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\u201cThese people are<\/span> crazy! I\u2019m telling ya \u2014 they\u2019re crazy,\u201d President Donald Trump exclaimed<\/a>, pointing to Democratic members of Congress near the start of his lengthy and lie-drenched State of the Union speech.<\/p>\n At that particular moment, the Democrats in question were doing the right thing: refusing to stand and applaud when Trump called for a nationwide ban on the ability for trans kids to exist in public.<\/p>\n \u201cWe must ban it, and we must ban it immediately,\u201d the president said.<\/p>\n The Democrats in question were doing the right thing: refusing to applaud Trump\u2019 attacks on trans kids.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n The \u201cit\u201d here did not refer only to gender-affirming health care for trans youth, which is already banned or restricted<\/a> in at least 27 states. Trump appeared to be going even further: The thing he wants banned would be the ability for trans kids to socially transition safely in school.<\/p>\n \u201cSurely we can all agree no state can be allowed to rip children from their parents\u2019 arms and transition them to a new gender against the parents\u2019 will,\u201d said Trump, whose administration has a standing<\/a> policy<\/a> of ripping children<\/a> from their parents\u2019 arms<\/a>.<\/p>\n In response, Republican members of Congress \u2014 supporters of industrial-scale family separations \u2014 rose in a standing ovation.<\/p>\n Democrats sat still in their benches.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n With midterm elections approaching, Trump will inevitably escalate these attacks on trans kids.<\/p>\n Democrats should refuse to take the bait. They should stay, at least metaphorically, seated. They don\u2019t need to prove to some imagined anti-trans majority that they are not \u201ccrazy\u201d for refusing to support persecution of a vulnerable minority.<\/p>\n On Tuesday, the president\u2019s vehicle for attacking trans kids was the story of Virginia teen Sage Blair, a student at Liberty University, whose mother Michele is suing the Appomattox County School Board.<\/p>\n According to reports<\/a>, Michele is accusing members of the school district of failing to disclose to the family that Sage was identifying as male; she claims this contributed to the teen running away and subsequently facing sexual abuse. Both Sage and Michele attended the State of the Union as Trump\u2019s special guests.<\/p>\n Sage\u2019s tragic story is now being used as the basis for Virginia legislation aimed at forcing schools to notify parents should a student identify with a gender other than their sex as assigned at birth and requiring parental consent to allow a student to use a new name or pronoun in school.<\/p>\n Such a law \u2014 essentially mandating forced outing \u2014 would put thousands of trans kids at risk. Republican claims to parental rights in such cases are, of course, a laughable fig leaf when the same anti-trans politicians are pushing for laws to prosecute parents as child abusers if they support their children transitioning.<\/p>\n Health care bans<\/a>, school sports bans<\/a>, bathroom bans<\/a>, bans on obtaining the correct identification<\/a>, and bans on socially<\/a> transitioning at school \u2013 these astroturfed<\/a> anti-trans policies all come together to make it impossible to safely live as a trans kid and flourish into a trans adult.<\/p>\n Democratic leaders to date have failed<\/a> to robustly oppose these eliminationist efforts, again and again ceding dangerous rhetorical ground to the anti-trans right.<\/p>\n A false dichotomy has emerged in which supporting trans people is deemed at odds with a focus on key economic, so-called kitchen-table issues. <\/p>\n Just last week, Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has a grim record<\/a> of entertaining anti-trans positions, told<\/a> CNN that he wants his party to be \u201cless prone to spending disproportionate amounts of time on pronouns, identity politics. More focused on tabletop issues, things that really matter \u2014 the stacking of stress in terms of the electricity bills and childcare costs and health care and obviously housing costs.\u201d<\/p>\n Newsom wants, he said, Democrats to be more \u201cculturally normal.\u201d<\/p>\n The idea that establishment Democrats have failed to support policies for the working class because they have been too focused on supporting trans people and minorities is laughable. In response to such a claim, a diligent journalist should surely ask, \u201cWhen?\u201d<\/p>\n Aside from a few shallow and embarrassing performances, when have Democratic leaders given significant time to advocating for oppressed minorities, in particular trans people? They haven\u2019t<\/a> \u2014 with a few pitiful, symbolic exceptions, such as when they knelt<\/a> in Kente cloth in 2020 during the George Floyd uprisings.<\/p>\n What we have seen, though, is Democrats like Newsom dedicating airtime to urging other Democrats to throw trans people under the bus<\/a>. It is a perverse performance of his own criticism \u2014 spending disproportionate amounts of time talking about trans people for all the wrong reasons.<\/p>\n None of this, of course, is to say that Democrats have not failed the working class. Of course they have<\/a>! But it\u2019s not because of trans kids: It is fealty to wealthy donors, Wall Street, and industry lobbies.<\/p>\n In addition to this vile scapegoating of their own shortcomings, Newsom raises another offensive proposition: What constitutes \u201cculturally normal\u201d for his ilk? The ability to remove whole groups of people from access to necessary health care and public life?<\/p>\n Democrats should absolutely run on campaigns that center wages, working conditions, housing, and health care \u2014 and they should insist on these being essential issues for all people, including trans people.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n\n
Line of Attack<\/h2>\n
How Democrats Are Failing<\/strong><\/h2>\n