Most Democratic elected officials are behaving with stunning timidity, at the exact moment that the crisis facing American democracy demands strength and aggression. Combining the neuroses of insecure teenagers and the poll-monitoring reticence of politicians fit for parody, they appear both weak and bashful. They are acting like losers, but their constituents will suffer the gravest losses.
Chief among those endangered constituents are transgender and nonbinary people. The first targets in President Trump’s autocratic assault on civil rights, minority protection under the law and democratic representation, trans Americans face a state of emergency: They find their liberties under attack, their economic and educational opportunities under threat and their very humanity under question. The increasingly rabid Trump White House is leading a nationwide charge of Republicans in Congress, state legislatures, and governor’s mansions to declare war on trans citizens.
Running on the noxious fumes of Christian nationalism, they are following the script of authoritarian regimes by beginning their fight against pluralism and elementary freedom by attacking what they perceive as an easy target. At less than one percent of the country’s population, and already the victims of relentless right-wing slander, trans people simply don’t have sufficient power, influence or visibility on their own to defeat the campaign against their basic civil rights.
Less than three years ago, things were very different. Democratic leaders understood an imperative to defend their transgender constituents and, in doing so, to promote the bedrock principle of universal human rights.
In 2022, Joe Biden hosted an LGBTQ Pride event on the White House South Lawn. Reacting to the passage of 78 state-level bills that year diminishing LGBTQ rights, along with book bans targeting stories about LGBTQ youth (along with other marginalized groups), Biden said, “I want to send a message to the entire community, especially to transgender children: You are loved. You are heard. You’re understood. And you belong.”
That simple but powerful message of respect and solidarity has faded into silence. After losing the 2024 presidential election by razor-thin margins in the swing states, Democrats have staged a wholesale retreat, apparently concluding that cowardice and complicity are better political tactics than persuasion and protest. Trans Americans, including the children that Biden mentioned, have almost literally been pushed overboard. be damned. Several Democrats have even joined the Republicans in attacking trans rights, blaming the issue for their November defeat.
Rep. Tom Suozzi of New York excoriated Democrats for “pandering to the far left” on issues related to transgender people. Rep. Seth Moulton of Massachusetts offered a similar admonition, expressing fear that a “formerly male athlete would run over” one of his daughters on an athletic field.
Gilberto Hinojosa, the former chair of the Texas Democratic Party, presented a binary choice between supporting transgender rights and winning elections, saying, “You can support transgender rights up and down … or you can understand that there’s certain things that we just go too far on.”
Rahm Emanuel, the former Chicago mayor who left office in disgrace after covering up video evidence of a Black teenager being shot by police, recently said while discussing education policy, “I don’t want to hear another word about the bathroom. I don’t want to hear another word about the locker room. You better start focusing on the classroom.” The craven implication is that civil rights for a minority of students is somehow a distraction from improving educational outcomes.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a likely presidential contender in 2028, recently invited Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA on his podcast. Kirk, who organized youth voters for Donald Trump, has said that women over 30 “aren’t attractive in the dating pool” and that he’d feel nervous on a plane with a Black pilot. He’s an old hand at anti-trans hatred, even implying that the social acceptance of trans people is a threat to civilization. Laughing it up with Newsom, Kirk asked him, “Would you say no to men in female sports?”
“Well, I think it’s an issue of fairness,” Newsom said without hesitation, “I completely agree with you on that. It is an issue of fairness, it’s deeply unfair.” He then seemed to give credit to Kirk and his far-right pals, remarking, “And I saw that — the last couple years, boy did I [see] how you guys were able to weaponize that issue at another level.”
The trans teenagers whom Democratic heavyweights are so willing to discard are showing greater courage by showing up at school every day school than the likes of Newsom can display from seats of political power.
Democrats’ mass retreat on transgender rights follows a sickly pattern of self-defeat. More than 20 years of surrender on immigration have helped to create the political conditions for mass deportation and efforts to end birthright citizenship. The refusal to defend “big government” has rendered Democrats helpless as Elon Musk takes a chainsaw to essential public agencies and services.
There are notable exceptions, although they are distressingly few. In response to her party’s obsequiousness, Rep. Summer Lee of Pennsylvania said recently, “There is no poll result that could make me turn on marginalized people. What I challenge us to do is find maybe better or different ways to protect folks, and better and different ways to lift up the messaging that…resonates with the people.”
Lee is one of the most progressive members of Congress, but evidently she is also one of the most old-fashioned. She actually believes that the purpose of politics is to convince voters of important ideas through debate, rhetoric and advocacy. Those looking to follow Lee’s counsel might want to consider beginning with a description of the cruelty that Trump, Republicans in Congress and many state governments are inflicting on their fellow Americans.
