It Could Happen Here - How Democrats Passed North Carolina's New Anti-trans Laws, Part Two

Episode Date: August 28, 2025

Mia continues her conversation with journalist David Forbes about two recent horrific anti-trans bills in North Carolina and how Democrats made them possible. https://transnews.network/p/nc-dems-anti-trans-betrayals @davidforbes.bsky.social @avlblade.bsky.socialSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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it makes things fall apart even worse. I am your host, Mia Wong, and today we're going to be continuing with part two of my interview with David Forbes, an editor and journalist for the Trans News Network and the Asheville Blade, about the history of the North Carolina Democratic Party's progressive veneer over their agreement with the Republican policies, and importantly, how the Democratic Party's original response to the anti-transbathium bills from 2016 paved away for where we are today. So enjoy. Let's talk about the original bathroom bills

because I think there's some knowledge. Well, okay, I don't know. It's been almost a decade. So I think people may have forgotten how this all started. So let's talk about the first bathroom bills, what happened, and then how the Democrats kind of ensured

that they would stay in place. Sure. So there is the big one everyone knows about is HB2 because it became kind of internationally famous as the North Carolina bathroom bill. And even, I think, for folks who memories may have faded, it has

come up recently as kind of a benchmark and often a misinterpreted one as we're about to get into, for how far things have shifted. Because on paper, it looks like this really horribly backfired. And in some ways it did initially. HB2 was

a bill that was kind of slapped in last minute. It clearly drew from the larger anti-trans, far-right policy circles, which North Carolina Republicans are highly connected to. North Carolina Dems often kind of view themselves their own little, like, institution. Like, we're the Democratic moderates, like North Carolina Democrats have always been at their best. People have that tradition we just talked about, the Republicans here were like, okay, we're now in power,

which they were starting in 2011. Let's try out this stuff from Alec. Let's try out this stuff from some secure right-wing think tank. And that meant they were plugged in when, in the wake of, of Obergefell and also North Carolina as well, the year before, you'd had equal marriage for that whole swath of the South was kind of imposed by a federal court order or recognized by federal court order. So they were like, okay, this isn't working. There is not just more desir, there is more de facto on the ground popular acceptance of equal marriage now. That's not the

wedge it was previously. So what do we shift to? Well, we shift to trans people. And so North Carolina legislators very eager to try out far-right policies. The North Carolina GOP is far right even by Southern standards, which is interesting because the state's very split as far as like votes and demographics go. So 2016's rolled around. Four years earlier, the Dems had done the usual thing. They'd run a super conservative, super pro-business white guy Democrat. He got trounced by Pat McCrory, who was the former mayor of Charlotte. And Rain was like, oh, I'm a moderate, sensible Republican. I'm going to bounce out the legislature a little bit. But unlike too many outside the region and the state who kind of wrote,

OK, North Carolina is just becoming this red state now like other southern states have, they knew their hold was actually really precarious. Now, they gerrymandered extensively, so extensively that, like, North Carolina the same year as HP2 passed, stopped being recognized as a democracy by the, like, policy versus study it. As a matter of fact, the district of Carolina, they did a whole commentary later that year, that these were the most rigged districts, the most jeremy districts they'd seen,

not just in the U.S., but anywhere in the world. So that is where we live. That's where we live for some time. But the governor's elected statewide. So he's in a more precarious position, and they wanted a wedge issue, in their view, to drive out conservative votes. They also hate trans people and want to hurt us.

Yeah, yeah. So this HB2 said that trans people can't go into bathrooms, unless they use the one matching their birth certificate in any state building in North Carolina. And this technically also includes, like, local government buildings. It includes, like, social services. It includes, like, any educational setting, pretty much. So this was clearly a slap dash of failure. They didn't even have, like, an enforcement mechanism in there.

But it did a few other things, too. I think people forget about, which is it also stripped the ability of localities to make their own minimum wage rules. So it was also an attack on labor because those always. Always go together and not unrelated, trans and queer people are only working class demographics, which I don't think it's said enough. And also, essentially, this was an reaction to Charlotte adding gender identity to its existing non-discrimination ordinance. There's always a local one. But in reality, you know, if Charlotte had never done that, they would have done a bill like this pretty shortly anyway. Yeah.

