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Activists worry that Trump will bulldoze trans rights. Here's how they're preparing

Published

1 month ago

December 7, 2024

Activists worry that Trump will bulldoze trans rights. Here's how they're preparing

Supporters of transgender rights hold signs as they rally outside the Supreme Court on Wednesday in Washington, D.C., as arguments begin in a case regarding a Tennessee law banning gender-affirming medical care for transgender youth.

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Afraid. Disappointed. Frustrated.

This is how Giovanni Santiago is feeling after former President Donald Trump’s reelection victory.

“What I do believe is that LGBTQ people, specifically trans people, are a target for him, and are a target for his fan base,” Santiago, who is trans, says about the president-elect.

A crowd of people are photographed from above in the Oklahoma state capitol. Some of them hold handmade signs supporting trans rights. A sign in the middle reads, "You can't erase us."

The 38-year-old lives in Ohio, where state law has banned gender-affirming care for youths and participation of transgender girls and women on girls and women’s sports teams. He is seeing and feeling the impacts of the political fight over rights for transgender people every day.

Nationally, the issue of gender-affirming care for minors was before the Supreme Court this week, after families challenged Tennessee’s ban.

Santiago, a local activist in Cleveland, isn’t alone in how he feels.

Giovanni Santiago, a transgender rights advocate who lives in Ohio, is preparing for a tough four years under a second Trump administration.

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“Many in our community, particularly trans people and their families, are filled with anxiety and fear about what a second Trump presidency could bring,” says Ash Lazarus Orr, with Advocates for Trans Equality. The group works to strengthen and protect the rights of transgender people through policy advocacy, political work and legal support.

Restricting access to gender-affirming care for minors and barring trans women from women’s sports teams covered by Title IX are just some of the policies that Trump’s campaign has said will be under consideration once he is in office.

Local advocates, trans people and their families, as well as national LGBTQ organizations are preparing for these potential Trump administration actions.

“We know that the next four years [are] going to be a grind,” Santiago says.

That means the work — on both policy and personal levels — is just beginning, Santiago and others tell NPR.

Trans-rights activists holding signs protest outside the House chamber at the Oklahoma Capitol in Oklahoma City in 2023.

Trans-rights activists protest outside the House chamber at the Oklahoma Capitol in Oklahoma City before the 2023 State of the State address.

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The political climate ushering in Trump

Republicans ramped up anti-trans messaging in the 2024 campaign. According to a report by AdImpact shared with NPR, the Republican Party spent $222 million on anti-trans ads during the campaign; overall ad spending by the party totaled $993 million.

Topics like gender-affirming care and trans women in sports have galvanized many American voters, says Andrew Proctor, an assistant instructional professor of political science who teaches courses on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender politics at the University of Chicago.

Recent polling shows that 76% of Americans say they support nondiscrimination laws for LGBTQ communities.

Americans Strongly Support Trans Rights — In Some Cases

And, yet, on the issue of transgender athletes, polling also indicates that a large majority of Americans, around 70%, say they should be allowed to compete only on teams that match their sex assigned at birth.

Trump returns to the White House at a time when half of all U.S. states ban transgender people under 18 from receiving gender-affirming health care. And 26 states have restrictions on transgender students participating in sports consistent with their gender identity, according to Movement Advancement Project, a nonprofit think tank that tracks LGBTQ-related laws.

The new Trump administration will likely look at what states have accomplished and use that as a playbook for what could be achieved legislatively at the federal level, Proctor says.

But the big question for Proctor is how high of a priority trans issues will be on the Trump agenda.

“They’re polarizing issues, and they do galvanize particular bases of the Republican Party,” he says.

That also was the case for anti-abortion policies, Proctor says, and yet Republicans were unable to pass legislation when they had control of the federal government under former President George W. Bush and for a time during Trump’s first term. “So it’s not clear if this issue will pan out any differently,” he says.

Roe v. Wade, which guaranteed the right to abortion, was eventually overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2022.

Since the presidential election, one Republican, Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina, has introduced legislation that appears to single out newly elected Rep. Sarah McBride of Delaware, the first transgender lawmaker to serve in the U.S. Congress.

If passed, the bill would ban transgender women from using bathrooms and locker rooms on federal property that do not correspond with the sex they were assigned at birth.

