When the “Big Beautiful Bill” passed in July, it included a huge increase in funding for ICE. That was a canary in the coal mine for the government’s attack on immigrants’ rights and the rights of anyone who might be profiled by ICE. The new appropriations bill that the Republicans have been trying to push through has led to a shutdown for now, but it’s still part of the authoritarian long game, and the bill’s swathe of anti-trans riders is another human rights canary that’s about to drop dead. 

And not enough people are talking about that canary.

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The Republican-driven appropriations bills include riders that seek to remove LGBTQ+ discrimination protections, ban federal funding for gender-affirming care, codify a trans sports ban, codify policies around denying trans inmates’ gender-affirming care and housing them based on their assigned sex at birth, and more.

Those riders represent an attempt to make existing in the United States as a trans person, if not impossible, then at least intolerable for many. The continuing resolutions that failed to pass did not include these anti-trans riders, but any appropriations bills that Republicans bring forward to reopen the government are likely to include them, and Democrats need to be ready to fight that battle. This is Republicans further testing the water for how much they can do to a marginalized community and have it be accepted as part of a legitimate political agenda.

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At the same time, Republicans are using the very concept of trans people as a distraction from the other horrific consequences their appropriations bills will have for the country.

Most Democrats and mainstream media outlets haven’t been talking about the many anti-trans aspects of these bills. They’ve been focused on the massive impacts that it will have on healthcare. The importance of safeguarding healthcare cannot be overstated, and while it shouldn’t be an either/or choice between supporting healthcare and trans rights, it’s easy to understand why healthcare is receiving all the attention. The arguments about healthcare have broad appeal, they’re issues that affect everybody’s day-to-day lives, and they might catch the ear of Republican and independent voters. Support for trans people might be less popular among the wider populace, and Democrats don’t want to be marked as only caring about trans people.

But Republicans aren’t just pushing bills that will destroy trans people’s lives, they’re trying to make it seem like the Democrats only care about trans people anyway and are mocking them for it. Despite the continuing resolution failing because of its threat to healthcare, the president and his cronies have been keen to tie the whole thing to two accusations: the entirely false and debunked idea that Democrats are demanding that the continuing resolution give healthcare to undocumented migrants, and the idea that Democrats are supporting trans rights to the detriment of everything else. 

That has manifested in everything from a massively offensive fake video of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) with the former talking about their obsession with “woke trans bulls**t” to a post from the official White House X/Twitter account claiming they want “‘Transgender’ for everyone” (whatever that would mean).

This is all an exhausting repetition of the dynamic that we saw between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris during the 2024 campaign season, where Trump and his campaign repeatedly said that Democrats only care about trans people, while the real-life Democrats barely said a word about us. 

On one hand, it makes sense to ignore the baiting and to focus on the unpopular move Republicans are making to strip people of their healthcare. Trump’s vocal mocking of trans people and support for them is a distraction, which out Rep. Becca Balint (D-VT) called out in a statement issued after the shutdown. Hers was one of the few comments about trans people from a Democrat: 

As a proud member of the LGBTQI+ community, I am angry yet unsurprised to see Trump attempt to blame this shutdown crisis on trans people. He’s using tactics to get us to rage against each other. The American people know that while Trump is playing games with our lives, Democrats are working to keep the government open and protecting Americans’ healthcare.

But on the other hand, outside of Trump’s posturing, the legislative attack on trans people in the Republican appropriations bills would be devastating and lead to more attacks on us and similar communities if it passes. The administration wants to see how extensive the push against groups like trans people can be as they seek to weaken and eradicate minority groups to consolidate their own power.

The attacks on trans rights are another version of the move to authoritarian government that we’re seeing with the armed forces. The military parade was a test to see what Trump could make them do. Deploying the National Guard to LA was a test to see if they could then do it in D.C. Doing it in D.C. was a test to see if they could do it in Chicago. And after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Trump’s speeches to the military’s top brass this week, we know that was a test to see if he could deploy the full army in the streets of American cities to have them kill anyone they decide can be classified as “the enemy within.”

We know that he wants people to think undocumented immigrants are “the enemy within,” that’s been apparent since he started reciting poetry at his rallies. Now we see the response to every act of terror and every mass shooting is to knee-jerk blame trans people, and there’s a push for the FBI to create a new domestic terror threat category around “Transgender Ideology-Inspired Extremism.” It’s becoming clear that in the president’s eyes, one of those “enemies within” is trans people.

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