A New Political Premise
Waking up on Wednesday to a flood of texts/emails expressing joy and hopefulness was not something I had expected, nor even expected by the same people sending these messages.
– “Well it was a 🌊!” said one, excited text, implying blue + wave.
– “I can’t believe we all made this happen…” said another.
– “Looks like they finally got their wish.” says another, with more reservation.
Suffice to say, most of these people felt satisfaction or relief following weeks, months, and even years of hard effort, relative to their initial 2024 shock and concerns. In truth, so did I. It has been a storm of two years of concerned outreach; watching so many team members and their tireless efforts; and watching a total unified Republican federal government wreak havoc on trans peoples’ livelihoods across the nation.
As advocates, I see a lot of folks currently doing the usual post-effort recovery, but this time with more optimism of what crafting out a lame duck administration—particularly from one actively promoting transphobic misinformation or outright lies, in conjunction with targeted, discriminatory executive orders and efforts to redefine domestic terrorism to include trans people—would look like in preventing further injustice to America’s transgender population, a group which constitutes millions of people in the U.S..
But what I also immediately noticed gave me a bit of concern. When I went back to ask the same constituents what their prospects were for the fate of our trans populace, they felt blindly hopeful the incoming Democrats would fix problems, despite not feeling confident any of their leaders have an actual transgender-specific plan, beyond the timeless “Democrats will work to pass the Equality Act.” For people I talked to who are cisgender, they also still seemed reluctant to commit time to learning more, hoping or expecting their Democrat will do it for them.
(I will give extra special shout-out, however, to the few who did acknowledge that the midterms caused them to look into trans issues more. Thank you for doing that.)
Some Basics On The Equality Act
Understanding the legislative proposal known as the “Equality Act” is important, as is the bill itself. First introduced in 2015 and continually re-introduced through current Congress, it aims to modernize the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to include additional protections, particularly for LGBTQI+ and trans individuals. Despite being referred to as an act, it has never fully passed Congress, nor made its way to a sitting president’s desk. It has currently remained as a proposed bill. For it to pass would require it either be signed by a president, or have any presidential veto overturned by a Congressional supermajority.
This would still absolutely require cross-partisan support, even under projected Democratic victories. And history has showed that this partially does happen, or according to The Hill:
“The sweeping civil rights bill passed the House in a 224-206 vote [in 2021], with every Democrat supporting the measure. While eight GOP lawmakers voted for a similar version of the legislation in 2019, Reps. John Katko (R-N.Y.), Tom Reed (R-N.Y.) and Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) were the only Republicans to vote in favor of the bill a second time.”
Despite a handful of races still being too close to call (MS Now: “Democrat Scott Colom led…by 2,574 ballots, with 97% of expected votes…” for Mississippi Senate), we can still approximate how many GOP seats need to be on board to achieve both 290 US House seats and 66 US Senate seats. And it isn’t zero.
(Oh, and please don’t confuse the U.S. House/Senate, with your state assembly’s House/Senate—which governs your state laws and has less total seats. Your state may have supermajorities there, but that unfortunately isn’t relevant to U.S. Congress! And it’s why we’re always talking about different levels of bills!)
Regardless of the final number, what we do know is that ongoing efforts to bridge bipartisan support for trans rights is necessary to advance what will likely be a reintroduction of the Equality Act proposal for the 120th Congress, in 2027.
False Promise?
But this assumes Democrats won’t pull support or request bill changes that hinge on where the party has reneged on expressing full support for transgender equality. And furthermore, this is simply just one single bill: it becomes easy to point to a single example of fighting for a community while deflecting from failing to fight hard enough for other adjacent issues.
Most recently, public comments made by Democrats Marcy Kaptur (U.S. House) and Amy Acton (Ohio Governor-elect) side with trans-excluding athletic policy, the same endorsed by various active hate groups.
These viewpoints often stem from the false framing that women athletes who are transgender must always be more at an athletic advantageous to their cisgender peers, despite contrary research showing evident signs of disadvantage. This is also without (or possibly with) realizing that the true survivors of bullying are not those complaining (and litigating) about tying for fifth place, but the young trans girls being kicked off their teams, despite full support from the same teams to remain, by grown-ass adults legislating their childhoods away.
Michigan House Republicans, for example, attempted to introduce such measures…despite the Michigan High School Athletic Association finding that only two of 170,000 student athletes were ones who requested a waiver to participate based on gender.
And this really challenges the notion that inclusion-as-a-problem could ever be a serious issue that all voters are driving to the poll for, unlike remedying wanton Constitutional abuses by the current President or the concern of such a hypothetical opinion.
Democrat Party Scorecard
Within the trans community, we know that we are largely disenfranchised from most Democrats when pressed beyond general support for queer communities. It becomes just as bad as the time Texas Rep. Andy Hopper incorrectly claimed intersex people “are still XX or XY,” literally while attempting to defund a university. And yes—just as bad, except when Democrats do this, it fortifies the resolve of transphobes working to advance harmful legislation because it is used to argue that transphobia is bipartisan.
While nobody expects anyone to be perfect, the repeated offenses suggest a large indifference internally within the Democratic Party towards working with communities on all trans issues, instead of simply rainbow-knighting while expressing or demonstrating the opposite elsewhere.
Elected Officials vs. Voters
The viewpoints of the average or moderate voter work a bit differently. Even the transgender community unanimously understands that the average American voter does not care about transgender issues (or never mind understanding that there are so many more beyond just a couple), because they are assumed to not directly exist as issues within most American households. Thus, nobody is really talking about it.
However, this becomes a major problem when anti-advocates frame the potential for harm as tied to issues that more voters actually would express that they care about, namely fairness in sports or valid concern over the equal rights of women and girls in America. (Which we will never forget nor deny: does include trans women and trans girls). And that drives up more votes to do-yes-harm, than votes that appeal to truly giving everyone a fair chance, including the select few.
This requires that our elected leaders—ones selected by the voter specifically to fully understand all issues—must be the ones who are truly speaking in a fully-informed manner, and not simply ignoring caucus workshops on trans-centered education that would serve to review how these issues are typically manipulated as something else: “protecting women,” “protecting children,” “protecting athletes.” Always, except the ones who are queer or trans, as we still see today.
And this is why the community and our allies triple-down so hard, time and time again: it’s just plain ignorant. And people can’t say they are truly doing enough when they serve under that ignorance.
Where Our Community Suffers
Many trans folk know that transphobic ballot measures targeting athletes and youth passed in left-leaning states of Colorado and Washington (as well as Arizona and Nebraska), and we will heal through this together as well, just as we have been for over 60+ instances of legal rights or public funding taken away, weighed against over 840+ total attempts, all across the US. In 2026 alone.
Be they measures or bills, it becomes apparent that public sentiment skews towards misunderstanding the full impact of a vote when our leaders and role models are not fully informed for themselves to stand up. Even if the voter doesn’t understand it yet directly, seeing someone who represents them take a stand has the exponential effect of making more people look into these issues on their own time, to be fully informed as well.
But that begins at the top where our leaders need to lead by demonstration. And until that is happening, trans people will continue to suffer on a systematic level, all while community-built resources are the ones doing the heavy-lifting protecting each other.
Yet We March Forward
Despite this bleak news, here are some trans and enby midterm runners who all won their races this recent election. Winners like these do not come without you, the reader, and your participation in emerging politics and those who we choose to elect.
And in cases of never letting history forget when Democrats fumbled queer equality, here’s a throwback to a 2011 Dem voting against marriage equality and attempting to save face soon after.
