Speaker 1: All media.
Speaker 2: Welcome to it could happen here. I'm Garrison Davis. I'm
Speaker 2: joined by Mia Wong. It's a sort of a new week,
Speaker 2: so let's start preparing for what these next few months
Speaker 2: are going to look like in the wake of Trump's
Speaker 2: election victory last week, So one thing I was thinking
Speaker 2: about after the results kind of rolled in and seeing
Speaker 2: everyone's reactions online, you have a you know, a mix
Speaker 2: of people going full doomer, some people trying to get
Speaker 2: hopped up on hopium, some people on copium right, just
Speaker 2: trying to like find any psychological way to survive. And
Speaker 2: for me, kind of the way I like to survive
Speaker 2: is just through information. So this episode, we're going to
Speaker 2: get into how we see life for trans people under
Speaker 2: a second Trump term, based on both what he's done
Speaker 2: in the past, what he's promised to do in the future.
Speaker 2: And I know, in like the days after the election,
Speaker 2: like LGBTQ, like crisis hotlines all saw massive spike in
Speaker 2: people calling in to the point where some people were
Speaker 2: even unable to reach someone, And like I understand, this
Speaker 2: is a very scary moment in time, and as much
Speaker 2: as it might not be fun to hear about how
Speaker 2: things are all gonna get worse. There's also some misconceptions,
Speaker 2: and I think there's also a degree of power in
Speaker 2: actually being able to reasonably ascertain what things could look
Speaker 2: like instead of just kind of feeling it out and
Speaker 2: just going purely on vibes. So to kind of start,
Speaker 2: I guess I'll mention some things that Trump did in
Speaker 2: his first term that then got undone by Biden, which
Speaker 2: will probably just end up being reinstated. We don't know
Speaker 2: these for sure, but that's like a decent guess. So
Speaker 2: one of the first things Trump did when he got
Speaker 2: into office is he rolled back in Obama era memo
Speaker 2: directing schools to protect trans students from discrimination.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that, by the way, discrimination protection is a
Speaker 3: constant theme in this episode. It's gonna get a lot worse.
Speaker 2: Trump later went on to ban trans people from serving
Speaker 2: in the military. He also went after trans making it
Speaker 2: so that trans people usually would need to be housed
Speaker 2: in prisons and jails according to their assigned sex at birth,
Speaker 2: which is of course a very dangerous situation for people incarcerated,
Speaker 2: specifically trans women.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think there is good reason to expect
Speaker 3: that treatment there is going to get worse. There's been
Speaker 3: you know, we'll get into this more later in the episode,
Speaker 3: but there's been a real focus on incarcerated trans people
Speaker 3: getting health care. Yeah, and this is one of the
Speaker 3: things that's kind of ambiguous as to how Trump could
Speaker 3: go about trying to stop these people from getting health care.
Speaker 3: So the thing about providing healthcare to trans people who
Speaker 3: have been incarcerated is that they have to do it. It
Speaker 3: is something that is required by the Constitution of the
Speaker 3: United States. The Eighth Amendment holds that there is a
Speaker 3: ban on cruel and unusual punishment, and withholding medical care
Speaker 3: is so obviously a form of cruel unusual punishment that
Speaker 3: even staggeringly right wing Supreme courts have been like, no,
Speaker 3: you actually have to give people medical care in prison.
Speaker 3: So this is one that's going to be a little
Speaker 3: bit difficult for him to do. I don't know, he
Speaker 3: might find some way to do it. This is one
Speaker 3: of the ones where there's a real potential for it
Speaker 3: to get worse, and we simply do not know enough
Speaker 3: about what legal strategy is going to be here to
Speaker 3: say for sure.
Speaker 2: But it's also worth mentioning, like people have had to
Speaker 2: fight for access to healthcare in prison, Like, it's not
Speaker 2: something that comes easily, Like people have had to sue
Speaker 2: to make sure that they get the healthcare that they
Speaker 2: are legally required to receive. And we can just assume
Speaker 2: that that process will probably be slightly more difficult under
Speaker 2: a second Trump term like it was under a first
Speaker 2: Trump term, then it may kind of currently be now.
