I'll be honest, after the criminal activity perpetrated during his first term, I felt confident that a second Donald Trump presidency was an impossibility. How hopeful and naive I was. Now that we're deep into the second "first hundred days," Trump has taken a torch to normality.
It's all angering. But the parts affecting my family most acutely are his bigoted executive orders—specifically the ones targeting trans kids. What little kid, already carrying an emotional burden, wants to wake up and find out the president of the United States has specifically demonized them and opened them up to more harassment?
According to recent Presidential decree, my 9-year-old is no longer allowed to play sports with his peers, because 4th-grade baseball and soccer teams are so competitive and trans athletes are really tipping the scales. (Frankly, I think all the sports at that age should just be co-ed, but that's a different debate.)
Now my kid is afraid to go to the bathroom at school. He doesn't want to be further bullied or get his teachers into trouble. Thanks to Trump, teachers and administrators who have been nothing but helpful and supportive are now at risk of prosecution for respecting my kid's pronouns and name.
The school district let me fill out paperwork to honor my kid's identity, but the state refuses to recognize it. He keeps bailing on state testing because they deadname him on exams. Teachers are at risk of criminal records for helping kids to feel more comfortable.
My son struggled at school, socially and academically, until he decided to start 3rd grade as a new kid and gender. He was going to be a boy with a new name. Between that and medication for his other mental health issues, his social transition turned him around from a behavioral nightmare into an incredible, well-adjusted student.
Trump wants to undo all of that progress. Why? Bigotry and a fake culture war. That's about it. There's no other legitimate reason.
Tucked away in his anti-trans nonsense, where he pulls Orwellian tricks to redefine gender and sex—against science and common sense, like characterizing puberty blockers as chemical mutilation—and makes medical decisions for families by inserting government between doctors and patients, Trump also insists that curriculum in schools be "America First."
That means they don't want kids learning about the Trail of Tears, or our history of slavery, or the Tulsa Massacre, or the Stonewall riots, or the McCarthy Era. These same folks will sneer at China as being oppressive and evil for not teaching their people about the Tiananmen Square massacre, but then mandate we do the exact same thing here. They're turning our schools into a battleground where they shouldn't be. And they're hurting our kids.
My kid specifically. And it's not okay.
In the words of Howard Beale in Sidney Lumet's 1976 masterpiece Network: "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!"