Prepping for policies under Trump

Demonstrators gather on the steps to the Texas Capitol and wave flags while speaking against transgender-related legislation bills being considered in the Texas Senate and House in 2021, in Austin, Texas.

Demonstrators gather near the steps to the Texas Capitol to speak against transgender-related legislation bills being considered in the Texas Senate and House in 2021, in Austin, Texas.

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Groups including the American Civil Liberties Union, Transgender Law Center and others are gearing up to combat Trump policies on trans Americans in the courts.

It’s a battle they’re familiar with.

During his first term, Trump attempted to ban transgender Americans from serving in the military and from receiving gender-affirming health care through the military. This effort faced legal challenges and was eventually overturned by President Biden’s administration.

When asked about the possibility of a ban on transgender people serving in the military during a second Trump administration, Trump-Vance transition team spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt told NPR that “no decisions” have been made on the issue. The transition team did not respond to other questions from NPR, including those about gender-affirming care for trans youths.

Another proposal during Trump’s first term — which intended to strip “sex discrimination” protections for trans people from health care laws — was challenged in court by a coalition of LGBTQ clinics and organizations. That was successfully blocked in court.

And at least 17 states are facing lawsuits challenging their laws and policies limiting youth access to gender-affirming care.

“Litigation will be essential, but it will not be enough,” Sruti Swaminathan, a staff attorney with the ACLU, said during a recent GLAAD media call. “We will engage on every advocacy front, including mobilizing and organizing our network of millions of ACLU members and activists in every state to work to protect LGBTQ people from the dangerous policies of a second Trump administration.”

Winning hearts and minds

Proctor says the electoral success of anti-trans messaging will embolden certain factions of the Republican Party. “We should expect that the anti-trans rhetoric is going to intensify,” he says.

Activists like Santiago and another Ohio resident, Rick Colby, say a major part of their work for the next four years will be pushing back against that anti-trans rhetoric.

Colby, 64, describes himself as a conservative Republican. He also has a son named Ashton who is trans. Colby, who lives in Columbus, Ohio, is in an unusual position: He voted for Trump, but plans to spend the next four years working with his 32-year-old son to fight anti-trans policies. He says he is happy the Republican Party will be in control of the federal government, but also very concerned about the party’s stance on trans issues, which he says “is awful.”

Rick Colby, 64, right, wears sunglasses . His 32-year-old son Ashton, left, wears a baseball cap. They both wear backpacks and are photographed with a backdrop of trees and mountains.

Rick Colby of Columbus, Ohio, right, and his son Ashton work as advocates on trans issues across the nation. Colby says their work will continue during the Trump administration.

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Ashton Colby/Rick Colby

“Talking is where the education comes in,” Santiago says during a separate conversation with NPR. He is the founder of META Center Inc., a group that offers direct support to transgender and gender-nonconforming people online and in person.

Over the next few months, he says he will be partnering with several organizations to provide training and plans to participate in panel discussions about the state of being transgender in America — and Ohio specifically.

He plans to meet people “where they are” — in libraries, in town halls or over email — to share information about trans people and dispel incorrect, preconceived notions about LGBTQ communities. A conversation between people on different sides of an issue can lead to a meeting in the middle and even common ground, he says.

Take gender-affirming care for youths. Major medical groups in the U.S. — including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Association — support access to gender-affirming care for youth with gender dysphoria, the discomfort or psychological distress caused when one’s sex assigned at birth and one’s gender identity are different. That care can range from using a child’s preferred pronouns to using puberty-blocking medications and sex hormones.

But, Santiago says, many people don’t know the facts about the issue. Trump’s campaign website says that he plans to “revoke Joe Biden’s cruel policies on so-called ‘gender affirming care’—a process that includes giving kids puberty blockers, mutating their physical appearance, and ultimately performing surgery on minor children.”

Area chart showing the number of states with laws that limit youth access to gender-affirming care. The number increases dramatically in 2023 — from three states to 22 states — and ends with 25 states in June of 2024.

As a result, Santigao says, there’s an incorrect belief, spread during the election and by Trump, that young children are undergoing gender-affirming surgery — which is actually a rare occurrence.