Speaker 2: So that's kind of one shift in how things might
Speaker 2: be slightly more challenging.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I want to also mention so that analysis
Speaker 3: and a lot of the analysis, the policy analysis that
Speaker 3: I'm going to be doing going forward, is heavily indebted
Speaker 3: to trans policy expert Carin Green, who we've had on
Speaker 3: the show a couple of times before Amazing. She was
Speaker 3: one of the people who ended up working on compliance
Speaker 3: for that lawsuit where Kamala Harris tried to keep transprisoners
Speaker 3: from getting healthcare, and she came in and like had
Speaker 3: to like ensure that the state of California was doing
Speaker 3: it and they weren't. So that's something that has been
Speaker 3: fought for, and that's something I mean, the trans community
Speaker 3: is small enough that that is the thing that has
Speaker 3: specifically been fought for by people who I consulted to
Speaker 3: make this episode. So, yeah, these these rights have been
Speaker 3: dearly one and it's going to be very hard to
Speaker 3: protect them. If I'm doing something where there's there's something
Speaker 3: about policy implementation, assume that I talked to Krinn about
Speaker 3: this and that's why it's accurate.
Speaker 4: And while I'm.
Speaker 3: Doing this, I want to plug a couple of the
Speaker 3: projects that she works on. But there's there's something you
Speaker 3: can do very immediately right now, before we get into
Speaker 3: all of the terrible stuff that's going to happen, which
Speaker 3: is you can donate to the Trans Income Project, which
Speaker 3: is the project that supports trans people and transsex workers
Speaker 3: in particular, which is a lot of trans people and
Speaker 3: supports them by just giving them direct cash transfers. They
Speaker 3: used to their work too, but yeah, and it direct
Speaker 3: caast transfers are one of the most effective ways that
Speaker 3: you can help trans people. And if you give money
Speaker 3: to this organization, they'll be links in the chat you
Speaker 3: can help do this. So let's get into how things
Speaker 3: are going to get worse. Unfortunately, trudministration, Congress, and state
Speaker 3: legislators have an enormous amount of power to make everything worse.
Speaker 3: We're mostly going to be focusing on what Trump and
Speaker 3: Congress can do well. We'll get into the legislator's a
Speaker 3: bit at the end. So there are a lot of
Speaker 3: levers of state power and sort of policy techniques that
Speaker 3: Trump can pull here to make things worse. We're going
Speaker 3: to go roughly from easiest to hardest to pull off.
Speaker 3: So the first lever is federal funding. Probably the easiest
Speaker 3: place that this lever can get pulled is in the
Speaker 3: education system. Trump can unfortunately fairly easily implement what amounts
Speaker 3: to a don't say trans ban on a federal level
Speaker 3: by threatening to withhold federal funding for any school that
Speaker 3: doesn't mandate things like misgendering and dead dating students and
Speaker 3: banned And this is I think he's explicitly talked about
Speaker 3: is like banning anyone in classes, any teachers from talking
Speaker 3: about traditioning at all. He's also threatened to have teachers
Speaker 3: who talk to students about being trans like investigated by
Speaker 3: the Department of Justice. We'll get more into Department just
Speaker 3: investigations in a bit. He's also used an explicit threat,
Speaker 3: the same threat of cutting state funding to stop schools
Speaker 3: some letting kids use the right bathroom in the locker
Speaker 3: room it's also possible he will do that through Title nine.
Speaker 3: But there's a lot of ways that he can do
Speaker 3: this very easily that are probably not going to be
Speaker 3: able to be stopped. And this is going to get
Speaker 3: extremely bad very quickly. Another sort of avenue that he
Speaker 3: has is I guess what you'd call like the High
Speaker 3: Amendment for trans people. So for people who don't know
Speaker 3: what the High Amendment is, the High Amendment is a
Speaker 3: writer that bans federal spending on abortion. It's been like modified,
Speaker 3: it's not like the one hundred percent band that he
Speaker 3: used to be because now there's like exceptions for rape
Speaker 3: and incests and stuff life of their parents too. But
Speaker 3: it is a very very effective Republican tool. It's actually
Speaker 3: also Joe Biden helped implement that that's been used to
Speaker 3: limit are access to abortion, and we already have seen
Speaker 3: the start of these kind of things even under Biden.
