Thirty-nine people were shot in Chicago over Juneteenth weekend. Six of them died. A dozen were hit in a single mass shooting Friday evening after an SUV pulled up on a crowded street and two occupants opened fire on victims ranging in age from 17 to 47.
Mayor Brandon Johnson took to social media on Sunday to talk about none of it.
Instead, Johnson posted a lengthy statement renewing Chicago's "Transfemicide State of Emergency" — a declaration he first signed as Executive Order 2024-2 back in 2024, creating what the city calls a "Transfemicide Working Group." The renewal expanded the original order with new frameworks including "trauma-informed safety programs," transgender-led organization funding, "gender-affirming" healthcare access for minors, expanded housing initiatives, and workforce development. The city also created a new bureaucratic post: Antonio King was named Chicago's first Director of LGBTQ+ Affairs.
"For too many transgender Chicagoans, the sense of belonging they deserve in their city has been denied by exclusion and barriers to opportunity in spaces that should feel safe and welcoming," Johnson wrote. "Since declaring a Transfemicide State of Emergency, our administration has strengthened the City's capacity to support LGBTQ+ Chicagoans."
As Louder with Crowder reported, the word "transfemicide" is defined by activists as the "targeted killing of a transgender woman motivated by transphobic and misogynistic hatred." Sounds terrifying until you look at the actual numbers. According to Gateway Pundit's Cassandra MacDonald, one trans woman has been killed in Chicago in all of 2026. One. In a city approaching 200 total homicides this year. Between 2016 and 2024, the total across eight years was 14.
As commentator Wilfred Reilly put it: "The number of trans women killed in Chicago last year was zero. There were 416 murders."
Rep. Jim Jordan didn't mince words either. "39 shot. 6 dead. Democrat-run Chicago."
The responses kept coming. Rep. Brandon Gill of Texas wrote, "Nobody knows what a 'Transfemicide State of Emergency' is. This is what the Mayor of Chicago is focused on." Matt Walsh called it "beyond parody. And delusional." Former White House Deputy Chief of Staff James Blair simply noted, "'Transfemicide State of Emergency.' We are running out of sentences."
Perhaps the sharpest line came from commentator Jarvis Best: "Everyone is dunking on this but I think it's NICE that Mayor Johnson finally found a type of murder he doesn't like. Baby steps."
Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon issued something closer to a warning than a quip. "Reminder that ALL Chicagoans are entitled to the equal protection of the laws," Dhillon wrote. "If Chicago uses this inchoate gibberish theory to preference government spoils to trans identifying people or subordinate women's rights... will investigate and take action, if appropriate."
Johnson's administration pointed to a Chicago Sun-Times report linking anti-trans violence to broader structural barriers in housing, healthcare, and workplace policies — framing the declaration as addressing systemic issues rather than raw body counts. The city's expanded framework directs the Chicago Commission on Human Relations and the Chicago Police Department to develop new strategies focused specifically on violence against transgender individuals, with priority given to non-white transgender people.
This is the same mayor who discontinued ShotSpotter, the gunshot-detection system that helped police respond to shootings in the neighborhoods getting shot up every weekend. He killed the tool that finds actual bullets to fund programs built around a word most people had never heard before Sunday.
President Trump weighed in from a different angle. "Lots of Killing going on in Chicago," he posted. "Why isn't Governor Pritzker calling me for help?" Governor J.B. Pritzker, for his part, said nothing about either the shootings or the declaration.
One trans death in six months. Two hundred total murders. A weekend where 39 people caught bullets and six stopped breathing. The mayor renewed a made-up word and created a new bureaucracy.
When the emergency is everything except the thing that's actually killing people, eventually people notice what you're not declaring an emergency about.