The far right is using the Lakewood Church shooting for anti-trans attacks

Following a Sunday shooting at a Houston megachurch that wounded two people, conservatives have seized on aspects of the alleged perpetrator’s identity — and misinformation about it — to further their attacks on trans people and immigrants.

Police have disclosed that the shooter previously used male and female names as aliases, while noting that she consistently identified as female. Additionally, police said that she was the biological mother of a child who was seriously injured in the shooting. They also revealed that she had a label that read “Palestine” on the gun that was used, and had produced antisemitic writings that officials think could be related to a familial dispute.

Thus far, law enforcement is still working to establish a motive, but the reports of aliases have already led to incorrect claims that the shooter was a trans woman and that this aspect of her identity was tied to the attack.

Some on the right — including lawmakers and commentators — have amplified those claims, using them to suggest this act of violence was an example of the threat they claim trans people pose. Certain conservatives also highlighted the shooter’s background as an immigrant from El Salvador and used this information to attack migrants.

In addition to advancing their culture war messaging, focusing on the shooter’s identity arguably helped Republicans divert attention from the issue of gun control and the need for more firearm regulations in the wake of another frightening shooting.

It’s a response that’s similar to the conservative reaction to a 2023 school shooting in Nashville, when prominent GOP pundits also used the shooter’s transgender identity to reiterate false claims about how trans people are dangerous. And it’s one that reveals how this is becoming a more common tool in the GOP’s messaging playbook.

For example, conservative commentator Benny Johnson linked the Lakewood shooting with the Nashville shooting and another shooting in Denver, where the perpetrators were transgender. Johnson claimed that these incidents were evidence that “the modern LGBTQIA+ movement is radicalizing activists into terrorists.”

After any mass shooting, it’s worth asking questions about how it happened and how different political movements or policy choices could have contributed. But given the lack of information about the shooter’s motive or general views — and the outright factual inaccuracies about her — this response from the right appears to be simply capitalizing on this tragedy to advance their political aims.

The GOP reaction also comes as Republicans have pushed a swath of hardline anti-trans policies and anti-immigrant policies both at the federal level and in states across the country. Implicitly, their statements suggest that violence like the Houston shooting proves why such harsh policies are justified.

Law enforcement has yet to disclose a motive and is still investigating the rationale for the attack.

However, it’s been established that a 36-year-old woman entered Houston’s Lakewood Church — one of the largest megachurches in the country, and one led by celebrity televangelist Joel Osteen — around 2 pm local time Sunday, ahead of an afternoon service.

The woman, who lived in a suburb about 50 miles away from the church, had her 7-year-old son with her and began shooting an assault-style rifle shortly after entering the building. The suspect was shot and killed by two off-duty police officers who were acting as private security for the church at the time. Two people were injured, including the alleged perpetrator’s 7-year-old son, who was shot in the head, though it’s unclear who shot him. The shooter’s son remains in critical condition at the hospital. The other victim was a 57-year-old man who was shot in the leg and is in stable condition.

Police filings indicate that the suspect’s mother had previously gone to services at Lakewood. Per law enforcement, the shooter had a mental health history and multiple past arrests, but she was able to obtain a gun legally and had used it to threaten family members and neighbors. The Associated Press reported that the suspect had been placed under emergency detention in 2016.

Little is known about the Palestine sticker and the antisemitic writings that were found. The shooter had undergone an allegedly contentious divorce and police have floated the hypothesis she may have had a conflict with her ex-husband’s family, some of whom are Jewish.

In recent months, Republicans nationally and locally have launched rhetorical and policy attacks against trans people and immigrants, with this shooting marking their latest effort to continue them.

As Vox’s Nicole Narea and Fabiola Cineas have reported, anti-trans attacks across the country have centered on treating trans people as a threat to women’s sports and girls’ locker rooms, and on treating medical care as a threat to trans kids. At least 19 states across the country have enacted laws restricting kids’ access to gender-affirming care.

Republicans have also been focused on attacking migrants and describing them as part of an “invasion” of the United States, arguing that unchecked immigration will result in more criminals and gang members entering the country and abusing public services. Similarly, as both Republicans and Democrats have supported Israel’s military offensive in response to Hamas’s October 7 attack, there’s also been pushback toward people who support Palestinian rights, including congressional rebukes.

By targeting these groups, Republicans have sought to capitalize on people’s fears of trans people and migrants, and to suggest that the GOP’s policies are aimed at protecting their voters from these groups and their actions. In citing some of the Houston shooter’s characteristics, conservatives sought to point to her as a concrete example of the dangers their policies are purportedly seeking to shield people from.

In doing so, many were pointed in sharing the supposed details of the shooter’s background, offering inaccurate posts like Sen. Marco Rubio’s (R-TX) on X, formerly known as Twitter: “Church shooter was a migrant woman who apparently identifies as a man and had a ‘Palestine’ sticker on the rifle.”

Commentators like Johnson and the team behind the conservative social media account @LibsofTikTok also claimed that the shooter was transgender and emphasized that she was an immigrant from El Salvador.

As police clarified, the shooter in the Lakewood Church case is not trans. Some conservative media outlets, including Fox News, altered their framing of the shooting in response to this announcement, though others seem determined to emphasize this point as a way of amplifying their critiques of trans people and the other groups the shooter actually belonged to.