Trump supporters are exploiting the mass shooting in Minneapolis on Wednesday — in which two children were killed and 17 people were injured — to escalate their broader attacks on transgender people.
“Two innocent children are dead and the far right are racing to use it as pretext to further eradicate trans people,” civil rights attorney Alejandra Caraballo said on Bluesky.
Early reports suggest the shooter may have identified as transgender, and the far right has seized on this to advance their ongoing campaign to demonize and criminalize trans people.
Within hours of the shooting, MAGA influencers began circulating the shooter’s reported gender identity as evidence of a so-called pattern. Far right commentators like Charlie Kirk and Matt Walsh called transgender people “dangerously delusional,” “mentally sick,” and “crazy.” U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem posted that the shooter “claimed to be transgender,” a claim that Elon Musk then amplified on X, writing: “There is a clear pattern here.”
This pattern, however, is one the far right have been trying to manufacture for the past few years as a routine scapegoating tactic in the wake of mass violence. “The fact of the matter is a shooter is more likely to be a non-transgender white male rather than a transgender person,” LGBTQ legislative researcher Allison Chapman told Truthout. “The right-wing media machine has been quick to blame a trans person in almost all recent shootings and this time it just happened to be plausible.”
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey condemned the transphobic backlash, saying that anyone “using this as an opportunity to villainize our trans community, or any other community out there, has lost their sense of common humanity.” He added on X that “thoughts and prayers” are not enough to confront the systemic causes of mass shootings.
Despite such “thoughts and prayers,” the Mass Shooting Tracker currently reports 339 mass shootings this year, leaving 388 people dead and nearly 1,500 wounded. Everytown for Gun Safety has recorded 91 incidents of gunfire on school grounds in 2025 alone.
Yet rather than confronting this crisis or advancing meaningful gun control — even though the shooter obtained the firearms legally — advocates say that the far right has instead chosen to weaponize the tragedy. “I’m absolutely disgusted by how the right-wing media and the Trump regime have tried to make this story about transgender people rather than the victims. They should be ashamed,” Chapman told Truthout.
Since returning to office, President Donald Trump has dramatically escalated efforts to roll back transgender rights. He directed the Food and Drug Administration to convene a panel to determine if hormone replacement therapy (HRT) increases a propensity for violence among trans people, and his administration has pushed bogus research on the efficacy of gender-affirming care for trans kids. He has also taken steps to pathologize trans people in what many trans people see as an effort to regulate and institutionalize transgender people.
“The Trump regime is desperate for a story to legitimize their attacks on the transgender community and this is simply a convenient way to demonize a community based on the actions of a singular person,” Chapman said.
Even in the rare instances when a mass shooter is transgender, the statistical reality remains: The overwhelming majority of such incidents are carried out by cisgender men. Meanwhile, transgender people are four times more likely to be the victims of violent crime — not the perpetrators.
“I’m terrified for my kids, I’m terrified for my community, and I’m terrified at the thought of what the Trump regime could do to me and my community in response to this tragedy,” Chapman told Truthout.
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