News

Jan 11, 2024

Republicans’ Anti

Thebanners stretched across the steps of the Montana state Capitol on April 24

Thebanners stretched across the steps of the Montana state Capitol on April 24 read"Democracy Dies Here." Inside, RepresentativeZooey Zephyr, a Democrat representing Missoula, tried to speak against ananti-trans bill up for debate. The Republican speaker refused to recognize her,continuing a pattern of silencing the only trans womanelected to the state's legislature. Democrats objected, as they had in priorweeks, demanding a vote on the speaker's decision. This time, one protesterbroke the silence as Republicans voted to back the speaker's decision."Bullshit!" the protester called down at the legislators, according to the Montana Free Press. The gallerypacked with one hundred people filled with similar chants—"Let her speak!"—andlaw enforcement, some in riot gear, swarmed in to make arrests.

Thefar-right Republican Freedom Caucus declared that Zephyr had "encouragedCapitol violence." They called it an "insurrection."

Thesilencing of Representative Zephyr was by then a national news story, part of apattern of young Democratic legislators—some Black, some trans andnonbinary—who have been disciplined by their Republican colleagues for theirparticipation in or mere proximity to protest against those Republicans’agenda. As in Tennessee weeks before, when Representatives Justin Jones andJustin Pearson were expelled from the legislature over participation in apeaceful protest, the Montana House of Representatives voted to censure Zephyr merelyfor standing in silent support of her protesting constituents. The FreedomCaucus Twitter account has since shared reports of what its director deemed a"Montana Transurrection."

It'snot subtle, what this far-right caucus is doing, with the support of its fellow Republicans: trying to conflate opposition to their anti-trans billswith political violence. "Folks want to characterize trans advocates as beingmotivated by some violent desire to overthrow the United States government," said Paul Kim, one of Zephyr's constituentswho was arrested that day. "But the facts don't exactly line up like that."

Thatnight, Representative Zephyr and Representative Jones appeared together onMSNBC. They knew, Jones said, that if the Tennessee legislaturecould do it, "this attempt to silence dissent with the most extreme measures,it would set a precedent." But, he said, "that means we are going to standtogether in solidarity, as a multiracial, multigenerational movement, to saythat we will not allow fascism to happen without a challenge, that we care moreabout democracy than decorum." Zephyr said she has already seen that solidarityin action: It was Indigenous groups, she said, who were the first standing withthe trans community, "pointing out that our state has a long history oftargeting marginalized communities, with policies that lead to separation anddeath."

Whenfar-right voices in the Republican Party (increasingly synonymous with theentire party) call this and other acts of protest an"insurrection," it obviously reeks of hypocrisy. But it also reveals how easilyintimidated they really are by the slightest act of resistance. Howeverunwittingly, in defining what threatens them in such outrageous terms, theyhave also highlighted what it will take to defeat them: this risingconstituency, drawing power from all those who are under attack in this moment,and using that power to confront those who seek to silence them all. "Weknow," Zephyr said the day she was censured, "if weare going to succeed, one community is not enough to shift the tides of historyhere."

Thebill that kicked this all off—Senate Bill 99, which bans gender-affirming carefor minors—previously failed. Montana state Senator John Fuller first introduced aversion of this bill while serving in the state's House of Representatives in2021, in the days after the violence at the U.S. Capitol on January 6. Thatearlier version of the bill, House Bill 113, was defeated, as were many similar bills in2020 and 2021.* Its success last week is the result of several years in whichthe right came to deploy anti-trans hatred and anti-democratic measures asmutually reinforcing tactics to consolidate Republican political power.

AsRepublicans largely failed to pass these bills, it appeared to some political analyists thattransphobia was a losing proposition: Some polling suggested that the majorityof Republican voters didn't perceive existing societal acceptance of transpeople as threatening: 57 percent of Republicans said acceptance of trans people hadgone "too far" in 2017, and only 30 percent said that in 2020. In this context,perhaps Fuller's 2021 gender-affirming care bill was merely premature. Itfailed when five Republicans broke ranks to oppose his proposed ban. Legislators whomade such decisions, Fuller said, lacked "moral courage to hold theline."

SomeRepublicans in power, perhaps in response to how unpopular these bills were, beganto turn to distinctly anti-democratic practices. When the Texas statelegislature refused to redefine "child abuse" to include gender-affirming care,Governor Greg Abbott ordered Child Protective Services toinvestigate the parents of trans kids as potential abusers if they affirmedtheir children. They stacked administrative committees with politicalappointees who would make sweeping changes for them, as Governor Ron DeSantis did inFlorida, when the Florida Board of Medicine barred providers from offering gender-affirmingcare to minors.

