For years, it's been apparent to me that Republicans target immigrants and transgender people because both groups have some degree of precarity in their legal situation, often especially with their identity documents.
"The 700,000 figure includes every undocumented migrant living in poverty in California who is becoming eligible for coverage under Medi-Cal, of whom an unknown and much smaller number would conceivably attempt to access gender-affirming treatments through the state’s low-income healthcare plan. ... If 1.6 percent of the 700,000 undocumented migrants are transgender this would be 11,200 Californians. If 31 percent of them seek hormone therapy, this would be fewer than 3500 people."
Also, those 3,500 people might access gender-affirming hormones at some point in their lives, not necessarily tomorrow.
California has 39 million people. That a few thousand people in poverty might access gender-affirming hormones through Medi-Cal over the coming year or so, and that these people are immigrants, isn't shocking. It's not the kind of news story Fox wants to make it.
Who can be the biggest transphobe?
Meryl Kornfield writes:
"Targeting transgender rights has become increasingly central to the pitch many Republican politicians are making across the country, a trend that has come sharply into focus here in Iowa. As the leading Republican candidates for president have barnstormed the state ahead of Monday’s Republican caucuses, they have put the issue at the forefront of their pitches, saying in some cases, without evidence, that transgender people are a threat to children or have a mental health disorder.
* * *
Nationwide, anti-trans bills led by conservative lawmakers doubled last year [2023], now targeting various aspects of the LGBTQ+ community, including drag shows and gender-affirming care for adults, particularly in states with Republican-controlled governments. In the run-up to the Iowa caucuses, Republican candidates have been battling each other to position themselves as the most vocal critics of transgender athletes’ in youth and college sports, pageant participants and gender-affirming care for transgender children, such as puberty blockers."
Thus, even though presidential candidate Nikki Haley has made the transphobic effort to claim that teen girls contemplate suicide because some athletes are trans, her rival Ron DeSantis is running ads claiming that "Tricky Nikki [Haley] supports the radical trans agenda" and criticizing Trump "for allowing transgender women to participate in Miss Universe and stumbling when asked, 'can a man become a woman?'" Of course, all three candidates are transphobic, all the time. That is their clear intent. Indeed they're exhausting themselves trying to prove who's the most transphobic.
The article: At Iowa’s oldest gay bar, fear over Republicans’ transgender rhetoric (subscriber gift link), Meryl Kornfield, Washington Post, January 14, 2024.
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