Trump’s HHS built a survey linking trans acceptance to violence. Its authors undercut the conclusions

The Trump administration decided that support for transgender people belonged in the nation’s counterterrorism apparatus. Months later, it commissioned a study that appears designed to tell the government it was right.The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on Wednesday released a 24-page report claiming that people who support transgender identities, chosen names, pronouns, and parental acceptance are more likely to hold “left-wing authoritarian” beliefs and consider certain acts of political violence justified.HHS promoted the findings under a headline declaring that people associated with “radical gender ideology” are more likely to justify political violence. Assistant Secretary for Health Adm. Brian Christine said the study raises questions about “what happens when ideology is given the authority of medicine.”The report does not establish that affirming transgender people causes violent attitudes. It does not measure whether anyone committed, planned, or intended to commit violence. It does not compare left- and right-wing violence. It does not demonstrate that transgender people are disproportionately violent. Only 13 of its 1,208 respondents identified as transgender or gender-nonconforming.And its authors acknowledge that the correlations they found cannot establish causation. A person’s politics could influence both sets of answers, authoritarian tendencies could influence their views about transgender people, or some unmeasured factor could affect both.In other words, the study cannot answer the inflammatory question its title poses: “Does Gender Ideology Arm Left-Wing Authoritarian Psychology?”Related: CNN anchor embarrasses White House counterterrorism chief over false transgender mass shooter statsWhat HHS labeled ‘radical gender ideology’Researchers affiliated with Rutgers University, the conservative Manhattan Institute, and the Network Contagion Research Institute created their own five-question “Clinical Gender Aff