“Just hours into his presidency, Trump signed an executive order that seeks to roll back trans rights in nearly every facet of life. The order describes trans women as men and directs federal agencies to keep them out of “intimate spaces” designed for women. It targets trans people’s identity documents and health care, and it narrowly defines sex in a way that aims to erase the very concept of trans and nonbinary people.
In the week since, the administration has halted transgender people’s passport applications, transferred incarcerated trans women to solitary confinement and moved to bar transgender troops from serving in the military – an effort that was met with an immediate legal challenge. On Wednesday, the Office of Personnel Management ordered federal programs promoting “gender ideology” to be shut down and their employees put on leave. A day earlier, Trump directed federal agencies to begin crafting policies that could cut off young people’s access to transition care nationwide. And he has done so in orders that describe trans people as dishonorable and “mutilated,” lacking “humility and selflessness.””
“Trump also signed a broad order Monday eliminating federal recognition of transgender and nonbinary individuals. In practice, said Mailman, the order will mean barring any options other than male and female from government documents, including passports and visas, ending the annual recognition of Transgender Day of Visibility, and excluding trans people from gender-segregated spaces that take federal funding, including prisons, migrant housing and domestic violence shelters.”
We should focus on helping those in poverty and those with a lack of wealth and opportunity, not people who have these problems specifically because of race. Those in trouble because of legacy racial issues will be helped by race-neutral welfare.
People around most leaders say the leader is good and they have respect for them. Even people close to Trump often later say he is nuts.
“According to exit polls, 55 percent of men voted for Trump in 2024, compared to 45 percent of women, for a 10-point gender gap — 1 point less than the 11-point gap in support for Trump in both 2020 and 2016.*
Compared to other exit polling results that point to how Trump’s victory may have boiled down to a referendum on President Joe Biden and the economy, this relatively static gender gap may not point to gender as a major factor in the election. But differences in the gender gap across groups of voters — such as growing gaps among Black and Latino voters — can tell us more about the country’s changing partisan landscape. And there’s a reason gender has also been widely discussed in the aftermath of Election Day: The role that gender played in each party’s 2024 presidential campaigns highlights a potential shift in the parties’ approaches to male and female voters, and how voters think about gender and politics.”
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“Trump’s 11-point gap in support between men and women in 2016 and 2020 was a record, but men have been consistently more likely than women to back Republicans since 1980. From then until 2016, the gender gap in support for Republicans ranged from 0 points (in 1992) to 10 points (in 2000), according to exit polls. (The phenomenon of men consistently showing stronger support for the more ideologically conservative party than women is not limited to the U.S., either.)”
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“the gender gap isn’t uniform across all groups. For example, white men and women voted more similarly to each other in 2024 than Black or Latino men and women.”
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“Nonwhite and younger voters had the largest gender gaps”
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“in 2020 Trump won 61 percent of white men and 55 percent of white women, for a 6-point gender gap among white voters. That gap was just 1 point bigger this year according to exit polls — 60 percent to 53 percent, for a 7-point gender gap among white voters. But the gender gap among nonwhite voters increased by significantly more.
Among Black voters, even as the vast majority of both men and women voted Democratic in both elections, Trump gained 2 points of support among men and lost 2 among women, moving the gender gap from 10 points in 2020 to 14 points in 2024. The gap is even more striking among Latino voters, one of the groups among whom Trump gained the most support overall compared to 2020. Four years ago, 36 percent of Latino men and 30 percent of Latino women supported Trump, a gender gap of just 6 points. That gap nearly tripled in 2024, as Trump’s support among Latino men went up by almost 20 percentage points: He won 55 percent of Latino men and 38 percent of Latino women, for a gender gap of 17 points.”
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“49 percent of men and 37 percent of women aged 18 to 29 supported Trump, for a 12-point gender gap, 3 points larger than in 2020. The gap among men and women aged 30 to 39 was also 12 points, while it actually shrank among voters over 50.”
“In January, Delaware Rep.-elect Sarah McBride will also make history in congressional representation, becoming the first openly transgender individual to serve in Congress. But once again, being a trailblazer has come with challenges.
In response to McBride’s election, South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace introduced a resolution last week intended to ban transgender women like McBride from using women’s bathrooms in the Capitol. House Speaker Mike Johnson initially equivocated on the issue, but under pressure from fellow Republicans like Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, he issued a statement that all single-sex facilities in the Capitol and House offices “are reserved for individuals of that biological sex.” Mace has since followed up with an even more sweeping proposal, a bill that would apply a transgender bathroom ban to all facilities on federal property.”
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“56 percent of Americans said they agreed more that “transgender rights have gone too far, infringing on the rights of women and children,” compared to 32 percent who said they agreed more that “protecting transgender rights is essential to ensuring equality for all Americans.” And in another YouGov poll last week, a plurality of 43 percent of Americans said they’d prefer their congressional representatives to focus more on upholding traditional definitions of gender, versus 30 percent who wanted them to focus more on protecting the rights of transgender people (12 percent said neither, and 15 percent were unsure).
