Sarah McBride on Why the Left Lost on Trans Rights
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So Donald Trump, in his inauguration speech, was perfectly clear about what he intended to do.
As of today, it will henceforth be the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders, male and female.
Starting the day of that speech, Trump launched an all-out effort to roll back trans rights using every power the federal government had and some that it may not have.
President Trump has signed an executive order which declares the US government will no longer recognize the concept of gender identity. President Trump directing the Secretary of Education to create a plan to cut funding for schools that teach what he calls gender ideology. This afternoon, President Trump makes a move to ban transgender athletes from competing in women's sports. Ban on gender affirming care for transgender inmates in federal prisons. Ban on transgender troops serving in the military. These executive orders, many of them have not actually gone into effect yet. But when I look across the country, we're already hearing the stories of impact. In a time when we are struggling to find people to volunteer to do this, we are begging to be allowed to continue our service and you're just going to wash us away.
So today I'm not okay. It's a complete dehumanization of transgender people. Years and years and years into who I am and I'm supposed to out myself. It's about privacy and dignity for me to be able to change my passport to male.
A lot of the things Trump is doing in this term have put him on the wrong side of public opinion, but not this. In a recent poll where Trump's approval rating was around 40%, 52% of Americans approved of how he's handling trans issues. Another poll showed that was more than approved of Trump's handling of immigration, far more than approved of his handling of tariffs. And if you look more deeply into polling on trans rights, the public has swung right on virtually every policy you can poll. Trump didn't just win the election. He and the movement and ideology behind him have been winning the argument. Sarah McBride is a freshman congresswoman from Delaware, where she was formerly a state senator. She is the first openly trans member of Congress.
And her view is that the trans rights movement, and the left more broadly, has to grapple with why their strategy failed. How they lost not only power, but hearts and minds. and what needs to be done differently to protect trans people and begin winning back the public starting right now. I was struck talking to McBride, how much she was offering a theory that goes far beyond trans rights. What she's offering is a counter to the dominant political style that emerged as algorithmic social media collided with politics. A style that is more about policing and pushing those who agree with you than it is about persuading those who don't.
Sarah McBride, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. So I want to begin with some polling. So Pew asked the same set of questions in 2022 and 2025. And what it found was this collapse in, I would call it persuasion. So they pulled the popularity of protecting trans people from discrimination in jobs, housing, public spaces. That had lost eight points in those three years. Requiring health insurance companies to cover gender transition lost five points. Requiring trans people to use bathrooms that matched their biological sex gained eight points. When you hear those results, what to you happened there?
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–5:19
2
What recent Trump policies have most impacted trans rights and how did they gain public support?
5:19–17:17
3
How did public opinion on trans‑rights issues shift between 2022 and 2025 according to polling?
17:17–29:18
4
Why does Sarah McBride say the trans‑rights movement lost the art of persuasion?
29:18–40:02
5
What role did a false sense of cultural victory play in the regression of LGBTQ support?
40:02–51:47
6
How can a politics of “grace” and compromise rebuild coalitions and win back voters?
51:47–1:03:33
7
What does “liberalism” mean today and how should it guide Democratic strategy?
1:03:33–1:15:30
8
How should policymakers balance parental authority and minors’ access to gender‑affirming care?
1:15:30–1:37:16