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Anyone Telling You to Fear Your Trans Neighbors Is Lying to Hide Their Real Agenda
Mostly, they’re hoping you won’t notice the precedents they’re setting to take away your healthcare and invade your privacy.
Apr 04, 2026
It’s a distressing time to be a trans person just trying to mind your business.
This March, the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention issued its third “red flag” warning about the risk of “anti-trans genocide” in the United States, warning about laws and policies designed to “criminalize” the entire trans community “based solely on its existence.”
In February, Kansas invalidated the IDs of all trans people in the state with a single day’s notice. Finally, just recently, the International Olympic Committee mandated that all persons competing in women’s events must submit to genetic screening—which will also ban all trans women and many intersex people from participating in Olympic sports.
As a trans person trying to walk my dog, pay my bills, and answer work emails in time to fold the laundry and make dinner, it’s profoundly stressful to say the least.
Dozens and dozens of peer-reviewed, scientifically valid studies in dozens of countries and contexts show that letting people make their own choices about how they live their own lives in their own bodies is very good for their well-being.
But it’s been this way for years. The tide of contemporary anti-trans legislation has grown from 2016’s famous (and failed) “bathroom bill” in North Carolina to a wave of speculative legislation funded by conservative billionaires creating division by stoking manufactured mass hysteria.
The numbers are staggering: a 668% increase in anti-trans legislation from 2021 to 2025, according to the Lemkin Institute. Since we all huddled down on our couches and started a sourdough hobby in 2020, the Institute says, we’ve had six consecutive record-breaking years in anti-trans bills introduced across the country.
But the horrors don’t stop in the legislatures.
A recent executive order banning trans people from the military calls trans people inherently dishonest and dishonorable. The US 4th Circuit Court of Appeals just ruled that states can legally compel trans adults like me to “appreciate [our] sex” by banning our access to gender-affirming healthcare. And when a Texan politician called billionaires a more dangerous 1% of the population than trans people, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s pastor said he hoped the man would be crucified.
For all the hate we’re getting these days, you’d think trans women were scooping up Olympic gold medals and firebombing suburban dog parks.
The reality is much less exciting, underwhelming even. We remain, by and large, humans with less money; less political power; and maybe more opinions on animation, philosophy, and colored hair dye than the average bear.
It’s estimated that there are less than 10 trans athletes of any gender in the entire NCAA. Only one openly trans woman has competed in the entire history of the Olympic games, and she didn’t place. In fact, the British Journal of Sports Medicine recently found no scientific evidence that trans women have a single competitive advantage over cisgender women in sports.
But dozens and dozens of peer-reviewed, scientifically valid studies in dozens of countries and contexts show that letting people make their own choices about how they live their own lives in their own bodies is very good for their well-being.
The American Medical Association, the largest association of physicians in the United States, just affirmed that hormone therapy, sex-reassignment surgeries, and other procedures that change a person’s physical sex characteristics are successful and medically necessary. These procedures have some of the lowest regret rates around: lower than hip replacements, lower than cosmetic surgeries, perhaps even lower than Harry Potter tattoos.
The people telling you to fear your trans neighbors are lying to your face and inventing a scary fantasy. Mostly, they’re hoping you won’t notice the precedents they’re setting to take away your healthcare, invade your privacy, and send you on a surprise trip to the DMV.
And if you’re a woman in sports, they’ll want your genetic data. I haven’t looked at a history book in awhile but I’m pretty sure that’s a red flag.
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Trump Attack on Trans Athletes Continues as DOJ Sues Minnesota Education Department
"It is astonishing that any president would try to target, shame, and harass children just trying to be themselves, let alone a president with so many actual problems to address," said the state attorney general.
Mar 30, 2026
The US Department of Justice on Monday continued President Donald Trump's crusade against transgender youth competing in sports in line with their identity by suing the Minnesota Department of Education and the state's high school league.
"The United States files this action to stop Minnesota's unapologetic sex discrimination against female student athletes," says the complaint, filed in a federal court in the state by the DOJ's Civil Rights Division.
"The state of Minnesota, through its Department of Education, and the Minnesota State High School League require girls to compete against boys in athletic competitions that are designated exclusively for girls and share intimate spaces, such as multiperson locker rooms and bathrooms, with boys," the complaint continues. "This unfair, intentionally discriminatory practice violates the very core of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972."
The Associated Press noted that "the administration has filed similar lawsuits against Maine and California, and has threatened the federal funding of some universities over transgender athletes, including San José State in California and the University of Pennsylvania."
Tim Leighton, a spokesperson for the league, told the AP that it does not comment on threatened or pending lawsuits. According to The New York Times, Emily Buss, a spokesperson for the state department, said Minnesota's leadership was reviewing the complaint while remaining "committed to ensuring every child—regardless of background, ZIP code, or ability—has access to a world-class education."
