As the Republican National Convention kicks off in Wisconsin this week, former President Donald Trump is hoping to woo voters after a shooting by a lone gunman during his rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday. While pundits speculate about how the tenor of the gathering might change after the shooting, queer rights groups will be nervously watching to see whether the Christian nationalism and anti-LGBTQ extremism in vogue on the right will be on display or shoved under the rug.
All eyes are on Project 2025, the 900-page handbook for a Trump White House that lays the foundation for a brutal purge of immigrants and a far right takeover of the federal bureaucracy orchestrated by conservative activists and Christian nationalists. The agenda is a product of the Heritage Foundation, a think tank and major RNC sponsor, and coauthored by conservative activists and more than two dozen former Trump administration staffers.
The proposed policies and people behind Project 2025 are extreme and unpopular. It infamously calls for a ban on pornography, which is defined so broadly as to include books featuring same-sex couples and the very existence of transgender people.
Last week Trump said he has “nothing to do” with the handbook, a claim that journalists quickly found to be full of holes. A video from 2022 shows Trump applauding a set of Heritage Foundation policies that would become Project 2025.
Trump may be attempting to distance himself from Project 2025, but his campaign’s own list of promises also veers sharply to the right of public opinion. Dubbed “Agenda 47,” Trump’s policy platform targets public school teachers thrust into the culture wars and would undo civil rights protections for LGBTQ people.
Right-wing groups such as Moms for Liberty that brand themselves around so-called “parental rights” may be fading from the headlines after embarrassing scandals, but Trump’s 2024 agenda reflects their obsession over books and media depicting queer life that led to a rash of hate crimes and standoffs over censorship in libraries across the country.
As The Advocate points out, Trump can be seen on a video posted to his own campaign website pledging to “protect children” from “left-wing gender insanity” and block federal funding to clinics that provide gender-affirming health care for minors, including puberty blockers used by some transgender youth. Trump would also revoke bare bones efforts by the Biden administration to prevent discrimination against transgender and nonbinary youth in schools and allow them to make health decisions alongside parents and doctors.
What Trump calls “child sexual mutilation” on his campaign website is a far right fantasy. Encompassing a wide range of potentially lifesaving practices that affirm a patient’s gender, misinformation about gender-affirming care went viral on the right in recent years, and an estimated 39 percent transgender youth now live in the 25 states that have passed a ban on gender-affirming care.
Most bans are subject to legal challenges winding through the courts, and a federal judge in Florida recently struck down a flagship ban in that state.
In the campaign video published last year, Trump says that he “will ask Congress to pass a bill establishing that the only genders recognized by the United States government are male and female — and they are assigned at birth.”
“No serious country should be telling its children that they were born with the wrong gender — a concept that was never heard of in all of human history — nobody’s ever heard of this, what’s happening today,” Trump says. “It was all when the radical left invented it just a few years ago.”
Of course, queer and transgender people have existed throughout history, and people have used trans and nonbinary as identifiers for decades. While Trump avoids using the word “transgender” in his tirade, it’s clear exactly whom he is targeting when he says that federal law prohibits men from competing in women’s sports. The extremely small number of transgender athletes competing in sports is another dark obsession of the right.
In another campaign video, Trump promises to shut down diversity initiatives across the federal government that he accuses of imposing “racist and woke sexual ideology across the federal government.”
The same goes for colleges, universities and public education in general. According to The Advocate:
In the video “Protecting Students from the Radical Left and Marxist Maniacs Infecting Educational Institutions,” Trump encourages “removing all DEI bureaucrats” at colleges and universities in the United States, as well as the “radical Left accreditors that have allowed our colleges to become dominated by Marxist Maniacs and lunatics.” He vows to take away billions in funding for schools that do not comply, even private universities such as Harvard.
As for public education, Trump vowed to “cut federal funding for any school or program pushing critical race theory, gender ideology, or other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content on our children.” He also promised to “create a new credentialing body to certify teachers who embrace patriotic values.”
The continued targeting of public school teachers is alarming. Teachers, along with librarians, are major targets of anti-LGBTQ extremism and the so-called “parental rights” movement. Pundits, activists and even politicians have accused teachers of pedophilia and “grooming” over LGBTQ content in the classroom. By silencing any discussion of queer life at school, they seek to push educators and their pupils out of public life and back into the closet.
While it’s unclear exactly how a Trump administration would certify teachers, it’s likely that only teachers espousing MAGA ideology would be approved. Trump may be attempting to appeal to a more moderate audience as he runs for re-election, but the anti-LGBTQ extremism that propels his popularity on the right is waiting in the wings.
Countdown is on: We have 10 days to raise $50,000
Truthout has launched a necessary fundraising campaign to support our work. Can you support us right now?
Each day, our team is reporting deeply on complex political issues: revealing wrongdoing in our so-called justice system, tracking global attacks on human rights, unmasking the money behind right-wing movements, and more. Your tax-deductible donation at this time is critical, allowing us to do this core journalistic work.
As we face increasing political scrutiny and censorship for our reporting, Truthout relies heavily on individual donations at this time. Please give today if you can.