WASHINGTON — Another deadly school shooting at the hands of a trans-identifying killer is prompting discussions about investigations into transgender domestic terrorism — and what kind of emphasis authorities should put on suspects who are undergoing so-called gender-affirming care.
Asked by The Daily Wire if the White House would support a new classification such as transgender domestic terrorism, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Thursday that she would have to “check with the appropriate people.” But since then, The Daily Wire has learned that the White House’s draft national security strategy on domestic terrorism will specifically address transgender violence.
“I can report that the new draft U.S. Counterterrorism [plan] addresses the issue,” Sebastian Gorka, deputy assistant to President Donald Trump and senior director for counterterrorism, told The Daily Wire, asked whether there should be a transgender domestic terrorism classification.
Gorka says the document, Trump 2.0’s domestic counterterrorism plan, is now in the hands of several cabinet members and principals, including Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, top intelligence officials Tulsi Gabbard, John Radcliffe, and Kash Patel, as well as Stephen Miller, Trump’s influential homeland security adviser.
The attacker, Robin Westman, who changed his name from Robert as a teenager, opened fire on Annunciation Catholic Church last week as school children were attending the first daily mass of the school year. Westman killed two children and injured 17 other individuals before killing himself in the parking lot. He left behind a YouTube video showing a lengthy, manifesto-like journal filled with rantings against Jews, Christians, President Donald Trump, and others. It included a transgender flag, images of Jesus Christ on a target, and sketches of Annunciation Catholic Church. His writings demonstrate that he was profoundly mentally ill and regretted his trans-identification.
Westman’s actions came only two years after another trans-identifying killer, this one a woman who identified as a man, targeted Christian school children in Nashville. One week later, leaders of Catholic and independent schools in Minnesota had called on Governor Tim Walz to help prevent similar shootings, as The Daily Wire reported earlier this week. They feared that the next transgender-identifying shooter would target one of their schools, but the security funding was never authorized.
MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA – AUGUST 29: Fr. Dennis Zehren, pastor at Annunciation Catholic Church, stands in front of a boarded-up window bearing a message of hope outside of his church on August 29, 2025, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)
These are just two examples of a steady stream of transgender-related violence over the past decade.
Last year, a 29-year-old trans-identifying man who went by the name “Mia Bailey” shot and killed both his mother and father in Utah before he was ultimately arrested by police after a dramatic manhunt. Bailey was “transitioning from male to female,” local outlets reported, and told officers of his killing: “I would do it again.”
Also in 2024, authorities arrested a 26-year-old Massachusetts man accused of stabbing six people, including four little girls who said he laughed as he stabbed them in a movie theater, and killing another. The New York Post reported at the time that the individual, Jared Ravizza, posted photos online wearing “lipgloss, face glitter and painted pink nails,” described himself as “she” on Instagram, and had recently changed his name from Jared Christian Ravizza Jones to Jared Love Jones.
In 2022, authorities arrested a man who traveled from California to Maryland to assassinate Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh — that man, Nicholas Roske, represented himself online as a “trans gamer girl” who went by the name Sophie.
Also in 2022, a man who identified as “nonbinary” and went by “they-them” pronouns shot up a gay nightclub in Colorado Springs, killing five people before he was captured. And a man who killed five people and injured four others in a Philadelphia shooting spree posted photographs on social media of himself wearing women’s clothing, prompting speculation that he identified as transgender.
In 2020, authorities sentenced a trans-identifying teenager to life in prison for killing one student and injuring eight others in yet another transgender school shooting in Colorado.
In 2018, a 26-year-old trans-identifying killer who went by Snochia Moseley killed three workers at a Rite Aid warehouse in Aberdeen, Maryland, injuring three others, before taking his own life.
Gorka, who said the administration’s counterterrorism strategy addresses the pattern, argues that there was an ideological component to the Annunciation school shooting.
“What we should do is we should look at the early warning signals, the signs,” he told CNN’s Brianna Keilar, “we should be providing off-ramps, we should be providing mental health options for these individuals.”
The disturbing number of transgender-related crimes has prompted calls for federal authorities to specifically investigate transgender domestic terrorism — or at the bare minimum, to at least track these types of crimes.
