In front of a crowd of young conservative activists from Phoenix, Arizona on Sunday December 22, Donald Trump, with the same method as during his meetings, tried to outline his first steps in the White House on January 20. “Under the Trump administration, the official policy of the United States will be applied, which is to say that there are only two genders: men and women,” he said under the applause during his one and a half hour speech. “From the first day (of mandate, Editor’s note), we will stop the delusional transgender trend,” continued the winner of the November 5 presidential election.
As soon as he is inaugurated on January 20, “I will sign decrees to put an end to sexual mutilation of children, exclude transgender people from the army and exclude them from primary, middle and high schools”, insisted the next American president. Medical treatments for minors to change their gender or access for transgender women to women’s sports competitions are hot topics in a polarized United States. During the electoral campaign, the Republican billionaire brandished the scarecrow of what the conservative camp sees as the diktat of right-thinking. It also targeted diversity, equity and inclusion programs in public institutions and private companies. He promised to ban these programs because “we believe in the merit system” in the United States.
Old campaign promises
This commitment received loud applause from the conservative audience, most of whom wore “Make America Great Again” caps and other clothing bearing the image of Donald Trump. The New York Times. Very regularly, Republicans oppose LGBT + rights in the states they control and, in the American Congress, right-wing elected officials wanted to block access to the women’s toilets in the Capitol for the first transgender woman elected in November. the House, Sarah McBride.
“Wokism must stop,” repeated Donald Trump to the applause of the crowd. The term “wokism”, borrowed from African-American struggles, is misused by political figures and conservative movements to denounce what they consider to be an excess of activism with regard to the demands of minorities and social and climatic injustices.
These attacks against LGBT people and especially transgender people are far from new. Last November, the channel NBC News reported that during his campaign, Donald Trump and his supporters spent nearly $60 million on eight anti-trans television ads, including one in Spanish, between September 19 and November 1, according to AdImpact, a company which tracks political ad spending. Phoenix’s statements are an echo of his election campaign, during which he announced that he wanted to give directives to federal agencies to define sex only as the sex assigned at birth. “On day one, I will sign an executive order ordering all federal agencies to stop promoting sex or gender transition at any age. They will no longer do it,” Donald Trump declared last August.
Upcoming legal proceedings?
The president-elect has also repeatedly announced that public schools will no longer receive federal funding if they promote ideas related to gender transition or transgender people. Likewise, any hospital or health care provider that performs sex reassignment surgery or care for minors would no longer meet federal health and safety standards and would no longer receive federal funding, he said. warned.
In November, the agency Associated Press underlined that Donald Trump’s return to power represented one of the main setbacks in the history of the LGBT + rights movement in the United States. But if the LGBT community is worried about the future policies of Joe Biden’s successor, they also say better prepared that eight years ago, during his first term. Near the National Public Radio (NPR), Sasha Buchert, lead attorney in Karnoski v. Trump, a federal lawsuit challenging Donald Trump’s ban on transgender people serving in the military, said she expected that there will be numerous lawsuits against the anti-transgender policies planned by the billionaire. His main argument is that transgender people are entitled to protections under the Civil Rights Act, which was amended to include transgender people in 2020.