A Breitbart column by John Nolte published Monday argues that violence against transgender people has dropped by nearly half under President Trump, citing statistics that the writer says come from two advocacy groups and federal hate crime data. The piece, headlined “Nolte: Violence Against Transgenders Drops by Nearly Half Under Trump,” leans heavily on a Boston Globe article by David Mastio that reported on the same numbers.
According to the column, Advocates for Trans Equality acknowledged that “the number of violent deaths… has fallen nearly 50 percent from 53 in 2023 to 27 in 2025.” The Human Rights Campaign, Nolte writes, separately pointed to “a peak in 2021 of 47 deaths falling to 27 last year.” The piece also cites FBI hate crimes data showing what it describes as a decline in the abuse of trans people between 2024 and 2025. These figures were reported, per the column, in the Boston Globe, not gathered independently by Breitbart.
Manhattan Institute analysis and its framing
Nolte also highlights analysis from the right-leaning Manhattan Institute that he says has not been refuted by left-leaning groups, showing that transgender people “actually have a lower murder rate than does the population as a whole.” He uses that finding to argue that the rhetoric of a “genocide” against trans people does not match the data.
The framing is combative throughout. Nolte writes that “normal people are more likely to be murdered than transsexuals,” and he criticizes what he calls emotional blackmail from the “trans loons” based on what he describes as lies about murder rates and violence. He asserts that “leftists are using this phony genocide narrative to destroy even more of our institutions and to target our kids.” That language is opinion, not a finding of the underlying data, and the piece is labeled as a column rather than straight news.
Nolte goes on to state that people should be free to live as they choose, but draws a line at what he describes as demands on bathroom and locker room access and on women’s sports. “If you’re a guy who wants to live as a woman, go live as a woman; just keep my daughter out of it,” he writes, adding that “no one cares if you’re a transsexual, transvestite, or homosexual until you demand we care or come for our kids.”
Groups dispute the data’s completeness
The column acknowledges, without embracing, the position of advocacy groups that the numbers are incomplete. Nolte notes that those groups “insist the data is incomplete and shouldn’t be used to draw any conclusions about the prevalence of anti-trans violence.” Their stated reason, as reported in the Boston Globe piece, centers on the role of families and authorities who misname or misgender victims, making it difficult to determine from public records how many transgender people have died in violent incidents.
That caveat matters, because it means the decline Nolte describes is contested in its meaning even if the raw counts are drawn from the groups’ own tallies. The column does not present a competing methodology, but instead argues that groups are refusing to celebrate good news. “Are trans advocacy groups celebrating this documented drop in violence? Of course not…” Nolte writes.
Mastio’s Boston Globe piece: care over fear
Nolte quotes at length from Mastio’s Boston Globe article, in which Mastio writes that he cares about trans people, including a close family member, and argues the message of imminent death is harmful. “What LGBTQ rights groups are doing to these folks with this unrelenting message that death is waiting for them around every corner is not healthy,” Mastio writes. “They have their constituents living in fear when the best numbers we have show that the supposed ‘epidemic,’ ‘onslaught,’ or ‘genocide’ against trans people is not as potent as they suggest and is, in fact, lessening. That’s good news.”
Nolte characterizes Mastio as bending over backwards to establish his credentials as an ally while still seeming to care about transgender people as individuals. The Breitbart column takes the argument further, asserting that the left will never announce the decline because, in Nolte’s view, it benefits from keeping people afraid and divided.
He extends this to a broader critique of media coverage of race and crime, claiming that certain outlets publish what he calls lies suggesting “white people hunt black people” and that “Mississippi is still burning.” Those outlets, he says, “have been and should be banned from the White House.”
A theory on the cause
The column offers its own explanation for the drop: an overall decline in violent crime under Trump. “My guess is that violence against transsexuals has been cut nearly in half because the overall violent crime rate has gone down under Trump,” Nolte writes, crediting deportations of what he calls “a million-plus violent illegal aliens.” That is presented as a guess rather than a demonstrated conclusion, and the piece does not offer data tying deportation levels directly to the change in transgender homicide counts.
Nolte also questions the motives behind the 27 transgender murders recorded last year, writing, “Was it bigotry? I doubt it.” He reasons that if someone had been killed because of hatred toward a man in a dress, that story would receive round-the-clock coverage. He offers no data on the individual cases to support either direction.
The piece closes with a personal statement. Nolte writes that he despises the gay movement but has nothing against gay people, and that he hates the trans movement but has nothing against transgender people. He adds that if someone tried to enter a restroom with his wife inside, he would “knock him on his ass,” dress or no dress.
The overall thrust is an argument that the statistical trend contradicts the political rhetoric around anti-trans violence. Whether the data are complete enough to support that conclusion remains disputed by the very organizations whose figures are being cited — a tension the column notes but does not resolve.
Source: www.breitbart.com — https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2026/09/22/nolte-violence-against-transgenders-drops-by-nearly-half-under-trump/