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On the campaign, Donald Trump used controversials around Transgender People’s access to sports and bathrooms to fire conservative voters and undecided. And in his first months back in office, Trump drove the issue further, and he mentioned transgender people on government sites and passports and tried to remove them from the military.
It is a contradiction of numbers that reveal a deep cultural gorge: Transgender -people form less than 1% of the American population, but they have become an important piece on the political chess board – especially Trump.
For transgender people and their allies – along with several judges who ruled Trump in response to legal challenges – this is a matter of civil rights for a small group. But many Americans believe that these rights have been too stretched.
The President’s spotlight gives Monday’s transgender day of visibility another tenor this year.
“What he wants is to refrain from being invisible again,” says Rachel Crandall Crocker, the executive director of Transgender Michigan who arranged the first day of visibility 16 years ago. “We have to show him that we won’t go back.”
So why did this small population find itself in such a major role in American politics?
The focus on transgender people is part of a prolonged campaign
Trump’s actions reflect a constellation of beliefs that transgender people are dangerous, men are trying to access female spaces or be printed in gender changes that they will later regret.
The American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association and other major medical groups said that treatments for sexual affirmation can be medically necessary and supported by evidence.
Zein Murib, an associate professor of political science and women’s, gender and sexuality studies at the University of Fordham, said a decades-old effort was made to reinstate the Christian nationalist principles as the law of the country “that increased its focus on transgender people to a 2015 ruling in the US high court. It lasted a few years, but some of the positions got traction.
One factor: Proponents of the restrictions lean in broader questions about fairness and safety, which attract more public attention.
Sports ban and bathroom laws are related to protecting spaces for women and girls, even though studies have found that transgender women are much more likely to be victims of violence. Attempts to prevent schools from encouraging sex transition are related to the protection of parental rights. And prohibition on sex -affirming care is partly relying on the idea that people may regret later, although studies have found that it is rare.
Since 2020, about half of the states have passed laws that impede transgender people of sports competitions that match their gender and have banned or restricted the medical care of generations for minors. At least 14 have passed laws that are limited which bathrooms can use transgender people in certain buildings.
In February, Iowa became the first state to remove protection for transgender people from civil rights rights.
It’s not just political players. “I think if it is a politically viable strategy or not is the immediate impact it will have on Trans people,” Fordham’s Murib said.
Many voters believe that transgender rights have gone too far
More than half of the voters in the 2024 – 55% election said the support for transgender rights in the United States went too far. About 2 at 10 said the level of support was about right, and a similar share said the support did not go far enough.
Nevertheless, AP votes also found that voters were divided into laws that prohibited sex-affirming medical treatment, such as puberty blockers or hormone therapy, for minors. Just over half were opposed to these laws, while just under half was in favor.
Trump voters probably said overwhelmingly that support for transgender rights went too far, while Kamala Harris’s voters were more divided. About 4 out of ten voters from Harris said the support for transgender rights did not go far enough, while 36% said it was about right and about a quarter said it was too far.
In a recording of the Pew Research Center, it was found that Americans, including Democrats, became more supportive to require transgender athletes to compete for teams that matched at the birth of their gender and more supportive for prohibition on sex-affirming medical care for transgender miners since 2022. However, most democrats are still opposed to such types.
Leor Sapir, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a legal sound tank, says the positions of Trump and Republicans have given them a political lead.
“They put their opponents, their democratic opponents, in a very unfavorable position by deciding between catering to their progressive, activist base or their median voter,” he said.
Not everyone agrees.
“People across the political spectrum agree that the most important crises and major problems the United States currently face are not the existence and civil participation of Trans people,” says Olivia Hunt, director of the Federal Policy for Trans Equality.
And in the same election that Trump returned to the presidency, Delaware voters Sarah McBride, the first transgender member of Congress, preferred.
The full political outage has yet to be seen
Paisley Currah, a professor of political science at City University of New York, said conservatives are partly of transgender people because they are such a small part of the population.
“Because it’s so small, it’s relatively unknown,” says Currah, who is transgender. ‘And then Trump has some kind of used trans to indicate what’s 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, says Seth Masket, director of the Center for American Politics at the University of Denver, who writes a book about the IDP.
“Many Democrats are not especially dismissed to defend this group,” Masket said with the polls.
For Republicans, the overall support of transgender rights is proof that they are not in line with the times.
“The Democratic Party finds itself on the wrong side of overwhelmingly popular issues, and it proves how they are out of touch with Americans,” said Mike Marinella, spokesman for the National Republican Congress Committee.
Some of the messages can come through. Early in March, Gavin Newsom, California Gavin Newsom, a potential 2028 democratic presidential candidate, launched his new Podcast by talking to transgender women and girls participating in women and girls sports.
And several other Democratic officials said the party was spending too much trouble supporting transgender rights. Others, including the US Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, said they oppose transgender athletes in girls and women’s sports.
Jay Jones, the president of the student government at the University of Howard and a transgender woman, said her peers largely accept from transgender people.
“The Trump administration is trying to weapon people of the trans experience … to give an arch -enemy or a scapegoat,” she said. But “I don’t think it’s going to be as successful as the strategy as he thinks it will be.”
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Azociated Press Personal Editor Amelia Thomson-Deveaux contributed to this article. Jesse Bedayn is a corp member of the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a non -profit national service program that places journalists in local news rooms to report on national issues.
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