“There’s simply no good way to track it, and no one’s even trying,” argued The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh. “The federal government doesn’t maintain any kind of database that lists crimes by trans-identifying individuals. They probably should have that database. We obviously need one, but one doesn’t exist at the moment. Media outlets are terrified of stigmatizing the quote-unquote trans community. And so for all practical purposes, we only ever hear about a violent crime committed by a trans-identifying individual.”
MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA – AUGUST 29: People visit a growing memorial outside of Annunciation Catholic Church on August 29, 2025, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)
Someone has to have noticed the warning signs with Westman, Gorka said on CNN.
“I find it hard to believe that an individual goes from getting his mother to sign a change of name certificate, age 17, and then just a handful of years later is mowing down innocent children in a church pew during a Catholic mass, and nobody realized there was a problem,” Gorka argued. “That is what we have to address to save the next children from the next atrocity. It’s not about the sexual proclivities of the individual, it’s the fact that nobody seems to notice a very disturbing pattern towards violence.”
“You don’t wake up one morning saying I’m going to do a video on YouTube threatening to kill the president, targeting Jews, targeting children, that doesn’t happen overnight,” he added. “Somebody saw that degradation, somebody saw those mental issues, and said nothing. That is what we have to prevent. The early warning signals must be addressed if children’s lives are to be saved.”
Journalist Andy Ngo, who has written extensively about possible trans militant cells in the United States, argues that the FBI should absolutely keep data on a subject’s gender identity, though the proposition might sound “woke” on first suggestion.
“It’s an important data point now since biological sex alone may be missing critical information about a criminal’s profile,” he argued to The Daily Wire. “For example, I think it’s relevant for criminologists and the public to know whether gender-diverse people are overrepresented in particular crimes. Convict data from other countries, like England and Wales, and Canada, show trans-identifying males are massively overrepresented as sex criminals.”
“We don’t have that federal data in the United States,” said Ngo. “I also think it’s past due for the FBI to develop a new ideological category within violent extremism tracking which monitors and gathers data among trans militant groups, which are all on the left, who call for and organize anti-government violence, domestic terrorism and the violation of others’ civil rights.”
Detransitioners previously interviewed by The Daily Wire say that when they sought out so-called “gender-affirming” hormones, such as testosterone and estrogen, they suffered from severe mental health issues, including anorexia, depression, anxiety, and more.
Jay W. Richards, a top gender ideology expert and director of the DeVos Center for Human Flourishing at the Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Wire that mental health issues absolutely play a role in transgender-related violence, since young people suffering from gender incongruence “often have other psychological disorders, such as depression, bipolar disorder, or severe anxiety.”
“And since we’re in the middle of the gender ideology craze, we would expect that some disturbed people who attack schools will also identify as ‘trans’ or ‘nonbinary,’” he reflected. “But we need to take seriously the possibility that gender madness, and cross-sex hormones themselves, might be contributing to these tragedies. Gender ideology is a form of collective madness. Why couldn’t it–and the medical interventions associated with it–make some teens worse off psychologically?”
Under President Joe Biden’s administration, the FBI was loath to release the manifesto of the trans-identifying Nashville shooter, claiming it would lead to conspiracy theories and inaccuracies. Daring news outlets ultimately published the disturbing entries of that killer, allowing the public to understand that this was a trans-identifying woman who specifically targeted Christians for their faith.
This type of action from the Biden Justice Department only emboldened critics of that administration, who argued that the Biden DOJ and FBI were ideologically focused on promoting transgenderism and targeting parents who dissented from gender ideology in schools and Latin Mass Catholics.
Former Attorney General Merrick Garland, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, and FBI Director Christopher Wray. (Photo by Samuel Corum/Getty Images)
“Instead of chasing down traditional Catholics, parents at school board meetings, and thousands of J6 Trump supporters in the biggest operation in history, maybe the FBI should have kept eyes on real domestic threats,” suggested The New York Post’s Miranda Devine last week, as more details emerged about the deadly Annunciation Church shooting.
Documents obtained by The Oversight Project indicate that under Biden, the FBI even instituted policies that blocked possible transgender domestic terrorists from investigation “by placing them in a highly protected class,” allowing agents to close complaints if information on the subject is based on an individual’s gender identity.
The FBI did not respond to requests for comment for this story.
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