It was kind of just the excuse. And they also struck down all non-discrimination ordinances across the state, like local non-discrimination. So this is a broad attack with trans people as kind of the point of the spear, as it were, like the ones most in the front lines. It's a familiar pattern. Go after trans rights. You're also going after broad rights for any marginalized group because non-discrimination stuff is being struck down left and right.

And also you're attacking labor. Yep. So, you know, it really kind of set the model for things to come. HB2 sparks a massive international backlash. I think the end estimate was $400 million. The state lost $400 million as companies pulled out, events pulled out. There was a boycott, a fairly effective one, honestly, that was started as grassroots, though, gay ink groups and even like just random nonprofits and some Democratic Party officials

later joined in on it. So the money's being hemorrhage left and right. McCrory's being turned into a national laughing stock. If anything, it's proving a rallying point for the other side. because 2016 rolls around and in a year where Trump takes North Carolina and generally the Republicans

do fairly well throughout the South, even in a swing states like NC, McCory loses. He loses to the Attorney General Roy Cooper as a Democrat. Now, I would never say his portrays.

I'm about to get some major betrayals he did. He was more willing to say at least perfunctory statements about trans rights than any North Carolina Democratic politician at a statewide level before and honestly sense, including the current governor.

And, yeah, he proceeded to win. There's a vile sickness in Abbas town. You must excise it. Dig into the deep earth and cut it out. The village is ravaged. Entire families have been consumed. You know how waking up from a dream? A familiar place can look completely alien?

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And I just looked at my computer screen. I was just like, ah, gotcha. On America's Crime Lab, we'll learn about victims and survivors. And you'll meet the team behind the scenes at Othrum, the Houston Lab that takes on the most hopeless cases, to finally solve the unsolving. Listen to America's Crime Lab on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My name is Ed. Everyone say hello, Ed. I'm from a very rural background myself. My dad is a farmer and my mom is a cousin. So like, it's not like...

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So he gets an office. North Carolina gentry are historically plenty fine with bigotry. But the Republicans had, by this point, broken one of their cardinal rules, which was they fucked with the money. Yeah. Because, like, the state was losing money. They were losing business deals, corporate headquarters and stuff. And this is a lot of what the status quo, the very anti-labor status quo that North Carolina Democrats and Republicans had generally both supported in varying ways was in danger. And some of them personally were losing money. So they basically tell the Republicans in early 2017 to knock it off. Like, okay, you've gone far enough. It didn't work. You lost the election. They still do the gerrymany. Had a lot of power in the state legislature, but they didn't have the governor's office anymore. So, you know, repeal this.

like, we're getting too much bad publicity. And what really escalated it was basketball is kind of a religion in North Carolina, especially college basketball. And the NCAA said, look, we'll pull the tournament out of HB2 is still in the books. And at that point, there became like these back and forth sessions. Earlier in December, there was this compromise effort where supposedly Charlotte would strike its non-discrimination stuff on its end. It was currently, like, this source of legal challenge.

They'd gone to court to fight to uphold it. and this should have been a warning sign. The governor, Governor-elect Cooper at that point brokered kind of this deal where, okay, Charlotte, you take trans people out of your non-screaming shorden

and so of your own accord and the state will repeal HB2. Well, that didn't happen. They did the first part. And then the legislative legislators were like, okay, well, that's nice. We're not doing anything about this. That should have been a lesson

about complying in advance, but it didn't really seem to take, sadly. So HB2 was sold in the books by March. You know, March Madness is coming up and all that. And so they finally do a repeal. And this is still hailed as, oh, look, like, back in the day, like, even Republicans, some Republicans would, like, repeal a trans bill when it got this big backlash.

