The past few months have been a frightening and deadly time for the transgender community. The Communist Party USA joins the transgender community in mourning the lives of Eryka Caldwell, Juniper Blessing, Kelsey Elem, Davonta Curtis, and Shyyell Diamond Sanchez-McCray, all murdered in the past two months. This violence against the transgender community, and Black trans women in particular, must be called what it is: fascist terror.

Individuals alone did not kill these women; these murders are the product of a fascist anti-trans campaign, which the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention has warned “is squarely within the early to middle stages of a genocidal process against trans people, the goal of which is to completely erase transgender people not only from public life but also from existence in the U.S. and globally.” These killings are the planned and intended result of a campaign of eradication and oppression sponsored by the most reactionary elements of monopoly capital.

Acts of individual violence against trans women are shaped by and sanctioned through the legal and ideological warfare waged upon the transgender community by the fascist Trump administration and its billionaire backers. They are part and parcel of MAGA fascism’s widespread attacks on women, Black communities, and working people, serving as a key component of the fascist right’s strategy to consolidate power.

However, we must be clear that such a campaign has had some bipartisan support, with eight House Democrats just this week voting in support of the “Don’t Say Trans” bill, an attack on educators that also puts transgender students’ safety at risk. This blatant capitulation from the corporate wing of the Democratic Party must likewise be condemned for enabling the fascist assault on democracy and civil rights.

This spike in anti-trans violence is not anomalous or new. This past year was the “sixth consecutive record-breaking year” in anti-trans bills in the United States. From 2021 to 2025 alone, the number of anti-trans bills has increased by 668 percent. These bills include attacks on lifesaving medical care for transgender people and attempts to charge them with fraud, making transness itself a punishable offense. Alongside these bills are attacks on universities like Smith College for admitting transgender women, campaigns of repression linking transgender people with terrorism, and attacks on doctors providing trans people with medical care, leading to the establishment of a “detransition clinic” in Texas. Together these represent a concerted effort to eradicate transgender people through any means available.

The Communist Party USA resolutely condemns this murderous campaign of transphobic bigotry, which we denounce as a genocidal campaign against some of the most vulnerable members of our working class. We call on our clubs, and all people, to take action to defend the rights of our transgender siblings, and to fight back against these attacks on our communities in the memory of Eryka, Juniper, Kelsey, Davonta, Shyyell, and the many others whose lives were stolen by fascist hate.

We must mobilize to beat back legislative attacks and win fighting resolutions in our unions and mass organizations to defend the transgender community. Together, we must build a working-class movement determined to defend the rights of, and stop the violence against, the transgender community, and the LGBTQ+ community at large, if we seek to truly defeat the onslaught of fascism.

Images: Hospital starts sending federal investigators trans kids’ medical records by lgbtqnation.com. Creative Commons.