Meanwhile,Fuller and other future Freedom Caucus members were talking up the need forso-called "election integrity." He signed onto an unsuccessful effort demanding the legislature form a specialcommittee to investigate "election security," in a letter that claimed therewas a "continuing and widespread belief, among a significant majority ofMontana voters, that sufficient irregularities in election security createserious doubt as to the integrity of elections in our state." Some of the othersignatories—though not Fuller—had been traveling throughout Montana to spreadconspiracy theories about "fraud" and the 2020 election. Speaking in support ofa 2021 bill to end same-day voter registration, though, Fuller echoed the letter, stating that suchlegislation was necessary because the "country was almost divided and tornapart by the idea that elections might be or were being stolen … regardless ofwhether that is the case." He failed to state the truth—that there was nostolen election.

Perhapsthe apex of this now-commonplace mythmaking was when Fuller marked the firstanniversary of January 6, the insurrection that failed to steal an electionbut entrenched the Republican embrace of conspiracy theorists. On his podcast, Fullerdismissed those who called January 6 aninsurrection: "Those of us that study history and know history know that nosuch thing actually happened," he said. "It was a relatively minor disturbance,with one or two exceptions, all those people that the worst crime theycommitted was trespassing." For Fuller, January 6 was about protesters beingunfairly smeared as insurrectionists. He cited "two Montana brothers," Jerodand Joshua Hughes, who "were maybe guilty of trespassing." Accordingto a January 2021 courtfiling, thesetwo were among the very first to enter the Capitol, through a window brokenopen with a police riot shield, stolen by one of the Proud Boys recently convictedon multiple charges. Once inside, Jerod Hughes kicked open a door, allowingothers to enter. The brothers were in the small group led by a rioterin a QAnon T-shirt, chasing Capitol Police OfficerEugene Goodman, who had been attempting to divert them so that members ofCongress could escape. (The brothers were later sentenced to nearly fouryears and just over threeyears in prison, respectively.) There was ample video and socialmedia evidence to support the government's claims about Jerod and Joshua Hughes.Fuller mischaracterized it as "facial recognition" leading to their arrest—whenin truth, the brothers turned themselves in, reportedlyafter seeing themselves on the news.

"January 6, 2022, is an anniversaryof momentous importance," Fuller concluded, because it represented a governmentwilling to do "anything" to its people. "And I don't know about you, but Iwould rather be afraid of my fellow citizens than be afraid of my government."

Suchincreasingly anti-democratic rhetoric from lawmakers came alongside escalating anti-queerand anti-trans harassment and violence. In 2022, far-right groups threatened Pride and drag events across the country, sometimeswhile armed, menacing people who attended. Social media accounts aggregating videos of these confrontationsmade the leap to cable news. The "groomer" slur took off across the right, from DeSantis's own staff to members of Congress, resurrecting old tropes about queer people assexual predators. They aimed the slur at trans people and anyone who appearedto support them, from librarians and educators to health care providers andelected officials. Conspiracy theories reminiscent of Pizzagate propagated in any town where a far-rightgroup could find a queer or trans event to accuse of "grooming" children. Open neo-Nazi and Christofascist groups took up the same cause, chose thesame enemies, as Republican legislators had.

TheMontana Freedom Caucus launched officially this year on the anniversary of January 6, just over one yearafter Fuller's podcast. "The radical left is trying to destroy our families,they’re trying to keep us from practicing our faith, and they’re trying tobrainwash our children," said U.S. Representative Matt Rosendaleat the launch in Helena. "And it is really those three things that canencapsulate what we are all fighting."

Fuller,now serving in the state Senate, reintroduced his ban on gender-affirming carefor minors, this time as S.B. 99. When the bill was debated in the House Judiciary Committee andits supporters likened gender-affirming care to "slicing up children"and "mutilation," Zephyr was there to objectto their rhetoric. "There are members on this committee who have had proceduresthat are being described here," she countered. This was a rare moment—when these bills comeup in almost every other state legislature, no trans legislator is there tocontest their claims. Still, the rhetoric demonizing gender-affirming care waspermitted by the Republican committee chair (who is also the House speaker's mother).Claims of "mutilation" were acceptable because it was, she said, "some people'sopinion as to what's happening." When Zephyrlater said to the supporters of Fuller's bill, "I hope the next time there's aninvocation, when you bow your heads in prayer, you see the blood on your hands,"the Freedom Caucus tellingly called this not just "hateful rhetoric" but "unmistakable evidence of a desirefor some to engage in violence over political beliefs." On April 28, two daysafter Zephyr was censured, Governor Gianforte signed S.B. 99 into law.

Hadthe rise in anti-trans rhetoric and harassment, part of an ongoing post-2020radicalization of the Republican Party, really transformed state legislaturesso much, in two years? In 2021, 154 anti-LGBTQ bills were proposed across statelegislatures; by May 2023, the number would climb to 417. Republicans’ appetite forcriminalizing trans people was increasing too—from 55 percent opposing and38 percent supporting bans on gender-affirming care for minors in April 2021 to 35 percent opposing and 63 percent supporting such bans in 2023. Republicanssaying they thought acceptance of trans people had gone "too far" rose to 56 percent in 2022, accordingto an NBC poll. This April, when NBC polled Republicans again, 79 percent saidacceptance of trans people had gone "too far." This is out of step with thegeneral public, who other polls showed oppose this legislation and largelysupport anti-discrimination laws toprotect trans people.