While Trump and his allies have aimed to stop all trans women and girls from competing as they identify—including at the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles—the fight with Minnesota specifically traces back to the president's February 2025 executive order, after which the administration began investigating the state.
The Minnesota Department of Education gets over $3 billion in federal funding. Democratic state Attorney General Keith Ellison sued to stop the administration from pulling that money last April. In September, the US departments of Education and Health and Human Services concluded that the state agency and league violated Title IX, and the case was referred to the DOJ in January.
In a Monday statement, Ellison said that the DOJ's lawsuit "is just a sad attempt to get attention over something that's already been in litigation for months."
"Donald Trump is currently facing an unpopular war that he launched, rising gas prices, massive health insurance price hikes, and a partial government shutdown caused in part by his ICE agents killing two Minnesotans in broad daylight," Ellison said, referring to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. "It is astonishing that any president would try to target, shame, and harass children just trying to be themselves, let alone a president with so many actual problems to address."
The DOJ filing about trans student-athletes came less than a week after Ellison and other Minnesota officials sued the Trump administration over its refusal to cooperate with state investigators probing the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal immigration agents earlier this year, as well as the shooting of Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis, who was wounded but survived.
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Sanders-Casar Proposal Takes On Billionaires Relocating Sports Teams for Corporate Welfare
"Professional sports teams should be owned and controlled by the fans who love them, not by the multibillionaire oligarchs," Sanders said.
Mar 26, 2026
US Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Greg Casar on Tuesday introduced a bill that would require owners of professional sports franchises who are considering relocating to give the communities in which they are located a chance to buy the teams first.
"The American people are sick and tired of billionaires threatening to move the sports teams they own to different states unless they get hundreds of millions in corporate welfare to build new stadiums,” Sanders (I-Vt.) said in a statement announcing the Home Team Act.
"In my view, professional sports teams should be owned and controlled by the fans who love them, not by the multibillionaire oligarchs who are getting even richer by charging outrageous prices and getting taxpayers to pick up their extravagant costs," he continued.
"You shouldn’t have to be wealthy to take your family to a football game," Sanders added. "You shouldn’t have to fear that a multibillionaire will move your favorite team to a different city if taxpayers refuse to subsidize it. The Home Team Act is a very modest piece of legislation that begins to address this problem. I am proud to support it.”
The Home Team Act is cosponsored by Democratic Sens. Chris Murphy and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut—which lost the National Hockey League's Hartford Whalers to North Carolina in the 1990s—and five House Democrats.
If passed as written, the bill would:
- Require sports franchise owners to provide notice a year before moving the team to a new community, defined by crossing state lines or moving to a new Metropolitan Statistical Area;
- Give communities a chance to purchase a franchise during that year, including through the sort of successful community ownership model used by the National Football League's (NFL) Green Bay Packers; and
- Penalize noncompliant franchise owners.
“Sports in America should be about more than just making billionaire owners even richer," Casar said Thursday.
"Far too many Americans know the pain of losing a team, and far too many communities have had to fork over billions in subsidies just to keep an already profitable team home," he added. "Our bill is about creating a level playing field so leagues work for fans and taxpayers, not just owners.”
Sanders' office acknowledged that "team relocation has plagued communities across America for decades," from the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants moving respectively to Los Angeles and San Francisco in 1958 to the Oakland Athletics—who previously called Philadelphia and Kansas City home—relocating to Sacramento and, eventually, Las Vegas.
Oaklanders have arguably felt the heartbreak of losing their beloved pro sports franchises more than any other US city, having lost the As, the NFL's Raiders, and the Warriors of the National Basketball Association in a five-year span.
"Currently, the Chicago Bears are threatening to leave the city after more than 100 years in response to the state of Indiana offering massive subsidies," Sanders' office said of the storied NFL franchise known for its passionately loyal fan base. "The bill would prevent the Bears from being moved across state lines without being offered for sale."
In his youth, Sanders—who grew up during a time when Jewish players dominated racially segregated professional basketball—was known for his killer mid-range jump shot. As a senator, he has championed professional athletes, especially baseball players, during their collective bargaining struggles against oligarch owners.
Sanders still holds a grudge against the former owner of the beloved Brooklyn Dodgers of his youth who relocated the team to Los Angeles in 1958, when he was a teenager. In 2018, he posted an old Brooklyn adage that "the three worst people in modern history were Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Dodgers owner Walter O'Malley—but not necessarily in that order."
Serving in the House of Representatives at the time, Sanders even had a bit part in the 1999 comedy “My X-Girlfriend’s Wedding Reception," in which he played Manny Shevitz, a rabbi who argues that the Dodgers leaving Brooklyn was the "worst thing that ever happened."
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