(re)Defining Victory 100 days in to the Trump Presidency
A recap of the many, many wins so far. Reflections on victory, resistance, and joy after the first 100 days of Trump's presidency.
100 days have passed since Trump's inauguration. To sum it up briefly: it has been a very long five minutes in which I have aged twenty years.
Per the usual Good Queer News philosophy, I'm going to trust others to provide thoughtful overviews of the challenges we've faced over the last hundred days. While few of these challenges are actually new, they are certainly on a much larger battlefield. It has been nothing short of miraculous to see how we've risen to the challenge, and today I want to take some time to reflect on the many ways I've seen hope, joy, and victory manifest.
Reflecting on my own experience of the last hundred days, I think I have been fundamentally changed. Put differently: I have chosen to change and grow to be able to meet bigger challenges and still protect space for my own joy. How about you? Who have you become to be able to meet this moment? Who do you want to become?
We've had a lot of major wins in the last three months, and for this article I want to put those wins in context. What are our goals for how we show up in a Trump presidency? Are we achieving those goals?
As you read through the list of wins, I want you to fight the urge to discount them for not being big enough. A flipped school board in a small town? That's a group of teachers who can breathe a little more easily, a group of kids who get to read diverse literature, queer students who know someone has their back. A preliminary injunction on a national healthcare ban? Not permanent, but every day where trans people get to access safe, legal, gender-affirming care is a win in my book.
There is no "equality" button to press and eliminate all social ills simultaneously. There is no ticker tape we will cross where there are no more things to fight to improve in our world. There is no singular election that will irrevocably save or doom us. All the changes we've seen through history have been made up of thousands of smaller wins, individual decisions to be brave, groups coming together to fight back. But my God, how these wins are piling up.
With these reminders in mind, my goals for "success" as an organizer and advocate as it pertains to a Trump presidency are to:
Empower people, organizations, and systems to resist the Trump administration and prevent as much harm as possible, through as many means as possible.
Create meaningful conversations and cultural change to begin to move away from the radicalized conditions that allowed Trump to be elected.
Build, contribute to, and draw from systems of community care to help sustain, support, and protect myself and the people around me as much as possible.
Note that I did not say "defeat every anti trans bill" or "make Trump quit". You can decide for yourself what your own metrics for success are, but I think psychologically we'll all be a bit better off if we set goals that we can actually take steps to achieve.
What are your goals for this period? What am I missing?
Where We Are
With the constant attempts to roll back human rights for many groups of people, it's tempting to point at some arbitrary time in the past and say "look! He is bringing us backwards in time!" I need us to slow our roll here.
If nothing else, claiming that things are now just as bad as they were thirty, forty, or fifty + years ago is profoundly disrespectful to the people who fought tooth and nail for the progress we now enjoy.
I came out as transgender at 15 years old. My parents might not have understood at first, but they were safe and loving from the start. I came out at school and was able to write new policies, use a gender neutral bathroom, and form an active student group. I attended college—with an application essay written about my transition—and lived in gender-inclusive housing with many other trans students.
I graduated early to become a public speaker, and have worked with (and continue to work with, even now) countless major international companies looking to build genuinely inclusive workplaces. At these companies, I speak often to openly queer senior leaders, and to highly visible and well-funded employee resource groups.
I feel safe and loved shopping and dining at queer owned businesses all around me. I married my wife two years ago, I work with congregations and faith communities, I had a safe top surgery in an actual doctor's office and I can pick up my hormone therapy from the pharmacy.
None of these experiences went perfectly smoothly, and I recognize that I come from an immense place of privilege in having had this largely positive experience (albeit this is a rose-colored recap) and many others here and now are not so lucky. There is so much further to go, but I absolutely must remind myself that if I'd come out in the 90s, or the 70s, or the 50s, every part of this story would likely look much, much worse.
The last anti-crossdressing law in the US was repealed in 2011. Gay marriage wasn't nationally legalized until 2015. We are living in the result of decades, if not centuries, of queer organizing, protests, and resilience. There is nothing Trump can do to take us back further than we were 20, 30 years ago. We are still living in a time of unprecedented support, visibility, and relative safety compared to how things were historically.
This does not mean that there aren't major problems and threats we're facing right now, or that his attacks aren't actually hurtful. We're facing real problems right now, but to say these attacks amount to complete and total erasure (or to use even more violent language) is both preposterous and unhelpful. Even if it may be Trump's goal to erase us, all he can do is hurt us. I think that distinction matters.
Court Wins
Litigation has been one of our strongest, and most visible, tools for inhibiting the far-right agenda. If you're a real hardcore legal nerd, Just Security has a sortable by issue database of all 226 lawsuits filed against the trump administration. According to the New York Times, there have been at least 135 court rulings that have at least temporarily paused some of the administration’s initiatives.
Note the key word: temporary. I don't trust the supreme court as far as I can throw them, and our litigation strategy isn't one that relies on courts doing "the right thing". The strategy with these many, many court cases is to reduce the harm of the Trump administration as much as possible. We can use lawsuits to take up their time and resources, to slow down or halt implementation, to take some of the worst language out. We can also make sure they know that we are not an easy target so they will think twice before their next attack. With these goals, we are seeing frequent victory.
Our advocates have been fighting tirelessly, and with great success on things like restoring access to gender affirming care for trans youth, dignity for prisoners, and more. In Maine, the USDA just settled a lawsuit after they tried to revoke school lunch funding to try to get the state to ban trans athletes from sports. Only 100 days in, the federal government is already beginning to be overwhelmed by the strength and volume of our lawsuits and giving up certain fights.