Speaker 3: There was a version of this of a kind of
Speaker 3: High Amendment for trans healthcare that was an attempt to
Speaker 3: get the DoD to not be able to spend money
Speaker 3: on trans healthcare. That's already a provision that's been tacked
Speaker 3: onto one of the most recent spending bills. That went
Speaker 3: through because Joe Manchin like defected and joined the Republicans
Speaker 3: to get it onto one of the spending omnibuses, and
Speaker 3: that was again just for the Department of Defense. We
Speaker 3: are very likely to see versions of these attached to
Speaker 3: every single spending bill that explicitly say that government funding
Speaker 3: cannot be used for trans healthcare. It will definitely be
Speaker 3: used to do to say you can't use it for
Speaker 3: trans healthcare for minors. It is possible this will be
Speaker 3: expanded to adults. We don't know. It depends how far
Speaker 3: there's sort of anti trans I don't know the arrangement goes,
Speaker 3: but that that is a real danger. And this can
Speaker 3: also be expanded to refusing to allow Medicare and Medicaid
Speaker 3: to pay for anything at a clinic that does trans healthcare,
Speaker 3: even if the money isn't funding the healthcare. That's also
Speaker 3: possible that would be absolutely catastrophic for the medical system.
Speaker 3: Even just a government band that you know, prevents things
Speaker 3: like Medicare and Medicaid and like government health care from
Speaker 3: covering transition in the first place is a disaster. But
Speaker 3: if they go further and you know, prevent clinics who
Speaker 3: like provide trans healthcare from taking Medicare and Medicaid. That's
Speaker 3: bad enough that I think that is in terms of
Speaker 3: what is the thing we most need to be worried
Speaker 3: about right now, I think that's the worst possible thing
Speaker 3: that can happen very quickly, because.
Speaker 2: It could basically pressure medical clinics into refusing to offer
Speaker 2: any kind of gender affirming care because it would threaten
Speaker 2: their just base ability to operate as a medical clinic
Speaker 2: taking Medicare, Medicaid, et cetera.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is the thing I talked about a bit
Speaker 3: in our Agenda forty seven episode on this. But this
Speaker 3: is this effectually create It's like Sophie's choice for these
Speaker 3: clinics because it's either you treat trans people who have
Speaker 3: private insurance, right, or you can treat like people who
Speaker 3: have who are a medicaa Medicaid. So it's like, okay,
Speaker 3: either either you let trans people get fucked or you
Speaker 3: let like every poor person or old person in the
Speaker 3: US like eat shit.
Speaker 4: So there aren't good options here for that.
Speaker 2: How do we think something like this would be implemented?
Speaker 2: Like is this an executive order or does this have
Speaker 2: to go through Congress?
Speaker 4: So that's the other part about this. That's very bad.
Speaker 3: The way this is being done is these things are
Speaker 3: attached to what are called writers to spending bills. So
Speaker 3: any spending bill Republican's put in front of the House,
Speaker 3: they will have this like provision in it, right, And
Speaker 3: the really big problem for us is that spending bills
Speaker 3: usually get past now out of this thing called Senate reconciliation.
Speaker 3: And the thing about Senate reconciliation is that you can't
Speaker 3: fill a buster them, so these can just get rammed
Speaker 3: through really really quickly, and there's not going to be
Speaker 3: enough opposition in the House to stop it either. So
Speaker 3: I mean, some of this stuff probably could be done
Speaker 3: with executive orders, but it's quite possible you won't even
Speaker 3: need that because it can just be rammed through in
Speaker 3: spending bills, which.
Speaker 2: Is a little bit harder to undo from my understanding.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, executive orders can be overturned by the next guy,
Speaker 3: whereas getting these provisions out is going to take a
Speaker 3: long time. Yeah, you know, this is another issue that
Speaker 3: we have. The map for the Democrats retaking the Senate
Speaker 3: is terrible in twenty twenty six, and it's bad in
Speaker 3: twenty twenty eight two. So I still don't think this
Speaker 3: is being recorded Friday. I don't think we still actually
Speaker 3: know what their majority in the Senate's going to be.
Speaker 4: But it's a lot.
Speaker 3: And also we know that Joe Manchin is willing to
Speaker 3: vote for stuff like this because he's done it already,
Speaker 3: So this is probably coming quickly. It basically depends on
Speaker 3: how good their policy people are, which who knows. But yeah,
Speaker 3: this is not going to be difficult for them to
Speaker 3: implement and it's going to be extremely damaging.
Speaker 2: Well, that was a lot. Let's take a little bit
Speaker 2: of a break and will we come back, take another
Speaker 2: look into what life could be like under a second
Speaker 2: Trump term.
Speaker 4: We are back.
Speaker 3: So the threat to trans people does not only come
Speaker 3: from Congress and the President. One of the things that's
Speaker 3: almost certainly going to happen very soon is there is
Speaker 3: currently a case about a trans healthcare band from Miners
Speaker 3: and Tennessee in front of the Supreme Court. It's called
Speaker 3: Scrimetti versus Us. We are almost certainly going to lose this.
