America, 2025: A Cautionary Tale for Generations

America chose to demonize transgender people. Then it came for other marginalized groups—and eventually, democracy itself.

***This article was originally published in the June issue of The Progressive.***

Once upon a time in America, a majority of voters decided to voluntarily forfeit their democracy, economic fortunes, and freedoms to destroy the phantom menace of transgender people.

In the 2024 election, Republicans spent more than $200 million to convince Americans that transgender people, hovering around 1 percent of the population, were a greater threat than a vulgarian, criminal rapist who incited a violent insurrection, quoted Hitler, and declared bankruptcy six times. However, fear and mass hysteria don’t require logic or common sense to grab hold of the people’s attention. All you need is an incestuous rightwing media ecosystem and a craven and cynical Republican Party willing to demonize one of the most marginalized communities on Earth. The world’s richest man, Elon Musk, purchasing Twitter and transforming it into a platform for neo-Nazis, hate-mongers, and anti-LGBTQ+ disinformation also doesn’t help.

The successful Southern strategy deployed by Republicans since the Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964 was given a modern reboot, with LGBTQ+ people and “wokeness” emerging as the latest manufactured bogeyman to convince Americans to vote against their interests. The Virginia gubernatorial race of 2021 was a test case to see if creating panic about critical race theory; diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI); and transgender acceptance in public schools could help propel Republican Glenn Youngkin to victory. Like the world’s most helpful Bond villain, rightwing activist Christopher Rufo admitted the plot and said the GOP would use establishment media as a Trojan horse to mainstream these fringe talking points outside of the MAGA bubble.

In turn, establishment media happily obliged, with The New York Times later inviting Rufo to write an op-ed on its esteemed pages. After Donald Trump’s election in 2024, alleged progressives like California Governor Gavin Newsom, comedian Bill Maher, and the hosts of the news commentary show The Young Turks openly parroted MAGA’s cynical and hateful talking points about transgender people to court a rightwing audience and cozy up to power. Just like “welfare queens,” sharia law, and an alleged caravan of invaders, America had to protect its children and women—especially in sports—from the dreaded woke virus that celebrated LGBTQ+ communities.

As a result, America will have more anti-trans bills in 2025 than actual trans athletes. The Trump Administration literally attempted to erase the existence of transgender and nonbinary people from public view, even scrubbing the word “transgender” from government websites. One of the administration’s first Executive Orders called for the recognition of only “two sexes, male and female.” Trump officials also attempted to purge transgender soldiers from the U.S. military, even though none of them have ever been accused of sharing classified military information on Signal, a commercial messaging app, with family and journalists, using a private cellphone.

Universities and other schools that protect transgender students were also targeted, with the Trump Administration suspending $175 million in funding to the University of Pennsylvania due to the existence of one trans swimmer, Lia Thomas, whom former swimmer turned anti-trans MAGA activist Riley Gaines blames for her being denied a fifth place trophy in a competition.

Trump then publicly picked a fight with the state of Maine by threatening to withhold federal funds because the state’s Democratic governor, Janet Mills, refused to exclude transgender athletes from competing in women’s sports.

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Unfortunately, many people in communities of color and in minority religious communities fell for the anti-trans panic without realizing they were next in line to be erased. Specifically, some Muslim American communities in Maryland volunteered to be halal chickens for the chopping block.

As of this writing, the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority seems to be siding with religious parents in that state who want to remove their children from classes that use storybooks with LGBTQ+ characters. Again, the conservative majority was seen to be promoting discrimination and Christian nationalism under the guise of religious liberties, by conveniently using a Muslim person of color to do their bidding. This was the same playbook that was used to dismantle affirmative action by using an Asian American plaintiff instead of a white woman as a convenient “model minority” tool to achieve their end game.

Seeing people from marginalized communities of color fall for the right wing’s cruel and cynical attack on transgender people to further their authoritarian agenda proves Gore Vidal’s comment that we live in the “United States of Amnesia.” It seems Pastor Martin Neimöller’s famous poetic confession, “First they came,” should be read daily by people who think the Face-Eating Leopard Party won’t begin to eat people’s faces once they gain power.

Tragically, that’s what happened in America, where transgender people were the first victims, quickly followed by undocumented immigrants, pro-Palestinian students, news outlets, universities, and even Republicans who dared to defy Trump and show fidelity to the rule of law and the U.S. Constitution.

Trump’s promise to bring down the price of eggs was replaced by a reckless and unnecessary trade war that increased the chances of a global recession. “America First” isolationism was replaced by threats to conquer Greenland by force and take Canada as the fifty-first state. The removal of DEI only elevated the world’s most incompetent, reckless, greedy, and idiotic people, who presided over an American nation that lost its former allies and international reputation and became a cautionary tale for generations.

A once powerful country chose to destroy itself due to fear, misinformation, and a manufactured hatred of one of the most marginalized communities on Earth.