The Daily - How the G.O.P. Picked Trans Kids as a Rallying Cry

Episode Date: June 1, 2023

With stunning speed, the status of trans youth has become the rallying cry of the Republican Party, from state legislatures to presidential campaigns.Adam Nagourney, who covers West Coast cultural affairs for The New York Times, explains how that came to be, and why it’s proving such a potent issue.Guest: Adam Nagourney, a West Coast cultural affairs correspondent for The New York Times.Background reading: Defeated on same-sex marriage, the religious right went searching for an issue that would re-energize supporters and donors.Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, anti-gay rhetoric and calls to roll back L.G.B.T.Q. rights have grown bolder among Republican elected officials and candidates.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

From New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today. With stunning speed, the status of trans youth has become the rallying cry of the Republican Party, from state legislatures to presidential campaigns. Party, from state legislatures to presidential campaigns. My colleague, Adam Nagarni, has been reporting on precisely how that came to be and why it's proven such a potent issue. It's Thursday, June 1st. Adam, over the past few months, it has felt like the Republican Party at every level has made what very much looks like a concerted decision to focus its attention, its rhetoric, and its political power on transgender identity and trans rights. And you have been studying that strategy closely.

So put it into context for us, the scale of it. You know, it's as big as you think it is. We're seeing across the country that Republicans are talking about this. Leading candidates for the 2024 presidential race are already releasing campaign ads. It's morning again in America. One of them being Donald Trump, who specifically mentioned trans people in sports. Mediocre male athletes now given the opportunity to compete unfairly. We've seen politicians at every level across the country, again, Republicans, using similar language.

Girls are going to play girls sports and boys are going to play boys sports. That's what we're doing. That girls should be girls and boys should be boys. And the largest gathering of conservatives, CPAC, earlier this year, was very much dominated by this issue. If transgenderism is false, as it is, then for the good of society, and especially for the good of the poor people who have fallen prey to this confusion, transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely. But it's more than rhetoric. We're seeing actual legislation passing. We've had a bunch of states

over this past year that have passed laws that have restricted the ability of minors to get access to health care or compete on sports teams. So it's been really a big deal, in my view, and my sense is that it's just going to grow. Well, Adam, to the degree that this really has been the year where this issue came to a head and reached a critical mass and for Republicans has found real success, mass and for Republicans has found real success, especially in the form of legislation. We want to talk to you about how that came to be. How did Republicans come to agree that this issue, kids who identify as trans, is the issue that they would put so much money and muscle behind in this moment? So tell us what you have come to understand about

that. It's partly organic. It probably just kind of happened for a variety of reasons. And it's partly part of a well-organized effort to put this on the map. I think it goes back to 2015 when the Supreme Court ruled in favor of same-sex marriage. And that was obviously a big victory for gay rights groups that have been fighting for that for a long time and were, I would argue, kind of surprised at their legal and political success in getting it through and getting such widespread acceptance to it. Now, there are a few things that are going on here.

One is that the most well-funded mainstream gay rights groups, like the Human Rights Campaign, Lambda Legal Defense Fund, the Victory Fund, they've been around for a long time. And in their history, they tended to be formed by overwhelmingly white, male, middle-class people, not exclusively, but predominantly. And they don't represent the entire gay rights movement, certainly not the gay rights movement that we see today, but they're prominent and they have money and they have influence. And the truth is, some of them have been uncomfortable with trans issues going back at least to Stonewall.

And I say that as someone who's actually studied this and actually wrote a book about this. And just explain that, Adam. I mean, because we all understand this acronym LGBTQ, you're suggesting that there's something of a complex inner dynamic between those letters, gay and trans. There is a complex inner dynamic. You know, I don't think we should assume that some of these gay rights groups would automatically move to trans issues. At the same time, once that court made a decision, they were without an issue that they had used to organize and to raise money and to rally support for years. So they needed to kind of figure out what to do next. And you could see this sort of trend toward embracing trans issues.

And it began around then. Right. I remember this moment really well, Adam. I remember covering the legalization of gay marriage for The Times. And it was something that was talked about somewhat openly, that with gay marriage passed, the gay rights movement had achieved this major milestone in social acceptance. And the feeling was that for these groups that you just described, the next natural, logical place to advocate was for trans people who did not win

the same kind of rights during that period that gay men and women had. I think that's right. And this became, you know, a really clear issue for these groups to rally around. So yes, I think that's right. And this became, you know, a really clear issue for these groups to rally around. So yes, I think that's correct. Okay. So what does that start to look like? All of these organizations and infrastructure that had been focused on gay rights suddenly turning their attention to trans rights? So you start seeing these same organizations that had been lobbying for gay marriage turned their attention to laws that would protect trans people. History was made today when the Defense Department lifted one of the last

bans on service in the armed forces. So, this is when the Pentagon lifts the ban on trans people serving openly in the military. And they will be eligible for any medically necessary care, including surgery. Big changes to driver's licenses and IDs in California and New York.