Speaker 3: Not losing this requires a bunch of extremely unlikely things happening,
Speaker 3: and this is very, very bad. What Scrimetti versus Us
Speaker 3: is probably going to cost us is trans people as
Speaker 3: a group being protected by the fourteenth Amendment. So the
Speaker 3: fourteenth Amendment is supposed to provide everyone equal protection under
Speaker 3: the law. The way that's been interpreted is that if
Speaker 3: you're passing a law that directly targets a group, there
Speaker 3: are certain levels of scrutiny that have to be applied
Speaker 3: to it to see whether or not it's discriminatory and
Speaker 3: can be allowed to proceed. What's probably going to happen
Speaker 3: here is that trans people aren't going to be held
Speaker 3: as protected at all, which means that the fourteenth Amendment
Speaker 3: will not protect us from things that are unbelievably obviously discriminatory,
Speaker 3: like healthcare bands for youth, which is again literally the
Speaker 3: same procedures that are happening for trans children are done
Speaker 3: to SIS children all the time, and it's fine. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so this is very obviously discrimination. We're probably going to
Speaker 3: lose it because the Supreme Court is full of a
Speaker 3: bunch of the worst people in the entire world. It
Speaker 3: is technically possible that Gorstch defects and drags someone else
Speaker 3: over and we get a thing that says we have
Speaker 3: intermediate scrutiny. That would be the best win we could
Speaker 3: possibly get on this. It's extremely it's unlikely. We're probably
Speaker 3: going to lose it. And this is also going to
Speaker 3: overturn the landmark case Bostock versus Clayton County, which is
Speaker 3: the one that rules that you can't discriminate against transpeople
Speaker 3: based on gener identity.
Speaker 2: Specifically for like employers as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for employees. Is specifically for employers. So what we
Speaker 3: could very well be about to lose. And again, this
Speaker 3: is another thing that's very high likelihood because this case
Speaker 3: they're ready in front of the Supreme Court, and the
Speaker 3: Supreme Court hates us. We could be about to lose
Speaker 3: employment discrimination protections now. To be fair, and I think
Speaker 3: most trans people who are listening to the show know this.
Speaker 3: I don't know how many SIS people understand this, but
Speaker 3: the level of trans employment discrimination in the workplace is unbelievable.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this isn't really enforced at all. Yeah, it's pretty bad.
Speaker 3: It is something that right now is technically possible to
Speaker 3: do and you're not allowed to just straight up to
Speaker 3: say it. But you know, like there is a reason
Speaker 3: that the unemployment rate for trans people is like three
Speaker 3: times as high. No, it's actually it's Yeah, I think
Speaker 3: it's about three times as high as the rate for
Speaker 3: SIS people. Right we don't have great data. There's some
Speaker 3: data from the Trans Student Survey from twenty twenty two,
Speaker 3: but the full report isn't out yet. But what I
Speaker 3: will say is that the the trans level of unemployed
Speaker 3: unemployment right now in the US is very low. The
Speaker 3: level of unemployment for trans people is nineteen thirty six,
Speaker 3: great depression levels, and this is before we lose these protections.
Speaker 3: It is also worth noting this will not overturn like
Speaker 3: state level of protections. So if you're in a state
Speaker 3: that like has specifically bandit, you will have some more recourse.
Speaker 3: But we're losing fourteenth medic protections. But a federal level
Speaker 3: would basically allow explicit employment discrimination. Yeah, if someone's trans,
Speaker 3: it's possible that case goes like marginally better for us
Speaker 3: and that doesn't happen. But it's hard to see how
Speaker 3: that would happen. The lawyers I talked to you will
Speaker 3: say this is not this is not a legal opinion,
Speaker 3: but they seem to think that this is how this
Speaker 3: would go, and the policy people seem to think it'd
Speaker 3: be going the same way. Yeah, there's some other things
Speaker 3: that can happen. Trump has been promising, We're going to
Speaker 3: get federal investigations into clinics that provide gender affirming care,
Speaker 3: also into hospitals. You know, there's gonna be enormous legal harassment.
Speaker 3: This has already been happening on a sort of lower level,
Speaker 3: but from sort of individual lawsuits and state attorney generals.
Speaker 3: But this is going to be happening with the full
Speaker 3: backing of the Department of Justice. You can look at
Speaker 3: like what Texas has been doing the past four years. Yeah,
Speaker 3: with them investigating not just clinics, but also like parents
Speaker 3: of trans kids. Yeah, parents, like individual health care providers.