Their federal funding was being threatened as well for the state. I wasn't like federal education funding at all. That's not what happened, though. And what happened, I think, is actually it was a lot more ominous and a lot more revealing. What passed instead was, honestly, a second bathroom bill called HB-140. or HB 2.0, as a lot of activists and queer folks in the ground, and trans with the ground, dubbed it. And what this bill did was it technically took out the bathroom ban, but it's put in a bunch of Byzantine provisions about who could use the bathroom when, so it would still take a court case

for a trans woman to go use the women's bathroom. It kept all the anti-labor stuff, and it kept all the non-discrimination stuff struck down for years, like you couldn't pass local massacation protections for years. And at this point, the pressure is mounted. the Democratic Party for the first time in most of a decade, their votes in the legislature actually matter because the Republicans are split

between kind of the capitalist who are hate trains who were using this as a wedge issue and now the money's being fucked with. They're ready to repeal it. And some of the others who are like, no, no, we really are dedicated to hating trans people. The state can burn as long as trans people's lives are made more miserable.

So they didn't have the votes in their own caucus to pass this. So for once, Dems had a lot of power. And they could have easily been like, No, full repeal or nothing. And they probably would have gotten it through. They did not. They sided with the Republicans. They passed this mess that essentially kept the status quo. It was just barely enough for the NCAA, who even noted, they even noted their corporation basically. They noted it was reluctant. That they were, you know, putting the tournament back in NC, but they did. The governor, new governor, Democratic governor signed it. And I probably forgot this mentioned earlier. HB2 passed with two Democratic votes in the first place. Yeah. This is like not a new trend of this happening. Heck, anti-queer stuff even well before that would often pass with Democratic support as well as Republican support, often be signed by Democratic governors. So this is not an entirely new thing. And this is also a point where you can see Gay Inc. splitting a bit, because Gay Inc. did actually, had actually condemned HB.2.0. But once it became passed, they either

offered tepid statements or they backed down. And so the lesson from HB2 wasn't. Okay, back in the day, you know, nine years ago, trans rights used to be more of a consensus, even among moderate conservatives, at least basic protections for it. And a good example was how unpopular HP2 was, and it was repealed under all this backlash. It did get a backlash, but it wasn't really repealed. And as a matter of fact, what the far right learned was that when it comes down to it, the Democrats, North Carolina, it turned out elsewhere, will fold if trans rights has made an issue. Yeah, and you know, and you can watch everything that has happened since with trans rights has just been the Democrats folding over and over and over again, getting weaker and weaker

language until we're in this place now. You know, like, and I think the thing that is a little bit different is that, like, you used to have to, like, claim you had done something. Yeah. About the anti-trans bill, and now you can just sign it. Yeah. And it becomes law. And this is something that is played out across the country. Like, there have been a lot of states where Democratic governors have signed anti-trans bills. Or vetoed pro-trans bills, like in California. Yeah. And, you know, even in states where, like, Pritzker, the governor of Illinois has been being held up as, like, the big pro-trans people. I see, like, even trans left is doing this. And, you know, like, there are a lot of things in Illinois that are very good for trans people because of the weird Pritzker corruption, his sister

is trans. And also, the moment the government was like, oh, hey, we're going to like sort of make a big show of threatening, like, health care funding, Prisker just folded and let all these hospitals stop providing trans care to youth, even though it is literally a violation of Illinois, like, of Illinois anti-discrimination legislation. Yeah. They just backed down and refused to do it. Yeah. And the way that this starts is that there is a gap between the rhetoric of someone like Pritzker being like, oh, no, like we support trans rights. Trans rights are an important civil rights issue. And then you watch them, like, allow a bunch of hospitals in Illinois to stop providing care to trans kids.

and the place where that ends is more and more Democrats just straight up voting for this stuff. Yeah. And the Democrats, you know, as you're talking about with HB2, is like, you know, there were democratic votes on that one. Yeah, HB1.42

especially, yeah, the compromise bill. But even HB2 itself, yeah, there were Democrats who scored that too. Yeah. And so this is, I think, the critical part of this is that, like, this stuff only can happen with the support of the Democrats, and that's why it's happened. It's because, because, like, and this is something that's incredibly important right now,

where, like, all of the shit that is happening, all the things Republicans are doing are hideously unpotting, like 30% approval ratings across the board for, like, all of this. Just hideously, hideously, hide it. The only way it can happen is if the Democrats go collaborationists and side with the Republicans, and that's what they're doing. Nazis always need whizzlings. Yeah, and they're relying on the image of resistance to distract everything. one for the fact that they're helping these policies go through.

