In the wake of the assassination of Charlie Kirk and other violent incidents linked to transgender ideology, The Oversight Project is pressing the FBI to create a new domestic terrorism category: Transgender Ideology-Inspired Violence and Extremism (TIVE). The organization argues that the Bureau could then act immediately, without congressional approval, to “detect, disrupt, and dismantle TIVE cells.”
Mike Howell, president of the Oversight Project, stressed that this effort is not about labeling all transgender people as extremists but about responding to a dangerous trend. He explained that rhetoric equating words with violence has created a climate where troubled individuals feel justified in carrying out attacks. “If you believe someone is trying to ‘eradicate you,’ violence becomes justified. That’s the threat we’re facing,” Howell said.
The Oversight Project, which previously uncovered the autopen clemency controversy, is now urging federal law enforcement to apply consistent standards to emerging domestic terrorism threats and to close loopholes that allow ideologically motivated violence to incubate online and spill into real-world attacks.
When I interviewed Howell, he described the Oversight Project as an investigative and litigation group spun off from the Heritage Foundation earlier this year. Staffed by former federal agents and lawyers, the organization, in his words, “sues a lot of people.” Howell noted that his own background includes service as a congressional staffer and as a Trump administration official, with most of his government work focused on homeland security oversight and litigation.
Generally, when a shooting occurs, the media tries to suppress the fact that the shooter is transgender or a leftwing extremist. This suppression distorts crime statistics, making it difficult to identify trends. As a result, anyone who suggests that violence linked to transgender ideology is rising is often dismissed as homophobic or accused of spreading misinformation.
Howell explained that the problem is not new. He said that when crime and shooting statistics were first being categorized years ago, officials manipulated the data to highlight white males as the primary perpetrators, while downplaying African American gang violence and related crimes. “Basically the crime stats have been junk ever since,” he argued.
According to Howell, the manipulation has only worsened. He claimed that officials are now grouping gang shootings and prison crimes together in order to obscure the growing rate of transgender-related crime and domestic terrorism. “Everyone’s astroturfing the same cooked statistics back at us,” he said, adding that the Oversight Project is pushing back against these distortions by putting forward its own research.
One of the central goals, Howell stressed, is to secure a federal definition and categorization of Transgender Ideology-Inspired Violence and Extremism. This would not only help law enforcement but also enable accurate data collection. As he explained, “A clear definition and categorization from the feds would allow for actual data collection on this, and not just a bunch of think tanks coming at it from a partisan lane or a Washington Post lane. That’s one of the ancillary benefits. We can actually understand the problem, let alone mitigate it and end it.”
Howell pointed out that while U.S. law provides a definition of domestic terrorism, there is no direct criminal penalty tied to the designation. “and there’s not a statutory pathway for the designation,” he said. This does not mean the federal government is unable to designate an activity as terrorism, only that prosecutions must rely on other criminal statutes.
One of the main challenges is that domestic terrorism is defined differently across various agencies and institutions. For his work, Howell relies on 18 U.S.C. § 2331(5), which defines domestic terrorism as activities that involve violent acts or acts dangerous to human life that violate U.S. law (or would if committed in the U.S.); that are intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population, influence government policy through intimidation or coercion, or affect government conduct through mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping; and that occur primarily within U.S. territory.
Howell explained that the Oversight Project has focused on the FBI because the Bureau has the authority to trigger action across the government. The FBI already maintains domestic violent extremism categories, administered through its counterterrorism branch, a framework that has existed since the Oklahoma City bombing and the Clinton years, when Merrick Garland helped expand domestic surveillance focused on white supremacy.
Democrats remain intensely focused on combating white supremacy, fascism, and right-wing extremism. Yet in the United States today, there are no organized groups openly identifying as fascist, and while right-wing extremism exists, its threat has often been exaggerated by political bias in reporting. In contrast, left-wing extremism has become a persistent and visible problem, with open support even from some figures within government.
According to Howell, the refusal to label left-wing violence as domestic terrorism is part of the problem. He argued that transgender ideology is closely bound up with violence and that such violence is predictable. He described it as a form of stochastic terrorism, where activists and their supporters insist that if transgender individuals are not fully affirmed, they will face eradication, suicide, or self-harm.
Howell said this rhetoric casts ordinary people who reject radical ideology as participants in violence, creating a worldview of permanent struggle. In his words, “We think that is the grounds from which people become extreme and adopt domestic terrorism, because they’ve basically accepted this worldview that’s life and that’s struggle. It’s similar to jihadism in so many ways.”
Creating a new domestic terrorism category, Transgender Ideology-Inspired Violence and Extremism (TIVE), would give the FBI broader tools to detect, disrupt, and dismantle TIVE cells, making the nation safer.
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