Speaker 3: He was also pledging to investigate like the companies that
Speaker 3: make hormones.
Speaker 4: So that's bad.
Speaker 3: There's also the Department of Justice has been making some
Speaker 3: incredibly half assed attempts to try to go after some
Speaker 3: of the healthcare bans.
Speaker 4: That's all going to stop. They're just going to give
Speaker 4: all that up.
Speaker 3: There's also a bunch of bills that could be passed,
Speaker 3: depending on the Democrats' willingness to filibuster them. So Trump
Speaker 3: has called for a ban of trans people like playing
Speaker 3: sports that correspond with their gender, and that may well
Speaker 3: pass because the Democrats are cowards, and the Republicans are
Speaker 3: going to have a large majority in the Senate. Trump
Speaker 3: has also pushed for a ban on gender firming care
Speaker 3: for minors, including hrits homo replacement therapy, which is like
Speaker 3: one of the main ways transition and puberty blockers. That
Speaker 3: one is less likely to make it through the Senate.
Speaker 3: But it also again depends on how cowardly the Democrats
Speaker 3: are and how much they decide to cave. And this
Speaker 3: is the moment that there is another thing that you
Speaker 3: can do and you should start doing this right now,
Speaker 3: which is this is the moment right now to start
Speaker 3: pressuring your congress person about this, like start calling them,
Speaker 3: start pressuring them, and start making sure that they don't
Speaker 3: fully sort of turn on trans rights. This is just
Speaker 3: something that you can concretely do right now, because these
Speaker 3: people need to understand that there are consequences for turning
Speaker 3: on trans people, because if there aren't consequences, they are
Speaker 3: going to do it now. Trump has also called for
Speaker 3: a ban on recognizing trans people at a federal level
Speaker 3: on like all identification documents things like that also would
Speaker 3: outlaw non binary marketings on passports and stuff. That would
Speaker 3: also be really bad. That's also something that probably requires
Speaker 3: a law. And that's again and everything. Call your congress people,
Speaker 3: like pressure them now, start doing it now, do not
Speaker 3: wait until he's actually an office.
Speaker 2: Like, all of these issues are things that public opinion
Speaker 2: has been shifting on greatly the past like two years. Yeah,
Speaker 2: these things used to be much more kind of seen
Speaker 2: as like, yeah, this like makes sense. This is like
Speaker 2: a humane and reasonable effort to include a group of
Speaker 2: discriminated people. And now we see in a growing number
Speaker 2: a majority of people pull on this issue do not
Speaker 2: support these measures. They don't support having the ability to
Speaker 2: have your gender marker match your gener identity. They don't
Speaker 2: support your ability to participate in public life. And that
Speaker 2: is the result of an intentional misinformation campaign and essentially
Speaker 2: like a hate crime campaign and a hate speech campaign
Speaker 2: that that has been going on for the past like
Speaker 2: four years because Republicans knew that they already lost the
Speaker 2: battle on like regular gay people, so they moved on
Speaker 2: to the next subjugated class. And that's something we've talked
Speaker 2: about for a while. And this is like something that
Speaker 2: is shifting. So you have to actually verbally express to
Speaker 2: your representatives that this is something that you actually do
Speaker 2: care about. Otherwise they will look at these like general
Speaker 2: polls and be like, oh, this isn't popular anymore and
Speaker 2: shift and cave on it. They need to know that
Speaker 2: their constituents actually do care about these things if we
Speaker 2: want these things to not get passed through Congress.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's also worth mentioning that a lot of
Speaker 3: this people just don't know anything about about trans people
Speaker 3: because we're like one percent of the population right now.
Speaker 3: Part of the reason the Republican campaign is working is
Speaker 3: that people are susceptible to being told things about trans
Speaker 3: people and believing them. But that also works for us, right,
Speaker 3: it goes both ways. Part of what's been going on
Speaker 3: is that, like, we haven't had the kind of giant
Speaker 3: advocacy push outside of some trans people, but we have
Speaker 3: no money, we have no resources, and we need there
Speaker 3: to actually be large, widespread and vocal public support because
Speaker 3: otherwise all of the stuff that's happening here is going
Speaker 3: to get even worse. And you know the word when
Speaker 3: we could get very well, the worst case scenario things
Speaker 3: which are full bands for adults. That's the thing that
Speaker 3: they could pass through Congress, But right now they don't
Speaker 3: have the support for it. Yeah, However, Comma's going to
Speaker 3: get to there are signs that the Democratic Party is
Speaker 3: deciding to throw us under the bus.
