Trump-GOP Attack on Transgender Community Elicits Disturbingly Weak Democratic Party Response

Interview with Parker Malloy, publisher of the Present Age newsletter, conducted by Scott Harris

Throughout his 2024 election campaign, Donald Trump focused on three main issues: the demonization of immigrants of color, defaming members of the transgender community and his pledge to weaponize the government to exact retribution on his perceived political enemies. Despite Trump’s record of pathological lies, divisive rhetoric, a 34-count felony conviction, inciting the violent Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection and being found liable for sexual assault, the real estate developer and former reality TV star was elected by a narrow margin on Nov. 5, winning less than 50 percent of the vote.

Although the national debate on transgender rights wasn’t a top issue for most voters, Trump and the Republican party spent $215 million alone on network TV ads that vilified transgender people who make up just 1 percent of the U.S. population.  For years now, opposition to trans rights has been a major focus of the Republican party’s culture war. Since the beginning of 2023, GOP-governed states across the country have passed dozens of laws restricting trans people’s options for gender-affirming medical care, sports participation and public restroom access.

The FBI’s annual report on hate crimes for 2023, released in September, found incidents of crimes targeting Americans for their sexual orientation or gender identity rose to record numbers, even as violence in the nation overall continued to drop. Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Parker Molloy, publisher of the “Present Age” newsletter. Parker, a trans person herself, talks about her recent article, “One Day in Anti-Trans America,” discussing on government attacks on trans rights and the Democrats’ disturbingly weak response to this assault on the transgender community.

PARKER MALLOY: You know, obviously, Republicans thought they’re running explicitly against trans issues. Pretty much anyone who watches during the World Series or during NFL games, they were airing these ads nonstop that Kamala Harris cares for “‘they, them.’ Donald Trump cares about you.” That was kind of the message there. And it took shots at Harris for having basically in the past stood up for trans people’s Eighth Amendment rights to avoid a cruel and unusual punishment in prison, having health care taken away. That became a giant topic.

In the first month after the election, it was really interesting to see how Democrats were responding to that. I wrote a piece that I called, “One Day in Anti-Trans America.” It was this piece that came about because I noticed something striking. On Dec. 10, three pieces of journalism dropped that when viewed together paint a devastating picture of what’s happening with trans rights right now.

You had Rolling Stone reporting on how Democrats might abandon trans healthcare protections when Trump returns to office, despite having the power to prevent it. The Marshall Project documented a disturbing new policy in Florida prisons where trans women are being subjected to humiliating physical examinations. And HuffPost revealed how Republicans slipped an anti-trans healthcare restriction into the must-pass defense bill, essentially forcing military families to choose between their careers and their children’s health care.

So what struck me wasn’t the volume of views, but how it showed the attacks coming from every angle. You had federal legislation, state policies, party politics. And while the reporting itself was excellent, the picture it painted was grim. We’re seeing coordinated efforts to strip away trans rights through multiple channels simultaneously.

So what I wanted to do is I wanted to highlight how good journalism helps us understand and fight back. Each of these reporters on each of those stories did the hard work of digging beneath surface-level political rhetoric to show the real human impact of these policies, while also exposing how much of the justification for them relies on misleading claims and discredited research.

SCOTT HARRIS: And Parker, I did want to ask you, in looking at the Democrats’ response or non-response to the unbridled and vicious attacks on the trans community from the Trump campaign during the 2024 election, what are your concerns about the party’s stance on human rights, as it applies to the trans community? Because in a lot of the post-mortem discussion about the election after Kamala Harris lost, there were some Democrats who said, “You know, we just have to tamp down our advocacy for human rights when it comes to trans folks.”

And that was very concerning to hear.

PARKER MALLOY: Yeah, that was very concerning. I mean, I myself am trans. And so this affects me personally. And it was really frustrating during the campaign to watch as you would have Trump going on the attack, smearing trans people just the same way he smeared other groups.

You know, the same the same way Donald Trump went out there and accused migrants in Ohio of eating cats and dogs was the same way he smeared trans people and unfortunately, Democrats didn’t really respond to that. They sat quietly. When asked directly about the attacks, Kamala Harris in particular, she would she would just respond, “I will follow the law.”

It was it was not a particularly good defense of trans people. You know, she could have said, “Medical decisions for trans people, for all people should be left between a doctor and the patient. And if you’re talking about someone who’s a minor, you include their parents in the discussion as well.” Those are the lines that she could have used but didn’t.

In the aftermath of the election, it’s been frustrating to watch as some political strategists and a lot of people on social media will sit there and go, “They just gotta give up on this on this trans thing.”

But the truth is the Democrats haven’t been running on trans rights. If you look for, you know, how much Harris talked about it during the campaign, the truth is that she didn’t at all. It didn’t come up. And other Democrats haven’t been running on this as well.

All the trans people want right now and all the trans people have been pushing for is essentially the status quo. Because the question when it comes to what’s going to happen when Donald Trump takes office is, “How far backwards things are going to go?”

This isn’t a situation where we’re talking about progress not going fast enough. We’re talking about how to how to stop an extremely speedy reversal of trans rights.

Listen to Scott Harris’ in-depth interview with Parker Malloy (17:28) and see more articles and opinion pieces in the Related Links section of this page.

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