On the campaign track, Donald Trump used dissatisfaction with transgender access to sports and bathrooms to draw conservative voters and influence the undecided. And in his first months in office, Trump pushed the problem more, erasing the mention of transgender people on government websites and passports and trying to remove them from the army.
It is a contradiction of numbers which reveals a deep cultural fracture: transgender people represent less than 1% of the American population, but they have become a major article on the political failure council – in particular that of Trump.
For transgender people and their allies – as well as several judges who ruled against Trump in response to legal challenges – these are civil rights for a small group. But many Americans believe that these rights have become too large.
The president’s projectors give this year the transgender day of the visibility on Monday.
“What he wants is to frighten us again to be invisible,” said Rachel Crandall Crocker, executive director of Transgender Michigan who organized the first day of visibility 16 years ago. “We have to show him that we will not return.”
So why has this small population ended up with such a disproportionate role in American politics?
The emphasis on people is part of a long -standing campaign
Trump’s actions reflect a constellation of beliefs that transgender people are dangerous, are men who try to access women’s spaces or are pushed to gender changes they will regret later.
The American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association and other major medical groups have declared that the treatments affirming sex can be medically necessary and are supported by evidence.
Zein Murib, an associate professor of political science and women, studies of gender and sexuality at the University of Fordham, said that there had been a decades old effort “to restore the nationalist Christian principles as an earth law” which increased its accent on transgender people after a decision of the American Supreme Court of 2015 recognizing national homosexual marriage. It took a few years, but some positions have gained ground.
A factor: supporters of the restrictions are looking at broader questions of equity and security, which attracts the attention of the public more.
Sports prohibitions and bathroom laws are linked to the protection of spaces for women and girls, even if studies have revealed that transgender women are much more likely to be victims of violence. Efforts to prevent schools from encouraging gender transition is linked to the protection of parental rights. And bans on affirmative care partially relied on the idea that people could regret it later, although studies revealed that this was rare.
Since 2020, around half of the States have adopted laws prohibiting transgender people with sports competitions aligning their gender and has prohibited or restricted medical care affirming the sexes for minors. At least 14 have adopted laws restricting the transgender bathrooms that people can use in certain buildings.
In February, Iowa became the first state to remove the protections of transgender persons from the Civil Rights Act.
It’s not just the political game. “I think that it is or not a politically viable strategy is second to the immediate impact that it will have on trans people,” said Murib de Fordham.
Many voters think that trans rights have gone too far
According to Voting, more than half of the voters in the 2024 elections – said that support for transgender rights in the United States has gone too far. About 2 out of 10 said the level of support was almost correct, and a similar share said that the support had not gone far enough.
Nevertheless, the Voting Voter has also noted that voters were divided on laws prohibiting medical treatments affirming the sexes, such as puberty blockers or hormone therapy, for minors. A little more than half were opposed to these laws, while a little less than half were in favor.
Trump voters were extremely likely to say that support for transgender rights went too far, while Kamala Harris voters were more divided. About 4 out of 10 Harris voters said that support for transgender rights did not go far enough, while 36% said it was about correct and there were about a quarter that it had gone too far.
This year, an investigation by the Pew Research Center revealed that the Americans, including the Democrats, have become more slightly more favorable to the requirement of transgender athletes that they compete with the teams that correspond to their sex at birth and more favorable to the prohibitions of medical care affirming sex for transgender minors since 2022. Most democrats have always opposed these types of measures.
Leor Sapir, a member of the Manhattan Institute, a right -wing reflection group, said the positions of Trump and the Republicans have given them a political advantage.
“They put their adversaries, their democratic opponents, in a very unfavorable position in front of deciding between the restoration of their progressive and activist base or their median voter,” he said.
Not everyone agrees.
“People through the political spectrum agree in fact, the major crises and the major problems facing the United States at the moment is not the existence and civic participation of trans persons,” said Olivia Hunt, director of federal policy for defenders of trans equality.
And in the same election that saw Trump return to the presidency, the voters of the Delaware elected Sarah McBride, the first transgender member of the Congress.
Complete political benefits remain to be seen
Paisley Currah, professor of political science at the University of the City of New York, said that the conservatives are in part because they constitute such a small part of the population.
“Because it is so small, it’s relatively unknown,” said Currah, Transgender. “And then Trump in a way used trans to signify what is wrong with the left. You know:” It’s just too crazy. It’s too awake. “”
But democratic politicians also know that the population is relatively small, said Seth Masket, director of the Center on American Politics at the University of Denver, who writes a book on the GOP.
“Many democrats are not particularly excited to defend this group,” said Masket, citing polls.
For Republicans, overall support for transgender rights is proof that they are out of time.
“The Democratic Party continues to be on the wrong side of extremely popular issues, and that proves to what extent they are out of contact with the Americans,” said the spokesman for the National Congress Committee Mike Marinella.
Part of this message can pass. In early March, California Governor Gavin Newsom, a potential Democratic presidential candidate in 2028, launched his new podcast by speaking against the authorization of women and transgender girls in competition in female and girls.
And several other Democratic officials have said that the party spent too much effort to support transgender rights. Others, including American senator Catherine Cortez Masto, said they opposed transgender athletes in girls and women sports.
Jay Jones, president of the student government of Howard University and a transgender woman, said her peers widely accepted transgender people.
“The Trump administration is trying to arm people from Trans experience … to help give an enemy or a scapegoat,” she said. But “I don’t think it will succeed until the strategy he thinks.”