Some local governments start lifting the requirement that people choose a gender identification when applying for a driver's license. Oregon, Maine, Minnesota, Washington State, and Washington, D.C. already offer three gender classifications. And at the same time, we're seeing more changes culturally in society in terms of transgender visibility. Ladies, I want each and every one of you to go back to your bunks tonight and get to know your own cha-cha, okay? So the show Orange is the New Black features a trans actress. That is history being made. Laverne Cox from Orange is the New Black is the first transgender

person to make the cover of Time. And then, of course, in 2015, Bruce always had to tell a lie. Caitlyn doesn't have any secrets. Caitlyn Jenner was on the cover of Vanity Fair. As soon as the Vanity Fair. As soon as the Vanity Fair cover comes out, I'm free. It was a real moment. And you can be sure that those

on the political right noticed the change. In what way? Well, I think they began at that moment to realize there might be a political issue here where the American public in general was becoming supportive of same-sex marriage, but they certainly were not supportive of some of these issues, or at least familiar or comfortable with them. This was new territory. And Michael, let me take a pause here. I want to make an important distinction. I think for some on the right, this was a matter of genuine concern. But there were some where this was also a political decision or a calculated decision. They saw this as a potent issue. And they began to realize that this could replace gay marriage as something that could help

them organize, raise money, get attention, become relevant. Both sides, after gay marriage is something that can help them organize, raise money, get attention, become relevant. Both sides, after gay marriage is legalized, are moving on. One to trans rights to champion it, the other to try to counter it and express a wariness of it. I think that's right. And I think that the same way the left saw there was something it could pivot to in terms of gay right issues, the right saw something that they could do to replace this big issue they had lost. Okay, so what does the right do about trans people and their sudden, much more visible emergence in American life in this period? What happens if you have a sort of constellation of conservative groups that have been working on social causes over the years and up until this point that had been basically gay marriage and abortion? And there are groups like the Family Research Council, the Alliance Defending Freedom, the American Principles Project, and an early attempt to turn this concern into action backfired. And it backfired spectacularly.

How so? So in North Carolina, legislators voted to bar transgender people from using public bathrooms of their choice. And it created a huge political and economic backlash. And you had businesses like PayPal and Adidas pulling out, not investing in the state. The NCAA and the NBA pulled back. Performers like Bruce Springsteen canceled concerts. And it culminated with the lawmakers backing down and eventually rescinding the bill. Right, the reaction to that bill from businesses,

from performers, was outrage, right? Like, how could you do this? And it became a kind of economic pressure on North Carolina. I think I remember covering this. That was so enormous that the lawmakers in North Carolina kind of scurried back to the drawing board and said, oh, that was a mistake. Exactly right. I guess the issue of bathrooms just wasn't resonating with the public, at least at the time. So some conservative strategists began looking around for other ways to frame transgender rights as an issue that could be winning for the Republican Party.

Okay. And what happens in pursuit of that next trans battleground for Republicans? So I should point out here that we have an interregnum. Donald Trump is elected president at the end of 2016. And, you know, as president, he was definitely an early ally of this movement, right? And he did stuff like rescind that Obama policy on transgender people serving in the military. That turned out just to be the beginning for the Trump administration. They moved on to narrow the definition of sex discrimination in education and in housing. So transgender people are not considered to protect the class. Right.

So I think a lot of these groups felt kind of comfortable with what was going on. Nonetheless, they were still doing research. And in 2019, these groups did polling. They found that Republicans were more likely to support a Republican candidate who favored a ban on transgender girls participating in sports than a candidate pushing for a ban on transgender people using a bathroom of their choosing. Interesting. Yeah, so they realized that there was a power to the issue of fairness in sports and to the medical issue.

