Republicans Push FBI To Designate Trans Advocacy As Violent Extremism. Inside The Project 2025 Organization's Proposal.
On Thursday evening, news emerged that individuals within and outside of Trump administration were pushing to cast trans activists as domestic terrorists. Then, Project 2025 dropped its proposal.
On Thursday evening, independent journalist Ken Klippenstein reported that the FBI is developing tools to identify transgender suspects and classify them as “nihilistic violent extremists.” Within hours, the Oversight Project at the Heritage Foundation—the same outfit driving Project 2025’s blueprint now being implemented inside the federal government—released a four-page memo urging the bureau to go even further. Its proposal: formally designate all transgender activism as “Trans Ideology-Inspired Violent Extremism,” a new category of domestic terror threat. It’s important to note that the Heritage Foundation is not itself the federal government, and to our knowledge, its proposals are not yet in place. But the group’s influence is vast, especially in the wake of a Trump administration openly committed to implementing Project 2025. That makes its latest push far more than just a think-tank memo—it’s a roadmap for policy. Here’s what you need to know about the proposal.
The memo’s first section lays out its definition of “Transgender Ideology-Inspired Violence and Extremism,” a term it urges the FBI to adopt as official doctrine. Under its test, anyone who believes violence is justified against opponents of “transgender ideology” would qualify. But the definition doesn’t stop there. It also includes anyone who argues that stripping away transgender rights constitutes violence or an existential threat to transgender people. That second prong is sweeping: by its logic, nearly every transgender rights activist or organization—merely for pointing out the tangible harm that comes from losing rights—would fall under the label of extremist.
The memo goes on to explain how such a definition could be weaponized. If the FBI were to adopt “TIVE” as a new category of domestic terrorism, it argues, the bureau could bring to bear “immense legal, intelligence, and law enforcement tools.” That includes “gathering intelligence on other individuals that share ideological commonalities to predict future attacks.” Elsewhere, the document spells out what that would mean in practice: using human sources, network mapping, undercover operations, and data analysis against those it deems suspect. In plain terms, it would open the door to treating transgender-rights leaders and organizations as security threats—placing them under surveillance and violating their privacy for the act of advocating for their own existence.
We’ve seen this playbook before. The U.S. government has a long record of turning surveillance tools against civil rights movements. COINTELPRO, the infamous FBI program from 1956 to 1971, targeted Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and countless others in an effort to disrupt the civil rights movement. The same tactics were deployed against Vietnam War protestors and the gay rights movement of the ’60s and ’70s. After 9/11, Muslim communities bore the brunt of an expanded national security state, subjected to dragnet monitoring and infiltration. Now, under this proposal, those same techniques could be repurposed against transgender rights leaders and organizations—casting constitutionally protected advocacy as extremism to be neutralized.
The document takes pains to insist that the proposal would not label “all transgender individuals” as domestic terrorists. Instead, it claims it would only apply when someone is “motivated by an ideology that encourages, promotes, or condones violence” while “inciting unlawful violent action or threat.” But those qualifiers are deliberately elastic. Given the earlier definition of TIVE, even the most basic act of advocacy—like pointing out that anti-trans laws threaten transgender people’s existence—could be construed as “incitement.” The memo itself makes the danger plain: in its list of “typical characteristics” of supposed extremism, it cites a trans flag with the words “protect their right to exist.”
If adopted, the move would mirror Russia’s path toward erasing LGBTQ+ civil society. In 2016, the Kremlin began labeling NGOs that threatened “public order” as extremist, a designation it later expanded to cover LGBTQ+ organizations outright. The parallels aren’t subtle. On Monday, President Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller all floated using the same kinds of policies to dismantle nonprofits they claim are “fomenting, facilitating, or engaging in violence,” such as major philanthropic foundations like the Ford Foundation and Open Society, the latter run by George Soros—long cast as one of the Republican Party’s preferred villains.
It is important to note that the policy has not yet been adopted. As Ken Klippenstein’s reporting makes clear, the FBI is still in the developmental phase, and the Heritage Foundation is still in the advocacy stage—circulating petitions and urging its allies in government to push the proposal forward. But Heritage’s influence inside the Trump administration is already undeniable: dozens of its Project 2025 proposals have either been implemented or are moving through the system. That makes this threat far more than theoretical. Even if the proposal does not label every trans person a terrorist, it creates the machinery for sweeping crackdowns, surveillance, and disruption—tools that echo some of the darkest chapters of American history.
Are we at the point where we can start being granted asylum elsewhere??
Exactly what they're doing with migrants. Label them dangerous. Label them criminals. Say, "we're only going after the dangerous ones!" Take them all. Abuse them, make sure nobody is going to stop them, and then finally exterminate them. I've been saying this will happen— they'll come after trans people first, then it'll be the whole lgbtq+ community and it won't stop at just surveillance.