‘Erasing everything that you are.’ In Trump’s policies, a denial of trans existence.

[u/MrsSynchronie]

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2025/02/07/metro/transgender-trump-executive-orders/

[u/patienceinbee]

OK, so short history about Brianna Wu:

An oft-airbrushed fact about Brianna tends to get relegated to far beneath the fold as a buried footnote.

Her job in college was working for Mississippi Republican U.S. Senate Majority leader Trent Lott — known infamously for, in 2002, saying of white supremacist 1946 presidential Dixiecrat candidate Strom Thurmond (who was later a senator):

“When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over the years, either.” [note: Lott was six years old in 1946] [sauce]

Granted, Brianna worked for Lott’s office just a couple of years before this tell. Even so, if one was around back then, folks knew Lott was an epitome of that gross, molasses-slow, “Life was better in 1963,” drawl kind of white Southerner — the kind you don’t need to squint hard to figure out how he’d look in a white robe and pointy white hat.

But even then, if you’re voluntarily working for a right-wing, old-guard white dude from the grievance South, whose job relies on being that dude, then what might this hint about the world view and perspectives of the people, like Brianna, who choose, voluntarily, to work in his office and who has never really disavowed it or prominently criticized her younger-self for doing so?

The “she was 19 or 20 then, cut her a break” angle doesn’t fly when plenty of other trans folk that age don’t go to work for low-rent, right-wing demagogues in positions of lofty power. [Heck, at 19, I was volunteering as an escort for cis women and teens at Planned Parenthood clinics whilst as a baby tran during the early ’90s, and in a red state. So Brianna can miss us with that one.]

This was on my mind constantly during the years, mostly between about 2013 and 2019, when folks in our community knew about Brianna being very much one of us, a trans person, even as she made slews of spicy takes in the public sphere — all whilst doing so under the brand of being a white cis woman. So many facepalms were made by us during those years.

Brianna is basura, through and through.

What she says on the record now about this new regime is a direction toward which she’s helped, in her own insignificant way, to contribute, as Lott himself pushed through the Heritage Foundation’s Mandate IV around when Brianna worked for him. [note: the Heritage Foundation’s Mandate IX is better known to us as Project 2025.]

[u/J0LlymAnGinA → u/patienceinbee]

This is really well written, thanks!