In April 2026, a claim (archived) circulated online that the FBI had classified LGBTQ+ people as terrorists.
One Facebook user who shared the claim online wrote:
BREAKING🚨🏳️🌈 Trump's FBI just classified LGBTQ+ people as TERRORISTS. And it gets much worse...
Read this slowly because what I am about to tell you sounds like something from a dystopian novel. But it's REAL. It's happening right NOW. And it's funded with YOUR tax dollars.
Trump's new FBI budget includes a line item for combating what the administration calls gender extremism.
They created something called NSPM-7. National Security Presidential Memorandum 7. And in that document they equate being LGBTQ+ with being a domestic terrorist threat.
Other Facebook (archived) and Threads (archived) users also shared the claim and Snopes readers wrote in asking whether it was true.
In its March 2026 budget request to Congress, the FBI repeated (Page 13) a list of views allegedly associated with domestic terrorism that came from a Sept. 25, 2025, national security presidential memorandum. That memo, also known as NSPM-7, listed "Extremism on migration, race, and gender" as a possible motivator or indicator that a person or group might go on to commit acts of domestic terrorism or political violence. Another such view, according to the memo, was "hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality."
Neither document explicitly named being LGBTQ+ as a possible motivator, indicator of or belief associated with domestic terrorism. It was unclear whether the Trump administration (and by extension, the FBI), regarded being LGBTQ+ as gender "extremism" or as being hostile to "traditional American views." As it appeared in the Trump memo and FBI document request, this classification was vague and open to interpretation.
Because of the vague language used in NSPM-7 and uncertainty about who it might apply to, we leave this claim unrated.
Snopes contacted the White House to ask whether it regarded being LGBTQ+ or any of the subgroups within that acronym
Presidential memo laid out 'motivations and indicia'
U.S. President Donald Trump signed NSPM-7, titled "Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence," on Sept. 25, 2025.
That memo presented a new U.S. government strategy to counter domestic terrorism and political violence such as the killing of Charlie Kirk in 2025, the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in 2024, a 2022 assassination attempt against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the two attempts to kill Trump in 2024 and anti-immigration enforcement protests in Los Angeles and Portland, Oregon.
It classified the listed incidents as a "pattern of violent and terroristic activities under the umbrella of self-described 'anti-fascism'" and claimed such activities had "common recurrent motivations and indicia" (indicators) such as:
Anti-Americanism
Anti-capitalism
Anti-Christianity
Support for the overthrow of the United States Government
Extremism on migration, race, and gender
Hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality
Following this list of claimed indicators, the Trump administration's memo asked the National Joint Terrorism Task Force, the Justice Department, the Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service to investigate and prosecute individuals or groups who were funding or "engaged in acts of political violence and intimidation designed to suppress lawful political activity or obstruct the rule of law."
The memo did not explicitly list being LGBTQ+ as an indicator that someone might go on to commit acts of domestic terrorism or political violence. What constituted gender "extremism" or hostility toward "traditional American views" appeared open to interpretation.
The Trump administration has previously used the term "gender ideology extremism" to refer to the existence of transgender people, whose gender identity differs from their assigned sex at birth. It was unclear whether the administration employed that same definition in its September 2025 memo.
According to criticism of the memo by the American Civil Liberties Union, using vague language to direct domestic terrorism investigations like Trump's memo did dates back to at least 2001 and the passage of the Patriot Act, which defined domestic terrorism as "acts that are dangerous to human life and already criminal, which are intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population or influence government policy or conduct." The civil rights group said the use of that definition to investigate people with little factual basis remained a serious problem.
White House adviser Stephen Miller said on Sept. 25 that the Trump administration's memo specifically targeted violence committed by people on the political left. As Trump signed the memo, Miller said:
This is the first time in American history that there is an all of government effort to dismantle left-wing terrorism, to dismantle antifa, to dismantle the organizations that have been carrying out these acts of political violence and terrorism.
Miller further vowed to "uproot" organizations that he said committed "carefully planned" acts of terrorism on U.S. soil.
Agencies, departments adopt indicators
Since Trump signed NSMP-7, at least two further documents became public that revealed details about how his administration intended to use its broad language to target what it perceived to be violent left-wing domestic terrorists.
In December 2025, Snopes reported on a memo from then-Attorney General Pam Bondi that instructed the FBI to compile a list of potential extremists as defined by NSMP-7 and tasked the DOJ with prosecuting the "most serious, readily provable offenses."
Bondi's memo included the same list of beliefs as Trump's September 2025 memo. It did not explicitly mention LGBTQ+ people as potential perpetrators of domestic terrorism or political violence.
Then, in March 2026, the DOJ submitted its 2027 FBI Budget Request to Congress that asked (Page 17) for more than $166 million for counterterrorism efforts that included the "implementation of NSPM-7 requirements."
The FBI wrote (Page 13) that domestic terrorists posed an "elevated threat" to the U.S. It again used the same list of beliefs or "motivators and indicia" that NSMP-7 laid out and said acts of violent conduct were "commonly" associated with views described by those indicators, which again included "extremism on migration, race, and gender" and "hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality."
According to its 2027 budget proposal, the FBI had already implemented the Trump administration's proposed new legal framework for identifying and prosecuting potential perpetrators of domestic terrorism or political violence through the NSPM-7 Joint Mission Center.
That center consisted of experts from 10 different agencies who reportedly (Page 13) used "intelligence, operational support, and financial analysis to proactively identify networks and prosecute domestic terrorist and related criminal actors."
Snopes contacted the FBI to ask how many investigations or prosecutions the center's work had produced and await a reply.