Kim Reynolds, the governor of Iowa, recently signed a bill stripping trans men and women of civil rights and employment protections, Indiana has enacted harsh restrictions against gender-affirming care, and in deeper red states such as Texas, there is a large scale agenda to “restrict trans lives,” in the words of a Texas Tribune headline.
Meanwhile, there is an attempt to erase awareness of trans existence. According to PEN America, 25 percent of the books banned from libraries and schools in 2024 featured LGBTQ characters.
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Since taking office, the Trump administration has denied trans people the ability to self-select their gender on passports, issued an executive order banning trans women from college sports, and in their most cruel and ignorant move, discharged all trans people from military service.
As if these policies were not sufficiently destructive, the Trump White House is also seeking to erase transgender people from American history. The National Park Service has eliminated the ‘T’ from its page explaining the importance of the 1969 Stonewall uprising in New York. It now refers only to the “LGB” movement.
That effacement tries to create a counterfactual absurdity. Masha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, two transgender women, are widely recognized as participants in the revolt against police brutality during the Stonewall raid. Even more significant, this erasure places the Trump administration in a grim tradition, that of authoritarian regimes eager to control knowledge and rewrite history.
There is good reason why George Orwell coined the phrase “memory hole” in “1984.” He writes in that classic novel, “When one knew that any document was due for destruction, or even when one saw a scrap of waste paper lying about, it was an automatic action to lift the flap of the nearest memory hole and drop it in, whereupon it would be whirled away on a current of warm air to the enormous furnaces which were hidden somewhere in the recesses of the building.”
Trump and his acolytes, driven by the dark forces of Christian nationalism, is now trying to throw all evidence of transgender history and humanity down the memory hole. Tragically, it seems to be working, largely because Democrats refuse to express outrage, or even speak up, in reaction to a vicious reversal of civil rights policy.
If they could summon minimal imagination and self-confidence, Democrats might understand that even when it comes to the favorite talking point of transphobic prejudice and paranoia — participation in school sports — the issue is not as simple as uninformed or instinctive reactions would suggest.
The NCAA estimates that there are fewer than 10 transgender athletes out of 510,000 participants in college sports. While it’s more difficult to track the immense universe of high school sports, the numbers at that level are likely just as small. For example, of the 170,000 high school athletes in Michigan, only two are trans girls. The typical response to such statistics is to assert that trans women and girls dominate athletic competitions, ruining the sport for everyone else involved. Here, again, empirical evidence contradicts so-called common sense.
An International Olympic Committee study conducted at the University of Brighton in England and published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine found that trans women consistently performed worse than cisgender women in tests measuring lower body strength, lung function and handgrip strength. Furthermore, the differences in bone density were negligible.
The anti-trans brigade often focuses on Lia Thomas, a transgender woman who became a dominant competitor in NCAA Division I swimming. Her specific case presents a moral dilemma with no easy solution, but the important point is that examples like Thomas are exceedingly rare. Relying on what we might call the traditional conservative policy — allowing local officials and independent organizations to make their own rules — is likely the best approach. Surely that’s better than allowing exceptional cases to dictate national policy, not to mention turning one individual into a weapon against an already endangered minority.
To say “endangered” is hardly hyperbolic: Since 2022, GLAAD has recorded more than 1,850 incidents of anti-LGBTQ violence, including assault, arson attacks on LGBTQ bars, and bomb threats against children’s hospitals providing gender-affirming care. The FBI reports that 2023 was the highest year on record for anti-LGBTQ hate crimes, with more than 2,800 targeted attacks.
Democrats could, at the most basic level, at least display empathy for the increasing numbers of trans Americans who are victims of hate crime. They could stand in solidarity with the first trans member of Congress, Rep. Sarah McBride of Delaware, who has endured a series of hateful attacks from transphobic Republicans, including Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Nancy Mace of South Carolina.
The overwhelming majority of trans people simply want the freedom to live their lives as they choose. They aren’t attacking police officers, destroying federal property or attempting to overturn the results of an election. Republicans, of course, have turned the Jan. 6 insurrectionists into political prisoners and heroes. Trump has pardoned effectively all of them, including the most violent offenders. His new FBI director, Kash Patel, produced and promoted a record of the “January 6th Choir” singing the national anthem. If Republicans can celebrate criminals, vandals and members of hate groups, shouldn’t Democrats have the courage to support law-abiding transgender Americans, especially as they come under virulent and violent attack?
Bigotry is not only menacing, it is also ravenous and contagious. Anyone who believes that theocratic Republicans will stop at trans people is delusional. Lawmakers in nine states have already introduced bills calling on the Supreme Court to revisit Obergefell v. Hodges, the decision that made same-sex marriage legal. Justice Clarence Thomas has said that the Supreme Court should overturn the decision.
When the ‘T’ is erased from LGBTQ, the other letters are likely to follow. Who will be next?