Similar to Santiago’s efforts, Colby and his son will continue what they’ve been doing for years: meeting lawmakers face-to-face and talking about their experiences. Their work has brought them to Capitol Hill before and he expects it will again.

Texas governor calls gender affirming care 'child abuse.' This family fights back

“We’re just being human,” Colby says. “We try to demystify the issue and humanize it. They hear the narratives being pushed about all these left-wing parents pushing their kids into being transgender. And, of course, obviously, anybody would be concerned if that’s the only thing you’re hearing.”

There’s a segment of the GOP that, in his experience, offers openness and kindness on the issue.

“My son and I are just going to keep trying to reach that kind of undecided middle group of people,” he says.

What groups are doing now

Lazarus Orr from Advocates for Trans Equality says there are steps people can begin taking now. The group recommends trans people update documents, including driver’s licenses and passports, to reflect desired name or gender marker changes ahead of January.

Angel Reyes Rivas at his office in Long Island. Yunuen Bonaparte/NPR

Lazarus also encourages people not to let anxiety and fear control them.

“I think one of the bravest things that trans folks can do right now is just continue living,” he says. “More than ever, just the simple act of our existence is a form of resistance.”

Giovanni Santiago, in a white T-shirt, chops vegetables on a cutting board in a kitchen while looking at a woman with brown hair and glasses.

Santiago says his work and life will continue even in the face of opposition.

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It’s advice Santiago, the Ohio activist, takes to heart. To counter his fear and stress, he finds moments of joy while watching football with his family (“Roll Tide, baby”), decorating for the holidays and proudly embracing his identity as a “Disney Adult.” He is not cowed by the opposition.

“I’m going to live my best life because at the end of the day what would make them happy is for me to stop doing that,” he says. “And I’m never going to give that satisfaction to anyone.”

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Tulsa Massacre Was a ‘Coordinated, Military-Style Attack,’ Federal Report Says

Published

2 hours ago

January 11, 2025

Press Room

Tulsa Massacre Was a ‘Coordinated, Military-Style Attack,’ Federal Report Says

The Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921, in which a prosperous Black neighborhood in Oklahoma was destroyed and up to 300 people were killed, was not committed by an uncontrolled mob but was the result of “a coordinated, military-style attack” by white citizens, the Justice Department said in a report released Friday.

The report, stemming from an investigation announced in September, is the first time that the federal government has given an official, comprehensive account of the events of May 31 and June 1, 1921, in the Tulsa neighborhood of Greenwood. Although it formally concluded that, more than a century later, no person alive could be prosecuted, it underscored the brutality of the atrocities committed.

“The Tulsa Race Massacre stands out as a civil rights crime unique in its magnitude, barbarity, racist hostility and its utter annihilation of a thriving Black community,” Kristen Clarke, assistant attorney general for civil rights, said in a statement. “In 1921, white Tulsans murdered hundreds of residents of Greenwood, burned their homes and churches, looted their belongings and locked the survivors in internment camps.”

No one today could be held criminally responsible, she said, “but the historical reckoning for the massacre continues.”

The report’s legal findings noted that if contemporary civil rights laws were in effect in 1921, federal prosecutors could have pursued hate crime charges against both public officials and private citizens.

Though considered one of the worst episodes of racial terror in U.S. history, the massacre was relatively unknown for decades: City officials buried the story, and few survivors talked about the massacre.

The Justice Department began its investigation under the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act, which allows the agency to examine such crimes resulting in death that occurred before 1980. Investigators spoke with survivors and their descendants, looked at firsthand accounts and examined an informal review by the Justice Department’s Bureau of Investigation, the precursor to the F.B.I. In that 1921 report, the agency asserted that the riot was not the result of “racial feeling,” and suggested that Black men were responsible for the massacre.

The new 123-page report corrects the record, while detailing the scale of destruction and its aftermath. The massacre began with an unfounded accusation. A young Black man, Dick Rowland, was being held in custody by local authorities after being accused of assaulting a young white woman.

According to the report, after a local newspaper sensationalized the story, an angry crowd gathered at the courthouse demanding that Mr. Rowland be lynched. The local sheriff asked Black men from Greenwood, including some who had recently returned from military service, to come to the courthouse to try to prevent the lynching. Other reports suggest the Black neighbors offered to help but were turned away by the sheriff.

