'Heritage Foundation caught pushing false stats in attempt to classify trans people as terrorists' & other Mon/Tue news briefs

The dirty hands of longtime anti-LGBTQ activist Roger Severino are all over the Heritage Foundation's attempt to classify trans people as terrorists.

Rightwing organization twists data to claim that half of mass shooters are transgender​ - Who else but the Heritage Foundation. And check out who is leading the charge: 

 Roger Severino, a vice president at the Heritage Foundation, defended the claim on X/Twitter by providing information from a dataset of only eight shootings, cherry-picked from Gun Violence Archive, an online archive on gun violence which draws data from law enforcement, media, government and commercial sources. The Gun Violence Archive has data for 4,147 mass shootings that took place in the United States between 2018 and 2025. Severino said that he only picked eight of the shootings because they’re “major shootings,” a term that has no strict definition. 

For those who don't know, Roger Severino has a long history of denigrating the LGBTQ community. And with his appointment in the first Trump Administration, he took it to the extreme. As Trump's director of the Office of Civil Rights at Health and Human Services, he attempted to push policies which endangered LGBTQ health. Severino's actions didn't simply border on animus. One could say that his policies were deliberate attempts to undermine the health of LGBTQ people while hiding behind the veneer of "religious freedom"

 In 2018, The Advocate claimed that he was attempting to "erase trans people out of existence" by pushing a memo which would say that gender identity doesn't exist and that gender is set at birth and defined by genitalia. Severino was also responsible for an attempt to create a rule which would roll back protections for the trans community against discrimination through Obamacare, and a "conscience rule" which said any healthcare worker could deny services to LGBTQ people based on "moral or religious" reasons. In November 2019, three different federal courts struck down the rule and one court found that HHS exaggerated a justification for the rule. Severino was pointed out in an NPR article to have contributed to that exaggeration.

 

Heritage Foundation uses false data to smear trans people as school shooters - The Advocate gives more details.

In other news:

MAGA Runs Wild With Claim ‘Thousands’ of Fans Wore Charlie Kirk Tribute T-Shirt at Penn State Game — By Using Clip That Shows Only Two - This new lie about Charlie Kirk perfectly encapsulates just how much of a fraud he was. 

Pentagon Pete’s ‘Manic’ Meltdowns Exposed by Aides - From The Daily Mail by way of The Daily Beast, so take it as you can. But is even a small portion of this is true, it says a lot of Hegseth's in claiming that trans troops would hurt the military when he is obviously the actual danger. 

This trans beauty pageant won’t be silenced by hate: “The girls are not afraid of who they are” - Don't back down even a little bit, ladies. You are beautiful and don't let anyone make you feel that you aren't.