Katelyn Burns: Texas Republicans are appealing to voters' worst instincts

(Katelyn Burns is a freelance journalist based in Washington, D.C. She was the first openly transgender Capitol Hill reporter in U.S. history.) On Sunday, the Texas House of Representatives passed a bill banning teenage and adolescent trans girls from playing high school girls sports, after the bill passed the state Senate late last week. It now heads to Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk for a signature. Texas has also been in recent headlines for its extremely unusual abortion ban that deputizes citizens to enforce the ban instead of the state, a legal end around the Constitution. Federal court judges have either been bewildered at the ploy or have taken a wink-wink, nudge-nudge approach to effectively ending Roe v. Wade. The proximity of these two bills is more meaningful than one might think: Conservatives have been hard at work over the last few years trying to divide the natural solidarity that should exist between feminists and trans people. In introducing bills that disempower both populations, they’re making crucial headway toward that goal.

Texas isn’t alone in targeting trans kids and abortion access. The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in a case over a Mississippi abortion ban on Dec. 1. Reproductive rights activists and court-watchers have speculated that the case could be the death knell for the constitutional right to access an abortion. On the trans side, in 2021 alone, more than 100 anti-trans bills have been introduced on the state level, with 10 becoming law. While we can stand around all day arguing over what should be done with trans kids and adolescents, Republicans' proposed bans on school sports and puberty blockers are extreme solutions to problems that simply don’t exist. The extremism is the point. The anti-trans movement has become an important plank in the conservative culture wars, effectively a copy-paste of the anti-gay-rights movement of the '80s, '90s and early 2000s. The difference between then and now is that the Republican Party has fully committed to seizing and holding on to political power through voter suppression, packing the courts and gerrymandering.