Like, should trans teenagers, minors, have access to what's known as gender-affirming care? And what I mean by that is a range of treatments that can include mental health support, hormone therapy, puberty blockers, and in rare cases, surgery. So the polls were definitely part of what led them to shift from bathrooms to these issues. And both of those issues, we should point out, Adam, involve not just any trans person, but trans youth, trans youth in sports and trans youth seeking medical care for being trans. Yeah, I think that's a big deal. I think that these groups have been casting around for how to deal with this issue and suddenly saw a clear path forward. And in both these examples we both use, it involves kids. I mean, the Times reported on it during this period. Numbers are starting to emerge showing that the trans community among young Americans is expanding. Yeah, you know, that's right. There was one study based on government data from 2017 to 2020 that estimated that 1.4% of kids who were from 13 to 17 years old identified as transgender and 1.3 of 18 to 24

year olds. Now, 1% is not a big percentage, but the numbers are growing. And I think the reason the numbers are growing is because in some parts of the country, it's more acceptable to come out as transgender and care is more accessible. And medical professionals will tell you that kids do need this kind of treatment at this point in their life when there are a lot of changes going on in their bodies. And it makes sense from that perspective to delay some of these changes until these minors can come to terms with what exactly they want to do in terms of transition. And we're not talking about many kids getting medical treatment. The best numbers we have show that maybe 4,000 kids began

hormone therapy in 2021. But it was going on, and it's caught the eye of conservatives. And they're uncomfortable with the idea of trans people in general, and they're uncomfortable with the idea of kids transitioning. So it made sense, you know, both for a policy perspective and from a political perspective, that Republicans seized on trans youth as an issue. And there's a history to framing these kind of issues around children. Well, explain that. Adam, what do you mean? This is nothing new.

The idea of conservatives who oppose gay rights, speaking generally, framing the issue around children has been going on at least since the 1970s, most famously is what a prominent singer-actress named Anita Bryant in Florida. Anita Bryant is not reluctant to use her show business background during her public appearances on behalf of Save Our Children. Led a campaign against gay rights by portraying gay men as predators of children. Save Our Children. We do not want our children subjected to this kind of a role model. And it was very effective. I'm not talking necessarily of child molestation in the physical. I'm talking about the psychological, which is even more detrimental.

Time and time again over these past decades, particularly as we saw the gay rights movement shift to marriage. Redefine a marriage would further distance marriage from the needs of children. When conservatives trying to derail these efforts would raise questions about how children would be raised by having same-sex parents. It would deny as a matter of policy the ideal that a child needs a mom and a dad. And I think that's even more the case now with trans issues,

particularly trans minor issues, and conservatives understand that. Right, you're saying this approach by conservatives of focusing on kids worked early on in fighting gay rights, so it stands to reason that it would work against trans rights. And if you're a conservative worried about trans rights, the reality is that the culture and politics around trans people and trans rights are changing very quickly after 2015. So that's how we arrive at this moment and this strategy by Republicans. It's not coming out of nowhere.

It doesn't come from nowhere. A really important point here is that these concerns are not only felt by conservatives, they're also felt by some independent voters and even some Democratic voters. All this stuff came together at once. Conservative groups kind of stumbled into this. I mean, they've been thinking about this for a long time. And, you know, partly by planning and partly just because stuff happens, they have stumbled across an issue that has real resonance and they realize

it. And now the time has come to try to codify it in state legislatures across the country. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. Okay, Adam, you've explained how by 2019, a group of conservative activists have found their issue and their strategy, which is to focus on trans kids. So how did they begin to deploy that strategy across the country? What do they do?

Well, before they can even get going, two things happened that really changed the political atmosphere in the country and made it, I think, more amenable to their message. The first, of course, was the pandemic. And that created skepticism about medicine, about medical professionals. So when organizations like the American Medical Association or the American Academy of Pediatrics say they support gender-affirming care for trans minors, there are a lot of people who just discount that or just don't believe them or just trust them. The kind of organizations that would have had a lot of credibility 20 years ago

just don't in this new world. And then, of course, at the end of 2020, Donald Trump loses the election. And what that means is that there's not anyone in the White House anymore who's going to carry out this agenda on a federal level. And they're forced to turn to the state legislatures. Where, of course, they start turning this approach we've been discussing into actual law. So remind us exactly what these bills try to do and in which states they pass. So we begin seeing these bills popping up all over the country. And it's hard not to notice that they are often similar in language. And that's because some of them are being drafted off of model legislation that was put together by some of these conservative groups

that have been leading the battle against transgender rights for a while. And once they helped state lawmakers write these bills, they lobbied to get it passed. This week, Arkansas lawmakers passed a first-in-the-nation bill. In early 2021, Arkansas became the first state to ban gender-affirming care for minors. New tonight, Arizona's transgender youth have become a target at the state capitol this year.