And if you want to stop them, you have to stop them from collaborating. There's a vile sickness in Abbas town. You must excise it. Dig into the deep earth and cut it out. The village is ravaged. Entired families have been consumed. You know how waking up from a dream, a fool. familiar place can look completely alien.

Get back, everyone. He's going to next. And if you see the devil walking around inside of another man, you must cut out the very heart of him. Burn his body and scatter the ashes in the furthest corner of this town as a warning. From IHeart podcasts and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Manky, this is Havoc Town. A new fiction podcast sets in the Bridgewater Audio Universe. Starring Jewel State and Ray Wanky,

wise listen to Havoc Town on the iHeart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts the devil walks in ablestown what would you do if one bad decision forced you to choose between a maximum security prison or the most brutal boot camp designed to be hell on earth unfortunately for mark lombardo this was the choice he faced he said you are a number a new York State number, and we own you. Shock incarceration, also known as boot camps, are short-term, highly regimented correctional programs that mimic military basic training. These programs aim to provide a shock of prison life, emphasizing strict discipline,

physical training, hard labor, and rehabilitation programs. Mark had one chance to complete this program and had no idea of the hell awaiting him the next six months. The first night was so overwhelming, and you don't know who's next to you yet. And we didn't know what to expect in the morning. Nobody tells you anything. Listen to shock incarceration on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. A foot washed up a shoe with some bones in it.

They had no idea who it was. Most everything was burned up pretty good from the fire that not a whole lot was salvageable. These are the coldest of cold cases. But everything is about to change. Every case that is a cold case that has DNA. Right now in a backlog will be identified in our lifetime. A small lab in Texas is cracking the code on DNA. Using new scientific tools,

they're finding clues in evidence so tiny you might just miss it. He never thought he was going to get caught. And I just looked at my computer screen. I was just like, ah, got you. On America's Crime Lab, we'll learn about victims and survivors. and you'll meet the team behind the scenes at Othrum, the Houston Lab that takes on the most hopeless cases to finally solve the unsolvable.

Listen to America's Crime Lab on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My name is Ed. Everyone say, hello, Ed. Hello, Ed. I'm from a very rural background myself. My dad is a farmer, and my mom is a cousin, so, like, it's not, like... What do you get when a true crime producer walks into a comedy club? I know it sounds like the start of a bad joke,

but that really was my reality nine years ago. I just normally do straight stand-up, but this is a bit different. On stage stood a comedian with a story that no one expected to hear. The 22nd of July 2015, a 23-year-old man had killed his family. And then he came to my house. So what do you get when a true crime producer

walks into a comedy club. A new podcast called Wisecrack, where stand-up comedy and murder takes center stage. Available now. Listen to Wisecrack on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I think that also brings up kind of the third element in this. You've got the are always fascist, increasingly fascist,

Republican Party. You've got the increasing collaborationist. Democratic Party. And especially on queer and trans rights, you have gay ink, which, and I go into some examples in the piece, after HP2.0, they put out some preferring three statements, but then they turned to gatekeeping. And the ensuing years, they very consistently tried to stifle any activism that was more radical or more principled to try to get this stuff off the books. And especially if it came to holding Democratic officials feet the fire, I literally have an example in the article that I was physically there for and witnessed where a director of the canvas inequality sees the mic

as was being passed as some candidates to answer a stronger question from some trans activists and change the question to something that didn't actually put any pressure on them at all. Like, just kind of absurd, petty stuff like that. But the coup of effect has been that, you know, they turn to thinking about their political careers and their fundraising. And when push comes to shove, again and again, they've shown they won't hold Democrats' feet to the fire. If anything, they will tell the trans people trying to hold their feet, the fire to shut up. So if you know that the lobby, the official lobby that's supposed to, you know,

ostensibly on some level stand up for some mild version of trans and queer rights, will never give someone any shit for breaking ranks, not even like we condemn official so-and-so and their bigotry or whatever, or we are sorely disappointed in or any one of the boilerplate things, they won't even go that far. That's too far for them. So you have Democrats, collaborating and a gay ink structure that has taken the energy and funding out of law of other queer activism, but we'll absolutely will not fight when Democrats are involved. So if you're fascist, all you have to do is get some Democrats involved. Yeah, and that's how you give Fishefrance.