Speaker 2: Yeah, not as steadfast on this issue then what we
Speaker 2: will probably prefer.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And on the state level, I guess the important
Speaker 3: thing for the state level is that once we lose
Speaker 3: fourteenth Ament protections, it's going to be so much harder
Speaker 3: for there to be legal challenges to any of this.
Speaker 3: And this means we're going to see a proliferation of
Speaker 3: these state level bans on healthcare, even sort of marching.
Speaker 4: Ahead of where the federal government is.
Speaker 2: Let's have our last break, and when we come back,
Speaker 2: we will close the episode by discussing Trump's focus on
Speaker 2: trans issues during his campaign, as well as things that
Speaker 2: you can start doing, like right now, to get ready
Speaker 2: and prepare for these next four years.
Speaker 4: All right, we are back.
Speaker 2: During the last few months of Trump's campaign, his team
Speaker 2: shifted away from the key issues of the economy and
Speaker 2: immigration in their national election ad efforts, and specifically honed
Speaker 2: in on trans issues as a wedge against Kamala Harris
Speaker 2: and the Democrats in general. The infamous Kamala is for
Speaker 2: they them ad being the prime example of this. According
Speaker 2: to a PBS report, from October seventh to October twentieth,
Speaker 2: Trump's campaign and pro Trump groups spent an estimated thirty
Speaker 2: nine million dollars on anti trans ads, and Trump ended
Speaker 2: up spending more money on these ads than on housing, immigration,
Speaker 2: and the economy combined. This was his main focus in
Speaker 2: his final ad push, specifically after the September debate. A
Speaker 2: new report from journalist Casey Parks using data from ad Impact,
Speaker 2: shows that Republicans spent nearly two hundred and fifteen million
Speaker 2: dollars on anti trans ads this election cycle. And this
Speaker 2: figure does not include cable or streaming ads, this is
Speaker 2: just network TV. And these anti trans ads weren't just
Speaker 2: focused on the presidential election. Other Republicans in various Senate
Speaker 2: races picked up on the success of these anti trans
Speaker 2: ads and used them in Ohio, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Now,
Speaker 2: initially some thought that maybe this would be a repeat
Speaker 2: of twenty twenty two. Maybe this extra focus on this
Speaker 2: small group of the population wouldn't lead to kind of
Speaker 2: electoral successes, pointing to how a similar strategy failed during
Speaker 2: the twenty twenty two mid terms, but then election Day
Speaker 2: came and we saw that there was a degree of
Speaker 2: success or at least these did not hurt them in
Speaker 2: any substantial way, and Republicans won many of the Senate
Speaker 2: races on anti trans campaign messages. I'm going to quote
Speaker 2: from an article in The New York Times called it
Speaker 2: Trump and the Republicans bet big on anti trans ads
Speaker 2: across the country.
Speaker 4: Quote.
Speaker 2: The kamala Is for the Them ad was rated as
Speaker 2: one of his campaigns more effective in September in some
Speaker 2: Democratic testing, according to results reviewed by The Times, Republican
Speaker 2: strategists said the focus on transgunter women and girls sports
Speaker 2: had been particularly effective with a key group of voters
Speaker 2: the party had hemorrhaged support from in recent years, college
Speaker 2: educated women. One of the things you see in the
Speaker 2: focus groups is that the moms get really visibly angry
Speaker 2: on this issue, said Jim McLaughlin, a Republican polster who
Speaker 2: works for mister Trump and other Republican campaigns. Quote it's
Speaker 2: a fairness issue. They don't want their daughters to lose
Speaker 2: a scholarship, and they don't want them to get hurt.
Speaker 4: Unquote.
Speaker 2: The enthusiasm for this issue kind of lines up with
Speaker 2: what me Sophie and Roberts saw at the RNC, where
Speaker 2: anti trans statements consistently got the loudest applause. Though some
Speaker 2: state level Democrats like Representative Seth Multon of Massachusetts and
Speaker 2: Tom Soulsey of New York, as well as some mother
Speaker 2: DNZ advisors, have jumped onto the blame game, citing trans
Speaker 2: issues as if not the reason, then a reason Democrats
Speaker 2: just completely fumble this election, claiming that the Democratic Party
Speaker 2: is far to the left on trans issues and the
Speaker 2: average American. But largely the Dems were not out campaigning
Speaker 2: for trans people loud and proud the selection cycle. Oh,
Speaker 2: Trans issues were intentionally pushed off stage at the DNC,
Speaker 2: and the Harris campaign tried their hardest to sidestep this issue,
Speaker 2: giving vague non answers and whether trans people should be
Speaker 2: able to receive healthcare by just stating that her administration
Speaker 2: would quote unquote follow the law and invoking states rights
Speaker 2: type framing. And I see this as just a massive
Speaker 2: failure to confront an issue that Republicans have like slingshot
Speaker 2: into the spotlight, and it shows a failure to do
Speaker 2: things because it's like the right thing to do, not
Speaker 2: just necessarily for some like electoral gain, well.
