America’s Anti-Trans Panic Is a Scam

In the marble halls of the battle dome of American lawfare on December 4, Tennessee’s deputy solicitor general performed a brazen act of legal gymnastics: He argued to the Supreme Court that protecting transgender children requires denying them health care. That same day, UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson—architect of an AI-powered claims denial system with a reported 90 percent error rate—was shot, allegedly by a man driven to desperation by America’s predatory and labyrinthine health care system, which causes as many as 66.5 percent of American bankruptcies.

The grim symmetry was impossible to ignore. The parallel path of these two events perfectly encapsulates the cynical sleight of hand at the heart of the American establishment’s current political strategy. While millions struggle under the weight of medical debt and economic precarity, our political class has masterfully redirected public anger toward a manufactured crisis: the supposed threat of transgender Americans. By scapegoating trans people, they divert attention from the systemic failures killing and impoverishing our neighbors. This phenomenon is what sociologists call displacement, where economic anger and despair are redirected onto marginalized groups rather than the systems and structures that are actually causing the suffering. While the threats to trans people are real and growing, the threat of trans people is a nonexistent distraction, and attacking us will do nothing to address Americans’ real material concerns.

In Tennessee, where I spent 13 years, one in five children lives in poverty, and the state ranks forty-sixth in health care access. Yet the state legislature seems more concerned with spending millions defending discriminatory anti-trans laws rather than addressing these systemic failures. Florida pours resources into investigating drag shows while its residents face an unprecedented housing crisis. Texas hunts down parents of trans children while steadfastly refusing—along with 10 other states, including Florida and Tennessee—to expand Medicaid coverage that could benefit millions of working families.

This isn’t coincidence—it’s strategy. As Americans struggle to afford basic necessities, state legislatures have unleashed an unprecedented wave of anti-trans legislation. The timing is calculated, the playbook well-worn: When economic anxiety rises, create a cultural boogeyman. Cable news fills hours with breathless coverage of trans athletes rather than investigating corporate price gouging. Politicians perform outrage over pronouns while quietly approving corporate subsidies and bloated military contracts.

The Supreme Court’s pending decision in United States v. Skrmetti will have far-reaching implications for anyone who depends on accessible health care and basic civil rights. It’s a stark reminder that the struggle for trans rights and economic justice are inextricably linked. Every moment spent debating trans existence is a moment politicians don’t have to justify their economic failures and corporations don’t have to defend sacrificing American lives for ever-growing profits.

The cruel irony is that this manufactured panic actively harms the very communities these politicians claim to protect. States passing anti-trans legislation consistently show higher poverty rates, lower wages, and worse health care outcomes than those protecting trans rights. A 2024 workplace study found that 82 percent of transgender employees have experienced discrimination or harassment, while the 2022 U.S. Trans Survey revealed unemployment and poverty rates twice the national average among trans Americans.

What the fomenters of this moral panic hope to elide is that the same corporate interests bankrolling anti-trans politicians are simultaneously fighting against labor rights, universal health care, and other measures that might otherwise level the economic playing field. The same states investing heavily in defending discriminatory laws often rank lowest in worker protections and education funding. It’s a classic bait and switch: Get Americans fighting about bathroom bills so they don’t notice their pockets being picked. You might remember North Carolina’s House Bill 2 as the infamous 2016 law that became the template for a nationwide slate of bathroom bills. What received much less attention was the fact that it was a peerless example of this economic sleight of hand: The bill also limited the ability of municipalities in “regulating wage levels, hours of labor, or benefits of private employers.” Toxic bigotry toward some, served up with a side dish of income inequality for all.

As a trans person watching all of this unfold, I feel something beyond the familiar twist of anxiety—a bone-deep weariness. There’s a special kind of exhaustion in watching your community’s basic rights become a political football, recognizing the tired playbook, and still seeing people fall for it. The justification comes wrapped in rhetoric we’ve heard before: appeals to “states’ rights” and “protecting children”—phrases that once defended segregation and continue to mask systems of exploitation.

But there’s hope for us all when we learn to understand these connections. Labor unions like UNITE HERE increasingly recognize that discrimination against one group weakens protections for all, prioritizing trans-inclusive health care across the hospitality industry. They understand that when employers test the waters of discrimination against trans workers, they’re testing how much discrimination all workers will accept.

The solution isn’t to ignore trans rights in favor of economic justice, or vice versa; it’s to recognize their fundamental connection—after all, the forces arrayed against us all understand this only too well. When we show up to school board meetings to defend trans kids, we can also demand answers about why teachers are forced to buy their own supplies. When we support trans advocacy groups, we can also join tenant and labor unions building broad coalitions to achieve better living and working conditions. When politicians try to manufacture outrage about pronouns, we can shift the conversation to their voting record on raising the minimum wage instead. These struggles are intertwined, and we’re stronger when we face them together rather than letting them become wedge issues that divide us.

The anti-trans panic is designed to displace our righteous anger about our exploitative economic system at the expense of trans people, immigrants, and other marginalized Americans. It’s about preventing Americans from recognizing our shared struggles and common enemies. We can’t afford to keep falling for it—not when we have the power to expose and deconstruct the cynical charade that is being used to divide us.