It’s been almost reassuring to think of the anti-trans platforms that politicians have been running on as purely political messaging designed to invoke tribalism. We’re an “other” that’s easy to rile up a base against. But the very real harm that we’re seeing, the depth of it, and the way that it has started to happen in the shadows is a reminder that the politicians might not believe we’re the devil, but they’re puppeteered by true believers in the shadows whose goal is to harm us.
Donald Trump in 2016 was perfectly happy to have Caitlyn Jenner use whichever bathroom she wanted to in Trump Tower—an offer that she took him up on. He simply didn’t think that trans people in bathrooms were an issue.
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But by the 2024 election cycle, Trump’s biggest concern in the world was trans girls playing sports, and he thought that bathroom bans were the way forward for America. It was easy at that point to see he had picked up the political bullhorn that had been tested by others in his party and used it to get him to the White House for a second time.
When it did, it was with great bluster that he signed a series of executive orders against trans people, from “Two Sexes” to banning “mutilation” (by which he meant gender-affirming care), and of course “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports.” It was a great victory for his supporters and showed his base that he’s a man of his word (at least on issues that will have next to no effect on their daily lives or the cost of their groceries).
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It’s easy to say that he’s just riling up his base, but if this were all political maneuvering and nothing more, it could have easily stopped there. Alternatively, it could have been limited to the occasional outburst that we’ve seen in his speeches against trans people existing in the world, appearing in TV shows, or whatever else he needs to bring up to distract from the Epstein Files and the price of gas.
But that’s simply not what we’ve seen on the ground as trans people. What we’ve seen is persistent harassment and intimidation of the trans community for no reason but the cruelty of it.
In July 2025, the Department of Justice (DOJ) issued over 20 subpoenas to hospitals seeking to collect private and personal data about trans youth, their medical providers, and their healthcare. At the time, Fox News covered it triumphantly, declaring “Trump’s Justice Department targets doctors, clinics who provide sex change procedures to minors” (which is certainly one way to describe puberty blockers that are routinely prescribed to cis kids with precocious puberty). That single headline appears to be the last time that they reported on the matter.
Because of those subpoenas and other threats to federal funding, multiple hospitals have suspended their gender care programs for trans youth, with some then resuming care only to suspend it again. That leaves trans youth unable to access their healthcare or unsure whether they’ll still be able to next month.
That has all been an uphill battle for the DOJ, with taxpayer money spent to fight in court to defend and enforce the subpoenas. While eight judges have now quashed their subpoenas, the DOJ has gone to a court across the country to seek an order to enforce a subpoena, and they’ve since turned to criminal subpoenas. But the DOJ’s efforts aren’t being touted by Trump or the right-wing media. Their victories aren’t celebrated, and their defeats aren’t even used to cast the left as the devil.
There’s real harm being done to trans people, their families, and their healthcare providers. There’s a massive invasion of privacy going on. But to what end for Trump and his ilk? There’s no political kudos to be found here.
Similarly, states have been excitedly working to stop trans people from being able to have driver’s licenses with their correct gender markers on them. At least nine states have now made gender marker updates on IDs impossible to obtain, with Kansas going so far as to revoke all previously corrected driver’s licenses without notice.
The inability for trans people to have an ID that accurately reflects their gender identity makes it dangerous for them to exist in public life, whether that be for driving, going to a bar, or even applying for a job. But these moves aren’t being championed by politicians as we head up to the midterms. They’re not cheering the fact that they’re hurting trans people just like they promised they would.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) was one of the earliest officials to start targeting trans driver’s licenses when he started making a list of people trying to correct their gender marker. He’s now running for the U.S. Senate. But his campaign isn’t focused on the harm he’s done to trans Texans.
When Wyoming made it so trans people couldn’t update their driver’s licenses, they did it in such a way that, for a while, nobody even noticed. There was no press release, no media reports, and thus no political cache to be gained with the right-wing base.
This has all stopped being about fanfares and rallies and agitating a base against a marginalized group. Now it’s just about hurting that group of people in any way they can.
When it comes to the politics of it all, it’s clear that conservative think tanks and groups like the Heritage Foundation and the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) decided that trans people were the next tribalist tactic they could run on after same-sex marriage was passed. For most of the politicians they support, it seems like that was all this was: a tactic.
But the Heritage Foundation was behind Project 2025, and many of its architects now sit in executive positions and clearly have Trump’s ear. That includes FCC Chair Brendan Carr, who is starting his war on gender identity in TV shows.
For those people, this is about dogma. They truly hate trans people and all that we represent.
Whether that’s the threat we pose to the patriarchy, or the vision of a pliable American family that they want to put forward, they just want to end trans people. They’re the true believers of the anti-trans movement, and they really want this harm done.
All the bluster of the man at the podium is their disguise so people can say, “but he doesn’t really mean that,” as they happily vote for these policies that are killing us.
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