And that was followed by Arizona and Alabama. The law would make providing that care a felony, punishable by up to 10 years in prison. And as of this taping, Governors in Utah and South Dakota signed legislation banning gender-affirming care into law. Georgia and Iowa have become the latest states to enact anti-trans laws. The most high-profile new state added to the list is Florida. Over a dozen states have restricted access to medical care for minors up from just three in January. More than 426 bills that have been described as anti-LGBTQ laws

have been introduced in state legislatures across the U.S. And some of these bills go even further. A record number of bills relating to health care, access to bathrooms, even drag performances have already been tabled this year in state legislatures. So it's been a big change. And talk to us for just a moment about the practical impact of all these new laws. Because at this time, we're now talking about at least 16 states with restrictions or bans on gender-affirming care for minors, and more than 20 states that have some kind of a sports ban. I mean, I think what it means is that any minor who identifies as transgender or is searching to determine their gender identity

and lives in a state where this is actively discouraged, is going to find life is difficult. I mean, it's going to be harder to seek help. It's going to be harder to join sports teams. It's going to be harder to get hormone therapy or other gender-affirming care. And in some states, some kids who are already getting these treatments are going to be forced to stop. It's just making it more difficult for them to live the way they want to live.

And activists say they've put trans kids at serious risk. Adam, as all this has been happening, what is the LGBTQ rights movement that was so successful in the past doing to try to fend off these laws? I mean, reality is that they cannot do much legislatively to change this. These states are controlled by Republicans, legislators,

and governors. The sentiment is really strong. There's just not much you can do to change the laws in the legislature, but you can go to court. And some of these groups are taking these laws to court with mixed success, trying to at least slow them down. And advocates are doing what they can in the blue states to protect and bolster trans rights. You know, the result is that we're having two very different countries here. It's very different, you know, to be a trans person living in a red state than a trans person living in a blue state. Adam, we started this conversation in 2015 and with gay rights and the success of gay marriage. and with gay rights and the success of gay marriage.

A big way that gay rights activists overcame fear and antipathy of gay rights was by focusing on adults and a very traditional request, the right of gay adults to be married. And that ultimately is seen as having melted the opposition to gay rights. I wonder how much the trans rights world thinks about that as a model and about the idea that they're likely to keep suffering political and legislative setbacks if this debate is being framed, as it now is by Republicans, around kids and

young people. Yeah, I mean, like, history shows, and social conservatives know, that focusing on kids is an effective and powerful way to frame this argument and ultimately to win this argument. Now, if these policies start to encroach on the rights of trans adults, and I have to point out, in some places they already have begun, then social conservatives might lose support, certainly, I would argue, among independent or moderate voters. But for now, the vast majority of laws remain focused squarely on kids under 18. Right, and so long as that remains the case, it's going to present a real challenge for trans rights advocates. That's correct.

I mean, it's a conundrum for them, right? For trans advocates, it's a huge issue. You can't really turn away from kids because part of what we're talking about here is being a kid and growing up as a potentially transgender kid. And they want to protect kids at this stage of their life when they're undergoing puberty and their identities are beginning to emerge. And how do they get out of that dilemma?

That's the situation we're in right now. And my gut is that this debate is going to be centered on trans kids for a long time to come. Adam, thank you very much. Thank you, Michael. I appreciate it. It is wrong for a teacher to tell a student that they may have been born in the wrong body or that their gender is a choice. Ron DeSantis of Florida began his newly announced presidential campaign in Iowa by talking about trans kids and his efforts to keep any discussion of them out of public schools. We actually just signed legislation protecting students from having teachers force them to pick pronouns, which they are doing in some parts of this country at very, very young age. We're not competing in the pronoun sweepstakes.

We're going to have school just like school stands. The issue is expected to be central to DeSantis' candidacy and to the larger battle for who becomes the Republican presidential nominee in 2024. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to knitter day. Yays are 314. The nays are 117. The bill is passed. to Niterday. On Wednesday night, the Republican-controlled House passed a controversial plan to raise the debt ceiling and avoid a U.S. financial default. But in an embarrassing political setback for Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who brokered the deal with President

Biden. 71 House Republicans voted against it, saying it failed to reduce federal spending by enough. As a result, it fell to Democrats to push the Republican bill over the line. In the end, more than 165 Democrats voted for the plan, compared with just 149 Republicans, a fact that House Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries was eager to highlight. Extreme mega Republicans attempted to take control of the House floor. Democrats took it back for the American people. The bill now heads to the Senate, where Democratic Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said it will be adopted before June 5th, when the U.S. is expected to hit the debt ceiling and run out of money.

Today's episode was produced by Eric Krupke, Shannon Lin, Diana Nguyen, and Sydney Harper. It was edited by Patricia Willans and Paige Cowett, fact-checked by Susan Lee, contains original music by Mary Lozano and Diane Wong, and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsberg of Wonderly. That's it for The Daily.

I'm Michael Bilboro. See you tomorrow.