United States | News & Politics

Riiight the one backstabbed trans people for no reason.

Newsom’s pivot came early, and it wasn’t just rhetorical. Reporting this year revealed that his office quietly worked behind the scenes to block or bury transgender protection bills in California. One measure, requiring judges in custody disputes to consider whether parents affirmed their LGBTQ+ children, was vetoed outright. Lawmakers say others were discouraged from moving forward under pressure from the governor’s office. This caution came precisely as red states were escalating their crackdowns, enacting increasingly hostile laws. California could have served as a bulwark—a safe ground—but instead, Newsom hit the brakes.

The rhetoric quickly followed. Newsom launched his podcast and began courting right-wing personalities. In one appearance with Charlie Kirk—the far-right activist whose network has poured tens of millions into anti-trans campaigns—Newsom declared he was “completely aligned” with Kirk on some transgender issues. He blamed a 2014 California law protecting transgender equality for allowing trans teens to compete while discussing a transgender runner at San Jose State University. Newsom also joined Kirk in targeting transgender incarcerated people and agreed that society must be “more sensitized” to what Kirk called the “butchery” of transgender youth—right-wing shorthand for gender-affirming care.

And as we’ve seen before, targeting transgender people never stays confined to sports. Sports are simply the entry point—a wedge to justify broader anti-trans policy, just as they have been since the beginning of the modern debate over transgender rights. Newsom then appeared on the Shawn Ryan Show, another far-right podcast, where he expanded his rhetoric. He downplayed transgender people’s pronouns, saying, “I'm trying to understand as much as anyone else the whole ‘pronoun’ thing.” On medical care, he leaned on the Cass Review—a discredited report on transgender healthcare produced in the U.K. by advisors who also worked with Ron DeSantis to ban care in Florida. And in one of the most alarming moments, he speculated that 25 might be too early for someone to transition—a talking point straight out of the far-right’s playbook, where bans on transition until 25 are openly floated. In some places, they’re already close: Puerto Rico has banned transgender care up to age 21.

Newsom is following a pipeline transgender people have seen time and again. Transphobia rarely stays confined to one small corner; it’s almost never just a one-off statement. Those who embrace it even slightly almost always end up sliding further into opposition to nearly every facet of transgender existence. We’ve watched this radicalization play out with comedians, children’s book authors, tech billionaires, and more. It’s a pattern so well known that even anti-trans activists acknowledge it. Terry Schilling of the Republican American Principles Project once admitted as much: “The women’s sports issue was really the beginning point in helping expose all this because what it did was, it got opponents of the LGBT movement comfortable with talking about transgender issues.”

Some may argue, as they often do when transgender people raise concerns about Gavin Newsom, that the alternative would be worse. And in many respects, Trump or whatever Trump-like candidate emerges in 2028 would be worse than Newsom on a host of issues. But even here, for transgender people, the calculation is not so straightforward. Right now, the community has one thing going for it: one major political party still passes protective legislation and has not joined the litany of anti-trans policies escalating in red states. If that fragile dichotomy collapses—if Democrats too decide that transgender people can be sacrificed for political gain—the result will not be a lesser evil. It will be a political consensus that our rights are gone, and that outcome could be even worse.

One only has to look to the United Kingdom to see what happens when both major parties decide transgender people are expendable. For years, right-leaning parties targeted trans people relentlessly, while Labour offered tepid, lukewarm support. In the lead-up to recent elections, that support collapsed. Multiple Labour leaders determined that trans people were safe to sacrifice, culminating in the party leader’s now-infamous declaration that he does not believe transgender women are women. Today, the country is pursuing a nationwide bathroom ban, and youth care has been practically outlawed. In a political environment where both left and right agree that your existence is negotiable, there is no one left to fight for you. It is untenable—and if such sentiment takes root inside the Democratic Party, it could take generations for transgender Americans to claw back even the most basic of rights.

https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/why-transgender-people-are-not-feeling