Speaker 4: Even even on a strategic level.
Speaker 3: Right, we saw this with border policy too, Right, exactly
Speaker 3: Democrats adopted the Republican's sport policy and then they look
Speaker 3: exactly and it's like, yeah, if you just agree or
Speaker 3: refuse to contest them on their core issues, then that's
Speaker 3: what people are going to believe, because people have a
Speaker 3: tendency to believe what their elites are telling them. You
Speaker 3: can't defeat these people's ideology by just agreeing with it
Speaker 3: or star stepping out of the way a bit.
Speaker 2: That's just lets it's and I think this is going
Speaker 2: to be proven to be like the biggest mistake Democrats
Speaker 2: made this election cycle, Like, you can't just sed territory
Speaker 2: to the right based on a massive disinformation campaign, which
Speaker 2: is exactly what the Democrats did on immigration and crime,
Speaker 2: and they showed a willingness to do that on trans rights. Now,
Speaker 2: even if some of these people that Democrats included claim
Speaker 2: to not like hate trans people individually, they have allowed
Speaker 2: questions around access to bathrooms, sports and government fund and
Speaker 2: healthcare to be used as a wedge against trans rights
Speaker 2: as a whole and the ability for trans people to
Speaker 2: be able to exist in public life. To close. I
Speaker 2: think we should have just a brief discussion on what
Speaker 2: people can do specifically during these next seventy five days
Speaker 2: and even in the months after, like what people can
Speaker 2: do to prepare for some of the worst aspects of this,
Speaker 2: specifically on the healthcare front. Now, we did a series
Speaker 2: of episodes a few years ago on DIYHRT there are
Speaker 2: both pharmaceutical and home brewed options for homones that can
Speaker 2: be ordered online. Now since that episode, home brewed distribution
Speaker 2: networks have spread throughout the United States. There's probably one
Speaker 2: already in whatever city is closest to you. Now, access
Speaker 2: to those networks does require a degree of, like in
Speaker 2: person community, and I know that can be challenging. You
Speaker 2: can certainly do organizing online on discord. You can certainly
Speaker 2: find trans people on discord that can help you learn
Speaker 2: where pharmaceutical grade estrogen can be ordered online. But that
Speaker 2: type of online organizing will only get more dangerous under
Speaker 2: a Trump term, especially if the legal status of these
Speaker 2: hormones change. So I will always emphasize the importance of
Speaker 2: in person community, and it might just take like learning
Speaker 2: if there's a trans band in the city you're in
Speaker 2: going to some shows, learning where trans people go. Where
Speaker 2: trans people gather is their community picnics is their book
Speaker 2: fares is their zine fares? Like? Is there like even
Speaker 2: gaming conventions? Right, just places that there might be a
Speaker 2: number of trans people gathered and talk to them about
Speaker 2: being transd talk to them about the issues that you're facing.
Speaker 2: It might take a few months to gain trust and
Speaker 2: become friends, but that's just how friendships work anyway, and
Speaker 2: that can be challenging. And there may not be something
Speaker 2: like this in a city super close to you, which
Speaker 2: is why online connections are useful, and sometimes it might
Speaker 2: require a little bit of travel. Now, what we can do,
Speaker 2: at least right now is stockpile things in case things
Speaker 2: get harder to maintain or produce. There's multiple forms of
Speaker 2: these hormones that can be stored, and I do believe
Speaker 2: that there will be some form of home brewed option
Speaker 2: that will most likely continue to exist even if prescribed
Speaker 2: hormones get restricted. And a part of why I emphasize
Speaker 2: kind of doing this in person as well, especially if
Speaker 2: you're a minor, that will just get more dangerous to
Speaker 2: do under a second Trump term. I will point people
Speaker 2: to the website diyhrt dot wiki. It's currently the best
Speaker 2: information source on dosing testing, how to find supplies and
Speaker 2: options for ordering hormones now, because changing legal paperwork on
Speaker 2: the federal or state level often takes a while. If
Speaker 2: that's something that you want to do, now is the
Speaker 2: time to start. There's still seventy days until Trump takes
Speaker 2: office and some of these changes could start being put
Speaker 2: into effect. You should absolutely apply for a passport now.