Like that's, yeah. And honestly, this is, it's a question I put to folks because, you know, look, I'm honestly dealing with North Carolina Democrats is one of the things that made me an anarchist. So, I've not had any faith in them for a very, very long time. But for folks that, you know, kind of do put a little more energy into electoral processes, I just, you know, so questions to the piece that I think are worth asked them, like, what's the point of people who are just going to support your enemies? Yeah.

What's the point of people that you elect? Maybe even, like, get out, you know, and dock doors or whatever to get elected, who then don't do the one thing they're elected to do. And I'd ask too for some of the folks who support some of these gay encores. I was like, if they won't fight now, what is the point of them? Yeah. Why do they deserve any support from us as a community? Or is it far past time to look to other alternatives?

There wasn't a lesson HB2 taught as well, which is if you want even the most diehard bigot to start losing their nerve, you attack their money and their power. Yeah. And then you don't stop if folks say, oh, you have to compromise over pragmatic solution, you ignore them, laugh in their faces, do whatever. But you keep pressing them. Because that was the other thing that you do. There was a really effective campaign to boycott. Yeah. And it did have a substantial effect. You know, the lovely weapon of vicious mockery really came in handy. And even Rogas didn't like becoming a national laughing stock. So there were less about how stuff could be fought as well. And the more radical history in North Carolina. You know, there are queer radicals here. You know, my city was hit by a massive hurricane last year. And honestly, it was a lot of those radicals getting out in the ground that kept things from getting even worse. And, you know, just folks in the ground pitching in outside of government structures, not waiting for the official non-profits who were either devastated or had not planned for this.

So there are other alternatives, you know, and or heck that the hell. I have to remember I could curse here. the fact that civil rights with a lot of tension has gone to citizens. And there was a lot of organizing in those movements. It's a lot more militant than folks remember. That also went along three

decades of riots in cities throughout the state before the old order even began to budge a little bit. And the lesson from that, North Carolina Democrats and North Carolina status quo and had to see throughout the south and throughout the country, it only budges or even

starts to move when the cost of continuing the way it is become far too high. Yeah. And our job is to impose that cost. Yes. Because if we don't impose that cost, they're going to keep pushing and they are going to continue to write us out of existence until they have the guns to do it.

Yeah. And honestly, that is a mentality. I think a lot more people need to absorb. And I think one of the lessons from, you know, fighting the far rate at some points for my entire, like, adult life basically, and even a little bit before then,

in North Carolina is that the more you fight them, the weaker they are. Yeah. But also, and this is something one of the more experienced, Transcendant South I know has emphasized, you won't always win. You can always inflict a cost. Yeah. And I think a little more like thinking outside of elections, a little more bloody-minded determination can really come in handy of the sense of like, if our enemies are like,

okay, court rules against us, we're still pressing the attack. okay, election goes against us. We're still pressing the attack. I think we can do way meaner and way better than they do on that front. Something goes against us. That's nice. We're still pressing the attack. You know, there's nothing in this hellscape of an empire we have to abide by, especially

not in the South. Yeah. Yeah. So if something doesn't go our way once, okay, learn, regroup, redouble, make sure you inflicted some costs, go out and inflict more of them. They're not invincible. Trust me. Yeah. Another gender is possible. You just have to go out and fight for it.

Exactly. Yeah. So I think on that note, David, where can people find your work? You can find my stuff for TransNews Network at TransNews. Network, including this most recent piece. And you can find some of my local reporting as part of the Ashful Blade co-op at Ashfallblade.com. Awesome. And y'all at both the Trans News Network and the Ashfield Blade have been doing a bunch of absolutely. incredible work. Thank you. And I encourage if one to support both, because ideally the function of journalism is to

be the targeting mechanism of the class. And these are two groups of working class trans journalists who do it. And both organizations are work or run, I should add. Yep. This has been It Could Happen here. Go fight them.

It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcast from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for it could happen here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening. Ah, come on. Why is this taking so long? This thing is ancient. Still using yesterday's tech upgrade to the ThinkPad X1 Carbon, ultra-light, ultra-powerful, and built for serious

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