Eight years ago, Donald Trump, his first candidate for high office, appeared to buck the prevailing conservative trend at the time by insisting that Caitlyn Jenner could use the women’s restroom in the Manhattan skyscraper that bears his name. This administration could have been more tolerant of transgender people, given the Republican-led effort that year to restrict bathroom access in states like North Carolina and Texas. Jenner, one of the most high-profile transgender women in the country at the time, would continue to support Trump, but recant In 2018, she claimed that Trump was using the transgender community as “political pawns” and “ignoring our humanity.”

Now, as Trump prepares to return to Washington with political authority and a congressional majority, he is doing so in part by eschewing the ambiguity of his 2016 stance by fully embracing his increasingly overt line of transphobia. Mainstream American conservatism. Trump, who ended his campaign with allegations that children were indoctrinated to question their gender identity at school and then “came home with an operation a few days later”, promised, among other promises, to “banish transgender madness from our schools”, and was viewed by many in the LGBTQ+ community as much more than his exaggerated campaign rhetoric. It is perceived as something serious.

What did Trump and his allies say they would do?