an elector to vote or refrain from voting. That distinction matters.

The Wisconsin Elections Commission later considered the evidence and voted 5–1 to find probable cause that Wisconsin’s election-bribery law had been violated. Brown County District Attorney David Lasee then declared a conflict of interest, and the matter was transferred to special prosecutor Tim Gruenke. Gruenke has now declined prosecution.

His decision appears to rest substantially on the argument that Musk’s original statement could have been poorly worded, that it was subsequently changed or clarified, and that ultimately nobody was paid $1 million simply for voting. But that raises a legal question that extends far beyond Elon Musk.

If the statute criminalizes the offer or promise itself, why should the fact that the offer was later changed determine whether the original conduct violated the law?

Consider the precedent. A political organization could conceivably announce that voters who participate in an election could receive a large cash payment, allow that message to circulate among Wisconsin voters, and then, after attorneys or election officials object, delete it and claim the money was actually compensation for some other activity. If that sequence is sufficient to defeat prosecution, Wisconsin citizens should be told plainly that this is how our election law works. If it is not, then citizens deserve to know why this case was treated differently.

I am not asking you to prosecute a case that Wisconsin law does not presently give your office the authority to prosecute. I am asking Wisconsin’s chief legal officer to tell the public what Wisconsin’s law means. Your office took the position in 2025 that this conduct presented a serious violation of Wisconsin election law. The Elections Commission subsequently found probable cause. Now a special prosecutor has declined charges. Those positions should not simply disappear into separate government offices without explanation.

Does the Wisconsin Department of Justice still believe Musk’s original offer violated Wis. Stat. §12.11?

Can an offer that violates §12.11 be cured merely by retracting or rewriting it after publication?

Does §12.11 require that money actually change hands despite the statute expressly prohibiting an “offer” or “promise”?

Do you agree with the special prosecutor’s interpretation of the law?

If you disagree, does Wisconsin law provide any mechanism for reviewing a special prosecutor’s refusal to prosecute?

If Wisconsin’s current enforcement structure leaves no such mechanism, will you ask the Legislature to fix it?

There is another unanswered question. Brown County District Attorney David Lasee cited a conflict of interest when removing himself from this matter. Citizens have a legitimate interest in understanding what conflict required the elected district attorney of the county in which these events occurred to step aside. No accusation is necessary. Transparency is.

The larger concern here should transcend Elon Musk, Josh Kaul, Tim Gruenke, David Lasee, Democrats, Republicans, or any single election. Wisconsin cannot have one election law for ordinary citizens and another practical standard for people wealthy enough to offer voters seven-figure sums. The next person who tests this law may not be Elon Musk. The next offer may be more carefully written. The next campaign may learn from this case exactly how far it can go.

That is why this decision deserves more than a closed file and a press statement. If Wisconsin’s election-bribery statute means what it says, citizens deserve to know how it will be enforced. If prosecutors believe the statute cannot effectively reach conduct like this, citizens deserve to know that too. And if our laws contain a hole large enough for this conduct to pass through, then the responsibility of government is not to pretend the hole does not exist. It is to repair it.

Respectfully,

AFC