Republicans are pushing culture war attacks on LGBTQ+ people because they have no clue how to govern

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Here’s a question worth asking: why is the GOP so fixated on transgender people?

Not just in the abstract but right now. The Republican Party, once the party of tax cuts and deregulation, has shifted much of its energy toward defining the boundaries of gender. Donald Trump’s latest executive order restricting trans rights—the most sweeping federal action on this issue to date—is just the latest step in a relentless, well-funded effort to make trans identity the political fight of the decade.

This is not because America has become a trans nation. According to the Williams Institute at UCLA, approximately 1.6 million people (ages 13 and older) identify as transgender in the United States—that’s 0.6% of the population. Nor is it because trans people pose a new, emergent threat. A 2011 poll by Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) found that 91% of Americans were already aware of the term “transgender,” and 89% believed trans people should have equal rights.

Yet somehow, over a decade later, we are in a political climate where trans rights are treated as an existential crisis.

How did we get here?

The Politics of Moral Panic

There is a familiar pattern to how moral panics take hold. Step one: A social change gains visibility. Step two: That change is framed as…

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