The white mob viewed attempts to protect Mr. Rowland as “an unacceptable challenge to the social order,” the report said. The crowd grew and soon there was a confrontation. Hundreds of residents (some of whom had been drinking) were deputized by the Tulsa Police. Law enforcement officers helped organize these special deputies who, along with other residents, eventually descended on Greenwood, a neighborhood whose success inspired the name Black Wall Street.

The report described the initial attack as “opportunistic,” but by daybreak on June 1, “a whistle blew, and the violence and arsons that had been chaotic became systematic.” According to the report, up to 10,000 white Tulsans participated in the attack, burning or looting 35 city blocks. It was so “systematic and coordinated that it transcended mere mob violence,” the report said.

In the aftermath, the survivors were left to rebuild their lives with little or no help from the city. The massacre’s impact, historians say, is still felt generations later.

In the years since the attack, survivors and their descendants and community activists have fought for justice. Most recently, a lawsuit seeking reparations filed on behalf of the last two known centenarian survivors was dismissed by Oklahoma justices in June. In recent years, Tulsa has excavated sections of a city cemetery in search of the graves of massacre victims. And in 2024, the city created a commission to study the harms of the atrocity and recommend solutions. The results are expected in the coming weeks.

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The strange world of the Euro-Gulf

Published

4 hours ago

January 11, 2025

Press Room

Stay informed with free updates

Waiting for the Tube, I see a poster for an upmarket gym chain. Locations? “City of London. High Street Kensington. Dubai.” What a shame to choose a setting that is so disfigured with bad taste and clueless expats. Still, the City and Dubai branches must be first-rate.

Soon after, I am in Doha, and again the Euro-Gulf linkage is inescapable. The emir of Qatar is back from a state visit to Britain, where the hosts were angling for a trade deal. Swiss-headquartered Fifa has just given the World Cup hosting rights to Saudi Arabia. Even in skyscraper-free Muscat, where alleys that might have been rationalised elsewhere in the Gulf twist freely behind the corniche, three restaurants in my hotel are outposts of Mayfair brands.

What a shame the word “Eurabia” is taken. And by such cranks. (It is a far-right term for a supposed plot to Islamise Europe.) Because we are going to need a word for this relationship. The Arabian peninsula has what Europe lacks: space, natural wealth and the resulting budget surpluses to invest in things. For its part, Europe has “soft” assets that Gulf states must acquire, host or emulate to carve out a post-oil role in the world. This isn’t the Gulf’s deepest external connection. Not while 38 per cent of people in the UAE and a quarter in Qatar are Indian. But it might be the most symbiotic, if I understand that word correctly.

True, the US has a defence presence in all six Gulf Cooperation Council states. This includes the Saudi footprint that Osama bin Laden wasn’t super-stoked about. But everyday contact? America is a 15-hour flight away. Its soft assets are either harder to buy or less coveted. Its citizens have little fiscal incentive to live in tax havens, as Uncle Sam charges them at least some of the difference.

In the 1970s, when Opec profits gushed through London, Anthony Burgess wrote a dystopia in which grand hotels became “al-Klaridges” and “al-Dorchester”. What a mental jolt it was for even the worldliest Europeans to see — we mustn’t pussyfoot around this — non-white people with more money than them. Still, they could condescend to the Gulf as being no place to live. Half a century on, their grandchildren would call that copium. In fact, their grandchildren might literally live there for economic opportunities. (Al-Dorado?) As a banker friend explains it, the time zones allow you to sleep late, trade the European markets, then dine late, so it is the young ones who do a Gulf stint, not the burnouts who are my age.

For how long, though? It is the sheer unlikelihood of this tryst, between a universal rights culture and monarchical absolutism, between a mostly secular continent and the home peninsula of an ancient faith, that distinguishes it from anything I can think of. A relationship can be both necessary and untenable. It wouldn’t take much — some intra-GCC violence, say, which seemed close in 2017 — for Europe’s exposure to the Gulf to age as badly as its former openness to Russia. If Abu Dhabi-owned Manchester City are found to have committed financial chicanery, a chunk of Premier League history will be tainted. Because it is “just” sport, I sense people are underprepared for the backlash.

