DOJ Reportedly Uses Anti-Trans Slur In Call To Disarm Trans Americans

It doesn’t have to materialize to have its desired effect: to terrorize transgender Americans, whether they are gun owners or not, and to scare the masses into complying in advance.

Ted Eytan // Creative Commons

When Aria Trucios, a Wisconsinite and avid outdoorsperson, transitioned, they legally changed their sex marker to “X”—including on their concealed-carry permit for a firearm, which they and over 21 million other Americans hold.

It just made sense, they told Erin in the Morning. They’re out in the woods alone a lot, and they’re a survivor of anti-trans violence.

But now, Trucios says, they and other transgender gun owners have been thrust into a state of terror. On Sept. 4, a White House correspondent for The Daily Wire—a far-right news site—posted bombshell claims on X (formerly Twitter) from anonymous sources in the Department of Justice, purporting to show a glimpse into leaked talks by unnamed individuals. A Department of Justice official said they were considering “banning guns for transgenders” and used an anti-trans slur.

In the hours and days that followed, the story was confirmed by outlets like the Washington Post and CNN. All of the pieces relied on anonymous sources, allegations of comments made by nameless bureaucrats, and were couched with uncertainties. The talks were “described as preliminary in nature” by a source to CNN. There was no formal “proposal” a DOJ spokesperson said, and it’s “not on the docket” at the Oval Office as per a source at the White House.

But like many grandstandings of the Trump regime, it doesn’t have to materialize to have its desired effect: to terrorize transgender Americans, whether they are gun owners or not, and to scare the masses into complying in advance. Trucios said trans gun owners in their circles are considering fleeing the country or even detransitioning after hearing the news.

“Speculation around the gun policy has driven a lot of fear into a lot of people,” they said. Trans people are already disproportionately the victims of violent crime, especially trans women of color. Trucios said one friend “had a gun pulled on her just for walking out of a bathroom.” So if transness becomes a barrier to gun ownership in this country, Trucios asks: “How ‘trans’ do you have to be?”

Extremist ideas about disarming trans people, robbing them of due process and their Second Amendment rights, are not totally new. “In the wake of several prominent mass shootings, anti-trans narratives are used to promote common myths about gun violence that are designed to promote gun buying, block policy change and reinforce divisive far-right ideologies,” a 2024 report from the Southern Poverty Law Center found.

Conservative politicians and pundits have weaponized tragedies and conspiracy theories to help construct the idea of “transgender violence”—a buzzword akin to “gender ideology” in that it describes something manufactured by the far right to justify the persecution of gender and sexual minorities. It creates a false narrative painting transness as some sort of violent political dogma driving terrorism on a mass scale.

This fact has been obfuscated in light of the mass shooting at Annunciation Church in Minnesota, where reports indicate the shooter had, at least at one point, transitioned. The individual left behind a manifesto with no clear political motive, disparaging “President Donald Trump, Christians, Black people, Hispanic people, Jews and Israel,” as per the New York Times. “But the only clear finding so far, law enforcement officials said, was that the attacker had come to idolize mass shooters.”

“Donald Trump and his administration have moved so quickly to use that tragedy and that trauma to score right-wing political points,” said Brandon Wolf, the national press secretary of the Human Rights Campaign, in an interview with Erin in the Morning. "I wouldn’t be surprised if—in fact I’d bet that—this story was floated by the White House themselves to reporters, to try to satisfy the base's lust for transphobic fervor. But we haven't actually seen them put forward policy, language, or how they would enforce this completely unconstitutional idea."

Wolf, himself, is also a survivor of a mass shooting—the 2016 attack at Pulse Nightclub, a queer bar which has once again become a flashpoint in Florida politics after Governor Ron DeSantis waged war on rainbow crosswalks meant to honor the shooting victims. Multiple people have been arrested for allegedly recoloring the sidewalks.

While lacking specifics, the DOJ source’s anti-trans comments pathologized transness in ways that mimic the rhetoric arguably seen in the anti-trans Skrmetti decision. “Individuals within the DOJ are reviewing ways to ensure that mentally ill individuals suffering from gender dysphoria are unable to obtain firearms while they are unstable and unwell,” one source inside the Justice Department reportedly told The Daily Wire.

“The United States and individual state governments have openly considered gender nonconformance a mental defect since at least the late 1800s,” said Pelecanos, an LGBTQ civil rights lawyer, in an interview for this piece. "They associated gender diversity with mental insanity to justify permanent incarceration and eugenic sterilization.”

It would be false to say the government has always treated all trans people as mentally ill, Pelecanos noted, but this rhetoric revives some of the darkest stains in our nation’s history when it comes to anti-LGBTQ sentiments. "It appears the DOJ is attempting to reinstate these old eugenic beliefs against trans people despite a century of legal wins and culture shifts away from those ideas," Pelecanos said.

The Trump Administration has already proven itself to be at least partially untethered from things like checks and balances, the law, and the truth. On Bluesky, Alejandra Caraballo, a cyber law expert and trans rights activist, said such a ban “would not be exceptionally difficult to do” on a logistical level.

“But there's a lot that happens between now and then,” Wolf said, speaking more broadly about the implementation of the hypothetical ban. Moreover, enforcement of such a policy would require a level of efficiency and competence this Administration often lacks—for now.

The trans community, meanwhile, found an unsuspecting ally amidst the political turmoil: mainstream gun rights activists. The National Rifle Association (NRA) released a statement that condemned “proposals” that “arbitrarily strip law-abiding citizens of their Second Amendment rights,” and then retweeted a post explicitly calling out the “Tran[s] Ban” on guns. An article from the conservative Cato Institute described the DOJ comments as “empty rhetoric and blatant hypocrisy,” arguing that such a policy would violate the Second Amendment, Fourteenth Amendment, the Supreme Court’s Bruen test, the Federal Gun Control Act of 1968, and the Administrative Procedure Act (APA).

However, as other civil rights are eroded for the trans community through state laws, federal policy, and Supreme Court decisions, wayward Americans like Trucios say the time to speak out is now. They aren’t unfamiliar with taking their safety into their own hands.

“I just worry that if it does come to pass,” Trucios told Erin in the Morning, “it's a little too late to do anything in opposition.”