Public Statement
The U.S. Counterterrorism Strategy and the Danger to Trans+ Communities
The Trump Administration’s 2026 United States Counterterrorism Strategy presents a serious and foreseeable danger to transgender, nonbinary, Two-Spirit, and gender-diverse people, as well as to their families, healthcare providers, educators, advocates, and allies.
The danger is not only that the document mentions transgender people. The danger is the structure of the argument it builds.
The strategy first claims that a new form of domestic terrorism has emerged, driven by violent extremists whose beliefs are framed as hostile to freedom and the American way of life. It then identifies three major categories of terror threats, one of which is “Violent Left-Wing Extremists.” Within that counterterrorism framework, the document later asserts that the assassination of Charlie Kirk was committed by “a radical who espoused extreme transgender ideologies“. The strategy then states that national counterterrorism activity will prioritize violent secular political groups whose ideology is described, in part, as “radically pro-transgender.”
Burleton Education is clear: violence should be investigated and prosecuted based on evidence, conduct, and due process. But it is profoundly dangerous for the federal government to place undefined pro-trans belief, advocacy, or community support inside a counterterrorism narrative. The phrase “radically pro-transgender” is not a neutral security term. It is politically loaded, undefined, and capable of being weaponized.
The document does not explicitly declare transgender people themselves to be a terrorist group. That distinction matters. But the strategy does something nearly as dangerous: it embeds pro-trans advocacy — and, by association, trans-spectrum identity itself — within a domestic-terrorism threat category and then describes tools of surveillance, membership identification, mapping, and operational disruption. The strategy states that the government will “map them at home,” “identify their membership,” and use law-enforcement tools to “cripple them operationally.”
That is the civil-rights danger.
When government language treats support for transgender people as a potential marker of extremism, the consequences do not remain abstract. Families seeking care can be chilled. Healthcare providers can be intimidated. Educators can be smeared. Advocates can be surveilled. Mutual-aid networks can be recast as suspicious. Public support for trans lives can be falsely associated with violence.
This is how authoritarian targeting works: first by redefining a vulnerable community’s existence as an “ideology,” then by portraying support for that community as radical, dangerous, or anti-American, and finally by using the machinery of the state to monitor and disrupt those who refuse to abandon them.
Transgender people are not a threat to the United States. Transgender people are part of the United States. They are children, parents, students, workers, elders, neighbors, patients, veterans, artists, teachers, faith leaders, and community members. Their families are not extremists for loving them. Their doctors are not extremists for treating them. Their allies are not extremists for defending their dignity and rights.
Burleton Education rejects any attempt to collapse trans existence, gender-affirming care, civil-rights advocacy, education, mutual aid, or allyship into a counterterrorism frame.
A democratic society does not protect freedom by criminalizing compassion. It does not defend public safety by stigmatizing vulnerable people. And it does not preserve constitutional rights by using vague ideological labels to expose disfavored communities to surveillance and state intimidation.
We call on journalists, civil-rights organizations, legal advocates, educators, healthcare institutions, faith communities, and public officials to treat this language with the seriousness it deserves. The threat is not hypothetical. The document itself provides the architecture: define a new domestic threat, associate it with pro-trans ideology, and authorize federal action against the groups placed inside that category.
That architecture must be named, challenged, and resisted.
Trans+ people and those who stand with them are not terrorists. They are human beings entitled to safety, dignity, healthcare, family, education, speech, association, and equal protection under law.
— Jenn Burleton
Founder, Burleton Education