Montananow joins more than a dozen states that have passed gender-affirmingcare bans in 2023. Its passage was less an indication of Fuller having won overhis party than a sign that he, along with other Montana Republicans, is benefitingfrom national efforts to demonize trans people—and, specifically, efforts thatportray trans acceptance as a sign of democracy's failure and America's decline.You can see expression of that in Rosendale's remarks at the launch of the Montana FreedomCaucus about the "radical left" who want to "destroy our families" and"brainwash our children." It's there too in Fuller's lambasting a local LGBTQ support and rightsgroup for "attributing my efforts to protect children from being spayed,neutered, and mutilated as hatred of the LGBTQ community," painting such groupsas collaborators in the abuse of children. "The Sovereign People now recognizethat their children are being indoctrinated with values such as the sexualizingof young people, that marriage between one man and one woman is obsolete, thatAmerica was founded by racists and that the U.S. Constitution was a pro-slaverydocument," Fuller has argued, in an essay parroting all thenow-entrenched conservative anti-queer, anti-trans, and anti-Black code words.It's no coincidence that the essay also included lines like: "Democracy is amethodology of government that has failed as miserably as socialism."

Butthe right's habit of creating repetitive litanies of its many enemies—Blackpeople, queer people, trans people, and more—also points to an opportunity:namely, a constituency that could actually be as broad as these reactionariesimagine and fearmonger over. The rapid escalation of Republican political andright-wing media attacks has coincided with the right's broader battle against"wokeism." The prime architect of such trends, Christopher Rufo, acknowledged that what gave life to hisanti–critical race theory and anti-"grooming" propaganda was the "riots" of 2020, after themurder of George Floyd, when, as he put it, "left-liberal" media wereallegedly "endorsing self-destructive ideas and causes such as ‘defund thepolice’ and ‘sex changes for kids.’" That is to say, to the extent that transpeople could be associated with multiracial, multigenerational protestmovements, the Republican Party would find more favor for their anti-transattacks. The right reawakened their base by stoking fear of young, Blackpeople, many of whom were also queer and trans. They rode that fear throughschool board meetings and library board elections, and now, here we are.

Inthis sense, the right not just targeting but attempting to exclude RepresentativeZephyr in Montana and Representatives Jones and Pearson in Tennessee from theirdemocratically elected offices is the predictable extension of this fight. Sotoo are attacks on Oklahoma state Representative Mauree Turner, the state's onlynonbinary representative, "censured by their own state legislature afterallowing someone into their office who had protested the state's ban ongender-affirming care," as Teen Vogue reported, several weeks before Jones andPearson were expelled.

Turnereasily sees the connections: "What we’re seeing right now is the same thingthat we saw with the progression of Donald Trump through his campaign into hispresidency: It was one community, and then the next, and then the next, andthen the next," they told Teen Vogue in a recent interview."If we don't stand together now, we are going to be woefully unprepared forwhatever comes next."

Considerwhat connects those under attack in Montana. "What we’ve been seeing over thissession is that there is such disdain, such animus, such disgust with queerpeople, Indigenous people, people that don't fit in within their vision of whatMontana is," ACLU Montana's Keegan Medrano told The Intercept after Zephyr'scensure—all people who declare their "body sovereignty and autonomy," as Medranoadded. "The Montana Republicans, the Freedom Caucus, they’re all afraid ofthese people, and so they legislate to extinguish their existence and/or tomake their existences not palatable and not a part of what Montana is."

Whatare they scared of, exactly, when they call an elected representative who directlychallenges them, or even protesters’ solely verbal support for thisrepresentative when she is silenced, "insurrection"? Fullerhas already told us what he thinks an insurrection isn't—white, middle-classpeople seeking to overturn an election. By claiming to fear the people who supportZephyr, Montana Republicans are trying to convey that their fear is legitimateand hers is not; that their power to retaliate against her is legitimate andthat trans resistance is illegitimate.

What the right calls an insurrectionis this moment of solidarity, among those people they have targeted. It's notenough for them to use the force of the law to exclude anyone who offends theirsocial order from American life; they must also silence the offenders when theyshow up for each other. But in doing this, the right has drawn together the sameconstituency it claims to fear.

Maybe the fears repeated by theseanti-trans lawmakers are not such wild overstatements. Maybe they are correctlyforecasting their own defeat.

* This article has been updated to reflect the correct numbering of the 2021 bill.

Melissa Gira Grant is a staff writer at The New Republic and the author of Playing the Whore: The Work of Sex Work.