When it comes to specific policies, about half of Americans in that poll (including 78 percent of Republicans and 29 percent of Democrats) seemed to agree with Mace on bathroom bans, telling YouGov they think transgender people should use bathrooms that correspond to their assigned sex at birth, while 34 percent thought they should use bathrooms that align with their current gender identity, or either option.
Slightly more voters also seem to favor bans on sports participation, while opinions are split on banning gender-affirming care for youth. In an October UMass Amherst poll, a plurality of Americans, 47 percent, supported bans on transgender individuals’ participation in school sports teams matching their gender identity, compared to just 25 percent who opposed them (the rest were undecided). In a Morning Consult poll of registered voters from Nov. 6-7, 56 percent said they would support and 30 percent said they would oppose banning transgender girls and women from competing in high school and college sports. Meanwhile, 39 percent in the UMass Amherst poll said they would oppose policies to ban gender-affirming care for trans youth, while fewer, 35 percent, said they would support them. And in the Morning Consult poll, more were still in favor of the bans: 46 percent, compared to 39 percent opposed.”
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“in an October CNN poll, registered voters were asked if they supported federal policies that were more supportive or more restrictive of transgender rights: Their answers were about evenly split between those options, but a plurality, 42 percent, said they “don’t have strong feelings either way.” That indicates that these issues may not be as pressing or important to many Americans as they are to politicians hoping to fan the culture war flames.”
“A Gallup and Walton Family Foundation study showed that Gen Z teens are twice as likely to identify as more conservative than their parents in comparison to millennials and their parents 20 years before. This was especially true for male Republican teenagers. Younger people are also more skeptical of major American institutions, including political parties, the government, and the media.
Trump’s campaign directly spoke to this demographic: He echoed that same mistrust in institutions, and did so while stopping at seemingly every podcast, Twitch stream, YouTube channel, and TikTok page whose viewership is dominated by Gen Z men and boys. He joined Adin Ross, a now 24-year-old streamer who once famously looked up and struggled to read the definition of “fascism” on camera, for an interview during which Ross presented Trump with a Rolex and a Cybertruck.
He went on the mulleted comedian Theo Von’s podcast, where they discussed cocaine, golf, and UFC.
He palled around with YouTube millionaires like the Paul brothers and the Nelk Boys, known for their distasteful pranks and crypto scams.
And, of course, he talked to Joe Rogan, the most famous podcaster in the world; the two rambled to each other for three hours. For this, he received Rogan’s much-coveted endorsement.”
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“Nearly half of men between 18 and 29 say there is “some or a lot” of discrimination against men in America, up from a third in 2019, according to the Survey Center on American Life, which is affiliated with the American Enterprise Institute, a right-leaning think tank. They believe the Me Too movement was an overreach and that many women are simply lying about being abused.
It’s not exactly surprising they’re drawn to media that speaks to these grievances — and more often than not, that media comes in the form of individual influencers who are unaffiliated with existing media institutions.”
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“men are even lonelier, more likely to be single, more skeptical, and more afraid than ever. They find solace and community online, in places that older folks still don’t understand, where they see idealized versions of masculinity winning. They cheer on UFC fights and boxing matches, use “edgy” slurs, trade in risky crypto investments, bootlick Silicon Valley billionaires, listen to toxic dating advice, and denigrate women.
They vote for a man who has done everything you’re not supposed to do — steal, lie, rape, idolize Hitler — because his election fulfills their fantasy that men really can get away with whatever they want.”
“Like Carlson, Vance had once opposed Donald Trump, and like Carlson, he had transformed into a prominent Trump supporter and a rabid participant in the culture wars. “We are effectively run in the country, via the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs,” he told Carlson, “by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too.” He went on to name Kamala Harris (and Pete Buttigieg, and AOC) as his prime examples of the childless leaders who should be excluded from positions of power.”
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“Vance appears to be a decent family man — someone who supports traditional conservative values, and is even willing to buck conventional GOP norms by supporting strong pro-family policies. But a quick perusal of his thoughts on women and gender reveal some unusual opinions that lie outside the American mainstream, beyond a stray comment about cat ladies.
Vance is staunchly opposed to abortion, and has suggested that it is wrong even in cases of rape and incest. He has compared the evil of abortion to that of slavery, and opposed the Ohio ballot measure ensuring the right to abortion in 2023. He also was one of only 28 members of Congress who opposed a new HIPAA rule that would limit law enforcement’s access to women’s medical records. He has promoted Viktor Orban’s pro-natalist policies in Hungary, which offer paybacks to married couples that scale up along with the number of children (a new Hungarian Constitution that banned gay marriage went into effect in 2012, so these benefits only serve “traditional” couples). Vance opposes same-sex marriage. During his 2022 Senate campaign, he suggested the sexual revolution had made divorce too easy (people nowadays “shift spouses like they change their underwear”), arguing that people in unhappy marriages, and maybe even those in violent ones, should stay together for their children. His campaign said such an insinuation was “preposterous,” but you can watch the video yourself and be the judge.”