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The Boston Globe published an opinion piece on Tuesday declaring that violence against transgender people was “going down” under President Donald Trump, contrary to warnings from transgender advocacy groups.
The article, written by former USA Today columnist David Mastio, cited statistics from Advocates for Trans Equality and the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) that Mastio said showed substantial declines in recorded violent deaths in recent years. Despite this, Mastio noted that the organizations have continued warning about violence against transgender people.
“Advocacy groups insist the data is incomplete and shouldn’t be used to draw any conclusions about the prevalence of anti-trans violence,” Mastio wrote. “That’s due, they say, to the bigotry of families and authorities who misname and misgender the victims, making it hard to discern from public records how many transgender people are dying.”
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David Mastio wrote in The Boston Globe that the number of transgender victims of violence has declined in recent years. (Stefani Reynolds/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
The article’s headline read, “In Trump’s America, violence against transgender people isn’t going up — it’s going down.”
He continued, “Still it’s hard to imagine that as awareness about the transgender community has grown, misgendering and pronoun-swapping have become more common in police reports and news accounts than they were a decade ago, when another prominent LGBTQ organization, the Human Rights Campaign, began publishing its own numbers on violence against transgender people. The HRC tallies, too, find a declining number of violent transgender deaths to mourn. The group found a peak in 2021 of 47 deaths falling to 27 last year. HRC described that 40 percent drop as an ‘ongoing onslaught of violence.'”
Mastio wrote, “But despite a hostile Trump administration and a barrage of anti-trans legislation across the country, the number of violent deaths the group documents has fallen nearly 50 percent from 53 in 2023 to 27 in 2025.”
Mastio also cited a report from the Manhattan Institute, which asserted that the transgender population actually has a lower murder rate than the population as a whole. He added that the HRC did not respond to a request for comment when asked to rebut the report.
The report was written by Vincent Lundgren and Manhattan Institute fellow Colin Wright.
Fox News Digital reached out to the HRC for comment.
The Advocates for Trans Equality told Fox News Digital that a “dip in one datapoint” does not suggest that transgender people are any safer today.
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“Anyone claiming trans people are safer today under the Trump administration is ignoring what’s happening. Right now, everyone in this country, trans people included, is facing Medicaid cuts, soaring gas prices, ICE terrorizing our communities, and attacks on the right to vote. On top of that, attacks on trans people have been relentless,” the organization said.
It continued, “This year alone, lawmakers across the country introduced over 700 anti-trans bills. Trans people are being cut off from gender-affirming care, denied IDs that match who they are, and housed in prisons that don’t match their gender. Any one of these makes trans people less safe. Together, they are a deliberate, hateful attack on the trans community under this administration, and people will die because of it.”
Manhattan Institute fellow Colin Wright called the Globe column a “shockingly sober article” that cited his report and said he was not surprised the HRC did not respond to Mastio.
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Advocates for Trans Equality disputed claims that transgender people were safer under the Trump administration. (Getty Images)
“That’s unsurprising because the HRC is engaging in fundraising propaganda. They don’t care about the truth, only promoting the narrative. Our report presenting the actual data is irrefutable. That’s why they have nothing to say in response,” Wright wrote on X.
In comments to Fox News Digital, Wright said he was glad to see a mainstream outlet report on his data and hoped the article marked a turning point for the media.
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“I do hope this is a sign that the media is no longer being held hostage by activists and is slowly being allowed to think again. At the Manhattan Institute, we believe that real justice requires an unwavering commitment to the truth. We have presented that truth in our report, and now the media must decide whether to acknowledge it or hide from it,” Wright said.
The Boston Globe told Fox News Digital in a statement, “This is a guest op-ed. The views expressed in the piece are those of the author. Globe Opinion publishes a wide range of viewpoints and perspectives.”