If you'd like a bigger review of court wins, I'd recommend attending GLAD Law's first 100 days community briefing TODAY at 5:30 EST. If you can't attend, register anyways to receive a recording!
Legislative Wins
I've written in longer form in other articles about the reckless reporting of pure numbers of anti trans bills proposed across the US. Yes, we continue to see state-level legislative attacks, but our advocates continue to be extremely effective in fighting and reducing the harm of these bills. In Arizona just this week, the governor vetoed two passed anti-trans bills, and the republicans there do not have the numbers to override that veto. In Missouri, listed as the state with the second highest number of anti trans bills, we only have four bills (and with 7 days left in session, really just one) that we are actually concerned about.
Around the country, people continue to show up for hearings, call their elected officials (and that really does work), donate to state advocacy groups, and ask "what can I do to help?". Many legislative sessions are reaching their conclusion for the year, and we've done an amazing job protecting our community from as much harm as possible.
We've also seen many states taking strong strides to protect their trans and queer residents. Washington protecting the ability to prescribe hormones 12 months at a time, Colorado taking parental deadnaming and misgendering into account at custody hearings. and countless cities creating sanctuary protections for transgender folks and care providers. We haven't just been on defense folks—we've been KICKING BUTT on offense too.
Electoral Wins
I just wrote a whole post this weekend going further in depth about the many electoral wins lately, but I'll recap here.
International Elections
After the 2016 election, the far right was emboldened around the world and saw a tide of victories in their elections by playing the same rage-politics game that Trump perfected in his race. This time around, the world is outright rejecting hateful conservatism. In Australia and Canada, both in the last week, major elections that were expected to be easily won by the far right turned into sweeping victories for center-left and pro-equality candidates (Canada's new prime minister has a transgender daughter!). The world has seen the path we set ourselves on, and responded with a resounding "no thanks".
Elections within the US
Already, the tides within the US are turning as folks are realizing that Trump does not have their best interest at heart. According to David Nir at the Downballot, in 19 special elections Democrats are running ahead of the presidential margins by an average of 11.6 points.
I don't have information on every school board race, but I can tell you that the ones I've followed have had fantastic results. A few months ago here in Missouri, thanks to passionate community organizers and community-led campaigns, four of the most notorious anti-trans school boards lost their conservative majorities! These aren't big blue city school boards either. I'm talking Rolla, O'fallon, Francis Howell, and Rockwood. Just a few days ago, I learned about a similar slate of victories and board-balance switches across major school districts in Texas.
These victories represent a groundswell of people who are willing to run to make a difference, people deciding it's time to get involved and volunteer to campaign for a cause they're passionate about, and people choosing to stay engaged and vote in local elections. They also represent continual progress towards understanding and acceptance of LGBTQ+ folks across the country.
Cultural Change
One of the things I love most about my work with PFLAG is that it allows me to have that "on the ground" feeling in so many different states, cities, and small towns. I get to hear what the resistance looks like, where the key battles are, and what victories we're celebrating today.
One of the biggest things I've seen at my own PFLAG chapter, and have heard from countless other chapters around the country, is that we're facing a surge of volunteers like none of us have ever seen before. People are fired up, angry, and ready to step up to the plate to learn how to fight for their loved ones. These are grandparents, religious people, rural dads, so many groups that people have written off as unlikely to care, that are SHOWING OUT.
There have been protests at every national park in the country, packed town halls in Republican congressional districts demanding accountability, dramatic declines in Tesla profits and protests at dealerships. Costco saw major boosts in foot traffic after doubling down on DEI, while Target's CEO just took a 45% pay cut. Public pushback led to reinstatement of care at hospitals around the country, including planned parenthood of Arizona. A4TE ran a campaign that got 62,000 public comments on the new passport policies. Things are happening.
Everyone is really into the phrase "don't comply in advance" these days, but some folks seem to be forgetting that choosing to give up and accept the Trump admin's attacks at face value is the biggest complying in advance you can do. They only have the power to do the things they're doing if we let them.
More Wins Than We Can Know
Amidst all this, there are countless victories we may never see. A parent opening their arms to hold their transgender child who just came out. Breathtaking pieces of queer art and music created every minute. Small moments in which people decide they are ready for things to be different. Some people are ready to leave their party in the dust, while others are starting to open their eyes for the first time and ask questions about what they’d been told was true. As we speak, organizers for small town pride festivals are working on final preparations for their celebrations. Someone just filed the paperwork to run for local office for the first time. Somewhere, a bookseller just handed someone a book that’s going to change everything for them. Somewhere, a queer kid saw two women holding hands, saw a guy wearing a pronoun pin, saw a movie with a real life nonbinary person in it, and realized for the first time that they’re going to get to grow up.
Over the past 100 days, we have been reminded that when the government completely and dramatically fails us, we are forced to ask ourselves: what is my responsibility? What do we owe to each other? To this planet?
And we are answering that we owe each other change, and joy, and passion, and love, and safety. We owe ourselves rest, community, passion. We owe this world something better and I have seen us fight like hell to deliver on that.
Now is not the time to give up. Now is the time to take a deep breath, look at where we are, look at how we’ve got here, and decide what we want to do about it. Who are you going to become to meet this moment?
If you’d like to support me in another way, don’t forget that my primary income is as a public speaker, and I would be so thrilled to speak for your ERG, organization, or nonprofit this pride month. Reach out!
Thanks, Ben. I really needed this today.
thank you for this article. it has changed my mindset profoundly and I am much happier now. we can do this.