And it is parochial to assume that the relationship could only ever break down on one end. It is the Gulf side that has to make the awkwardest cultural adjustments. Because Europeans associate 1979 with Iran and perhaps with Margaret Thatcher, they sometimes pass over the seizure of the Grand Mosque in Mecca by zealots who thought the House of Saud had grown soft on western habits. Governments in the region assuredly don’t forget.

How far a place can liberalise without tripping a cultural wire occupies (and is answered differently in) each state, or emirate. Everyone is very nice to “Mister Janan” in his Doha hotel. But the metal scanners that must be passed on each re-entry to the building stand as a reminder of the stakes here. I wonder if Europe and the Gulf throw so much into their liaison out of a niggling doubt that it can last.

Email Janan at janan.ganesh@ft.com

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Fox News headed for trial, again, over 2020 election fraud claims

Published

4 hours ago

January 11, 2025

Press Room

Fox News headed for trial, again, over 2020 election fraud claims

Fox News appears headed for trial over false election fraud claims made after the 2020 election, after a New York state appellate court chose not to dismiss a lawsuit brought by voting tech company Smartmatic.

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Fox News appears to be headed once more to court over the lies involving election fraud it aired about the 2020 presidential race. This time, it’s over the false claims that election tech company Smartmatic sabotaged the re-election of then-President Donald Trump.

In April 2023, on the eve of a trial in Delaware in which Fox founder Rupert Murdoch was set to testify, the network and its parent corporation agreed to pay $787.5 million to settle a defamation suit filed by Dominion Voting Systems.

Fox News settles blockbuster defamation lawsuit with Dominion Voting Systems

A flood of revelations from the pre-trial process of discovery yielded damning internal communications. The judge found that network figures from junior producers to primetime hosts, network executives, Murdoch and his son Lachlan knew that Joe Biden had won the election fairly. Yet, they allowed guests to spread lies that Trump had been cheated of victory to win back Trump viewers. Some hosts amplified and even embraced the claims.

Now, an appellate court ruling in New York state is allowing Smartmatic’s parallel, $2.7 billion suit to press ahead. The same ruling also dismissed some counts against the network’s parent company, Fox Corp.

Pro-Trump Fox hosts including Maria Bartiromo and the late Lou Dobbs invited guests making unsubstantiated and wild claims about Smartmatic on the air, and at times appeared to endorse those allegations themselves.

Fox forced Dobbs off the air just a day after Smartmatic filed its suit in February 2021. Two weeks later, Fox News and Fox Business Network ran an awkward segment with a voting tech expert, Edward Perez, to present viewers with a rebuttal to those outlandish claims. Newsmax, a right-wing channel in competition with Fox for viewers who supported Trump, did much the same.

“Today, the New York Supreme Court rebuffed Fox Corporation’s latest attempt to escape responsibility for the defamation campaign it orchestrated against Smartmatic following the 2020 election,” Smartmatic’s lead attorney, Erik Connolly, said in a statement. “Fox Corporation attempted, and failed, to have this case dismissed, and it must now answer for its actions at trial. Smartmatic is seeking several billion in damages for the defamation campaign that Fox News and Fox Corporation are responsible for executing. We look forward to presenting our evidence at trial.”

Unlike Dominion, whose voting machines were used in two dozen states, Smartmatic says its technology was used only in Los Angeles County in 2020. Fox has sharply questioned the value of Smartmatic and the contracts it says were jeopardized and lost.

“We will be ready to defend this case surrounding extremely newsworthy events when it goes to trial,” a network spokesperson said in a statement. “As a report prepared by our financial expert shows, Smartmatic’s damages claims are implausible, disconnected from reality, and on their face intended to chill First Amendment freedoms.”

In the Dominion case, Fox also relied on arguments that its shows and hosts were simply relaying inherently newsworthy allegations from inherently newsworthy people — the then-president and his allies. The presiding judge in Delaware, Eric M. Davis, rejected that argument; he found that Fox’s executives, stars, and shows had broadcast false claims and defamed Dominion in doing so.

Fox has said that the New York case offers a new venue, with slightly different implications, although Davis applied New York defamation law in his Delaware proceedings.

Fox settled, as it has in many other cases, before opening arguments of the trial with Dominion. It maintains it will fight the allegations Smartmatic is making in court.