As Republican lawmakers wage an all-out assault on transgender people, Democrats are reportedly “reshuffling.” In a recent article, sources told NOTUS that the party is attempting to adjust its tone on trans issues following its crushing losses in the 2024 election, instead seeking a sort of middle ground that won’t “inflame” voters.
The myth that Democrats were too radical on trans issues has been echoed by various mainstream pundits in the wake of Donald Trump’s return to the White House. In reality, moderate Democrats largely declined to speak out about trans rights on the campaign trail. The Democratic National Convention, for instance, did not feature any trans speakers for the first time since 2012.
In an October 2024 interview, Fox News host Bret Baier asked Vice President Kamala Harris whether she would support gender-affirming care for people incarcerated in federal prisons if elected president — a central focus of one of the Trump campaign’s major attack ads.
“I will follow the law,” Harris said. “And it’s a law that Donald Trump actually followed.” Her response was emblematic of the Democrats’ preferred line: pivot to focus on the law, but avoid defending trans people specifically.
The right-wing attacks on trans people are so vicious and pervasive — and Democrats’ response so milquetoast — that it can be easy to forget recent history. Not that long ago, legislation targeting trans people was quite rare. And when it was implemented, it faced widespread pushback.
Nine years ago, North Carolina Republicans passed the state’s infamous “bathroom bill,” or HB 2. The first law of its kind in the country, HB 2 mandated that trans people use the bathroom matching the sex on their birth certificate and banned municipalities from passing local nondiscrimination ordinances. I was a senior in high school at the time, and I, like many other North Carolinians, remember the controversy well. It triggered a massive boycott, totaling as much as $3.8 billion in economic losses for the state, and likely cost Republican Gov. Pat McCrory reelection. North Carolina has had a Democratic governor ever since, despite swinging red for Trump in each of the presidential elections.
Looking back from the vantage point of 2025, it’s pretty shocking to see how full-throated the opposition was to HB 2’s attack on trans people. The law’s passage incited the National Collegiate Athletic Association to pull nearly two dozen championships from North Carolina in 2016 — a massive blow to a state known for its love of college sports. The National Basketball Association also moved its all-star game from Charlotte, North Carolina, to New Orleans, Louisiana. Major corporations, from Coca-Cola to Apple to Ralph Lauren, called for a veto of the bill. PayPal announced it would cancel its multimillion-dollar expansion in Charlotte, and Google’s venture capital wing said it wouldn’t invest in any North Carolina start-ups until the law was repealed. Major television and film production studios, including Lionsgate and the A&E network, stopped filming in the state.
Perhaps even more striking were the travel bans. Cities and states implemented policies prohibiting government employees from taking publicly funded trips to North Carolina. These included the states of Washington, Connecticut, New York, Vermont and Minnesota, as well as the cities of Santa Fe, Salt Lake City and San Francisco, among others.
“As long as there is a law in North Carolina that creates the grounds for discrimination against LGBT people, I am barring non-essential state travel to that state,” said then-New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo in 2016.
Of course, that was the era of peak corporate pride. The companies speaking out against HB 2 did so because defending LGBTQ rights was in vogue, and they wanted to help their bottom lines. This is abundantly obvious in 2025, as companies now rush to roll back their diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, proving rainbow capitalism’s critics were right all along. How far we have strayed from the days when public opinion at least leaned in the direction of “discrimination is bad.” Less than three months into this year, 40 anti-trans bills have already passed, and another 725 are currently under consideration.
This current blitz of anti-trans legislation, when held against the far-reaching, multisector boycott of HB 2 in 2016, shows how far right this country’s politics have swung. But this history also underscores the axiom that progress isn’t linear. We are in a reactionary moment, yes, but the average U.S. voter’s alleged antipathy toward trans people is far from a settled fact. In light of the unpopularity of abortion bans, Republicans have chosen trans people as their newest wedge issue, scapegoating the LGBTQ community through fearmongering and lies.
Now is not the time for the left to cede any ground to a movement that wants to see trans people eradicated from public life. We must continue to defend the rights of the trans community, not because it is sometimes popular, but because it is always right.
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
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