HHS published a report tying gender-affirming care to left-wing authoritarianism and political violence, using an unvalidated survey scale

On August 26, 2026, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced the release of a report titled "Where the Clinic Meets the Movement: Does Gender Ideology Arm Left-Wing Authoritarian Psychology?," commissioned through the department's Office of Population Affairs (OPA) and published under HHS's own name. The report, based on a preregistered survey of roughly 1,200 U.S. adults, claimed that individuals who scored higher on a scale measuring support for gender-affirming clinical guidance were more likely to hold left-wing authoritarian views and to say political violence could be justified in some cases, a correlation the authors said held even after accounting for political party alone. It was co-authored by Network Contagion Research Institute head Joel Finkelstein, Manhattan Institute fellow Colin Wright, Rutgers professor Lee Jussim, and Rutgers students Ohad Fedida and Danit Finkelstein, and was published without peer review or institutional review board oversight.

Independent researchers disputed the report's methodology. American University associate professor Andrew Flores said the psychological scales used "have never been validated. They just made them up on their own," and described the study's design as "stacking the deck" toward the correlation it was built to find. Other critics noted the survey's sample skewed heavily Democratic-leaning and included few transgender or nonbinary respondents, and that its measure conflated ordinary support for gender-affirming norms, such as using someone's preferred name, with a willingness to justify violence. The Human Rights Campaign and the Southern Poverty Law Center both criticized the report as ideologically driven rather than scientific; SPLC's R.G. Cravens called it "anti-LGBTQ ideology seeking legitimation from the federal government."