Speaker 2: Depending on many variables, it may be advantageous to have
Speaker 2: your legal name and gender marker match whatever you more
Speaker 2: easily pass as, rather than your gender identity. Now I
Speaker 2: understand why this is less than ideal and if you
Speaker 2: think that this might just inhibit your transition progress and
Speaker 2: push you further back into the closet, especially if the
Speaker 2: option of changing your gender marker on federal documents just
Speaker 2: like goes away during the next four years, then people
Speaker 2: should just go ahead and get that stuff changed asap.
Speaker 2: But it's something to reflect on and consider. Lastly, I
Speaker 2: want to mention something about personal safety. Over the course
Speaker 2: of the past week, I've from friends around the country
Speaker 2: experiencing a spike in anti queer and misogynistic violence chuds,
Speaker 2: frat boys, and just asshole men have been way more
Speaker 2: willing to just openly harass queer people out in public.
Speaker 2: Some of this I think is just Trump supporters quote
Speaker 2: unquote celebrating the election results. But once Trump takes office,
Speaker 2: I expect this type of harassment to start slowly increasing
Speaker 2: as truds feel like they can get away with more
Speaker 2: just open misogyny, homophobia, racism, etc. I know a lot
Speaker 2: of people have been talking about or posting about buying firearms,
Speaker 2: and firearms is one of the last things you should
Speaker 2: buy in a panic. This is a very careful and
Speaker 2: calculated choice for you need to make about your own
Speaker 2: personal safety, your own mental health, your own willingness to
Speaker 2: carry and train with the gun. This is its own topic,
Speaker 2: but I do recommend buying and carrying pepperjel for basically
Speaker 2: all queer people and women. It's a great self defense tool.
Speaker 2: It spreads less than pepper spray, so you're going to
Speaker 2: be less likely to just spray yourself. Saber is a
Speaker 2: good brand. Buy it for yourself, buy it for your friends.
Speaker 2: Uh Mia, do you have anything else you want to add?
Speaker 4: Yeah? Yeah, two things. One.
Speaker 3: People have been asking for book macrumentation, so we're giving
Speaker 3: them to you.
Speaker 4: We're only given to you to you at the end
Speaker 4: of the episodes. You got to stay around.
Speaker 3: And I think something that's good to read in this
Speaker 3: moment on trans isssues is Julius Serrano's book Whipping Girl.
Speaker 3: I've had Julius Runnold on the show before. She is
Speaker 3: one of the most important, I mean, honestly like feminist
Speaker 3: theorists of the last of this century. And there's a
Speaker 3: new additional Whipping Girl that's come out recently, and it
Speaker 3: is it is one of the fundamental sort of texts
Speaker 3: to understand the experience to transfent people in this country
Speaker 3: and why things have gotten the way that they've gotten.
Speaker 3: So yeah, go go read Whipping Girl. It's spectacular. And
Speaker 3: then I want to plug one more thing that you
Speaker 3: can give money to. So I mean again, another very
Speaker 3: effective way for s people to support trans people is
Speaker 3: give them money, because all of us are unbelievably broke
Speaker 3: like all of the time. Another place you can give
Speaker 3: money to is the TRANSSICE Funding Project. We'll have that
Speaker 3: in this too, when they they give out grants to
Speaker 3: other just like trans groups who are doing organizing or
Speaker 3: doing other kinds of support work. Mutual land, et cetera,
Speaker 3: et cetera. So that's money that goes directly to trans people. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and then, obviously, as we've said, this is the forces
Speaker 3: people part of the episode. After our after our four
Speaker 3: trans people part, go call your congress people, Go pressure them,
Speaker 3: Go show up to their offices and make it extremely
Speaker 3: clear that it is unacceptable to write off trans people
Speaker 3: and that they need to be willing to successfully stop
Speaker 3: these writers and successfully do whatever they can to chant
Speaker 3: out the works to make sure that the Republicans cannot
Speaker 3: pass bills that will harm us even more than the
Speaker 3: things that they're already going to do.
Speaker 1: It's happened Here is a production or pool Zone Media.
Speaker 1: More podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website foolzonmedia
Speaker 1: dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever.
Speaker 4: You listen to podcasts.
Speaker 1: You can now find sources for it could Happen here
Speaker 1: listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.