By Sid Schwab / Herald Columnist
“I strongly support LGBTQ rights and equality. No one should be discriminated against. I have friends and family that identify as LGBTQ. Understanding how they feel and how they’ve been treated is important. Having been around gay, lesbian and transgender people has informed my opinion over my lifetime.”
That was two years ago, spoken by opportunistic, values-bereft Congressperson Nancy Mace, R-S.C., before the Trump campaign spent more money on anti-trans ads than anything else. Before, in other words, concluding that to retain one’s MAGA credentials, one must join the attack on vulnerable Americans; especially trans people.
So when newly elected Rep. Sarah McBride, D-Del., the first openly trans person to be elected to Congress, showed up, Mace took it upon herself to protect female users of Capitol bathrooms from whatever threat she imagines happening by allowing McBride in. She was, of course, joined by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who never misses an opportunity to screech for Fox “news.” After which House Speaker Mike Johnson, who’d previously informed us that God Himself had spoken to him and anointed him the Republican Party’s modern-day Moses, declared that his (or His?) gendered bathrooms may be used only according to one’s birth gender. For a look-at-me Christian, he sure is uncharitable.
Without going into the science, gender dysphoria is real. People who transition do so out of a deep, inborn need. It’s freeing. The number who regret transitioning is tiny. As is the number of trans people in general, the attacks on whom for political gain is hugely disproportionate, and is based on the ease with which Trumpists’ fears and ignorance can be manipulated. To spend time worrying about bathroom occupants is to be distracted from the real and dangerous Project 2025 agenda.
What will happen if Sarah McBride uses a women’s restroom? She’ll walk in, go into a stall, close the door, attend to necessities, exit the stall, wash her hands (one assumes) and leave. Unless Mace and Greene like to parade around naked in bathrooms, and who can say they don’t, no one will see anything. They know this. They also know that that kind of nastiness works on their voters; that it does is indescribably sad. But it’s a preview of what can be expected from Trump and the people with whom he’s surrounding himself.
Ms. McBride, admirably, has handled this performative nastiness with uncommon grace. If you were to pass her in a hall, you’d see she feels like a natural woman (Bluesky: tinyurl.com/2Bnatural). Or not notice her at all. Nevertheless, trans people across the country are on notice: under the Trump administration: You’re targeted. And it’s no more about bathrooms than it was about drinking fountains in the pre-civil rights South.
But Trumpists will tell us it’s all allowed, because, according to them, he won an overwhelming victory, achieving an unprecedented mandate. In fact, his margin in the popular vote was among the most narrow in history. Fifty-one percent of voters voted against him. Nevertheless, when neo-Nazis marched in Ohio after the election, condemned strongly by President Biden and Ohio’s Gov. Mike DeWine, Trump felt “mandated” to remain silent. They, after all, are his people.
And their sort of bullying will be baseline for Trump’s administration. It’s reported that a member of Team Trump warned Senate Republicans who’d consider voting against his horrifying nominees, “If you are on the wrong side of the vote, you’re buying yourself a primary. That is all. And there’s a guy named Elon Musk who is going to finance it.” In the phrase “of the people, by the people, and for the people,” substitute “Trump’s billionaires” for “the people.” They represent the vast majority of his proposed appointees, many of whom in the most powerful positions are the architects of that Project of which he lied he knew nothing (New Republic: tinyurl.com/4team2025). In whose interest will they be acting? Not yours.
Nor will Pam Bondi, second-string but equally corrupt replacement for Matt Gaetz as attorney general (Crew: tinyurl.com/2corrupt). In addition to protecting Trump from prosecution for his fraudulent “foundation,” she has promised that when she’s in charge, “prosecutors will be prosecuted. … the investigators will be investigated.” People like Special Counsel Jack Smith, doing his job. It’s classic authoritarian suppression of opposition, step one on the march to dictatorship.
Which explains the delight coming from the Kremlin after Trump’s victory. It’s why they’ve been supporting him since that downward-heading escalator ride: As Mikhail Gorbachev adopted western governance and brought down the Soviet Union, Trump embraces Russian governance and will bring down the U.S.
Email Sid Schwab at columnsid@gmail.com.
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