Donald Trump targets trans kids while abandoning Americans’ real needs around affordability

While millions of Americans are opening credit card bills they can’t pay, buying gas they can barely afford, skimping on groceries that cost too much, and rationing prescription medications their insurance no longer fully covers, Donald Trump took to Truth Social for a reason that has nothing to do with affordability.

From his gilded digital, gold-plated soapbox, he declared that he would hold all legislative business hostage until Congress passed a voter suppression bill he’d modified with anti-transgender provisions.

Not a post about groceries, or about insulin, or about a gallon of gas. His focus was on re-upping a dated, tired old culture war that has nothing to do with stretching a paycheck..

The bill in question is the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, or the SAVE Act. It has already cleared the House, because Trump's lapdog, Mike Johnson, would pass any bill touted by Trump, even if it called for the execution of non-Christians.

Related: How the SAVE Act would make it harder for trans people, married women, and some men to vote

And now this so-called “SAVE” act sits in the Senate, waiting. In its current form, it mandates documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote and dramatically curtails mail-in voting.

Those two provisions alone would disproportionately disenfranchise elderly voters, rural voters, marginalized groups, and low-income voters, some of whom form the backbone of Trump’s own MAGA coalition.

But rather than acknowledge this glaring irony, Trump has now attached two unrelated anti-transgender provisions to the bill, adding a been-there-done-that social issue to legislation that was already struggling to find its footing.

Related: Trump uses State of the Union to demonize transgender kids and their families

Related: Republicans rage after Trump appears to soften stance on trans care

Senate Majority Leader John Thune supports the principles of the SAVE Act and has promised Trump a Senate vote. However, he has voiced concern regarding the pressure to bypass the 60-vote filibuster, calling such tactics "not a realistic option" and "risky.” Trump doesn’t help him by jamming a transgender issue onto the bill.

Because polls consistently show that voters have no interest in going after the transgender community, particularly trans youth.

The Yale Youth Poll found that “acceptance of transgender people” ranked dead last among 30 voter priorities, selected as important by just 18 percent of respondents. “Cost of living and affordability,” meanwhile, came in at 88 percent. Not so much a gap as a Grand Canyon-sized disparity.

A Pew/YouGov survey found that 52 percent of Americans, including 51 percent of Republicans, believe lawmakers are already devoting too much attention to transgender issues.

Even in 2024, 80 percent supermajority in a Data for Progress poll agreed that “both Democrats and Republicans should spend less time talking about transgender issues and more time talking about voters’ priority issues like the economy and inflation.”

And a CNN poll found transgender policies ranked last among all issues surveyed, with 43 percent of Americans saying it was “not too” or “not at all” important to them, the highest “not important” rating of any issue polled.

In other words, poll after poll, survey after survey, show voters feel they have no business deciding the fate of transgender individuals.

Related: No, supporting trans rights doesn’t cost elections

The American people have made their preference clear. They want help paying their bills. They want relief at the gas pump, in the pharmacy, at the checkout line. And what they are getting instead is a presidential ultimatum about transgender children’s medical care.

Trump has chosen to plant the federal government squarely in the exam room, between a child, their parents, and their doctor. The Republican Party spent decades - as far back as I can remember, from the 1980s - campaigning against exactly this kind of overreach. I listened to Ronald Reagan say time and time again that "government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.”

What makes the SAVE Act gambit particularly cruel is its double effect on the transgender community. The bill itself is a mechanism of exclusion, strict voter ID requirements, and gutted mail-in access that will keep marginalized people, including many LGBTQ Americans, further from the ballot box.

That’s because transgender citizens, whose identification documents do not align with their gender, may face barriers when attempting to vote.

And now, by binding anti-trans provisions to the bill’s fate, Trump has set up transgender kids as the convenient scapegoat if legislation stalls. Imagine the attack ads and the talking points. “Congress couldn’t get anything done because of the radical trans agenda.”

Related: Donald Trump uses the anniversary of the Capitol insurrection to attack transgender people

Related: Trump signs executive order banning federal support of gender-affirming care for anyone under 19

Some Republicans don’t see the point in dragging the trans community in front of voters. Senator Tom Tillis of North Carolina told NOTUS that transgender issues are simply not top of mind for voters. “I think if you take a look at right-of-center, left-of-center voters, they’re more pocketbook issues,” he said. “Is this enough to win an election? Honestly, I think the answer is no.”

History bears this out. From Kansas to Kentucky, from Virginia to Wisconsin, anti-transgender campaigns have failed at the ballot box with consistency. In the 2025 Virginia gubernatorial election, Democratic candidate Abigail Spanberger defeated Republican Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earle-Sears, despite a massive, high-budget campaign by Earle-Sears that centered heavily on anti-transgender advertisements.

Former Virginia Republican Lieutenant Governor Bill Bolling ultimately broke with his own party’s candidate over that strategy, asking publicly: “What about jobs and the economy? What about education, health care, and transportation? I think these are the issues Virginians care most about.”

The lesson keeps cementing itself; nevertheless, the hardliners in the GOP keep ignoring it.

Moderate Republicans see it. Independents see it. Even a growing number of conservatives see it. The angry, exhausted politics of vilification, the endless war against people who represent a tiny fraction of the population and pose no credible threat to anyone’s daily life, is running out of steam.

Trans kids are not why your grocery bills are up. They are not why your electric bills are spiking. They are not the reason your health insurance deductible is ballooning past the point of reason.

They are children, with parents who love them, navigating an already-difficult world. The decision about their care belongs to their families and their doctors, not to a social media post from a president who needs a villain more than he needs a policy.

Related: Project 2025 vowed to roll back LGBTQ+ rights. Here's everything Trump has done so

I emailed a friend’s trans daughter and asked how she felt about Trump’s latest anti-trans action. “Maybe I’m lucky, but I don’t know a single person who thinks it’s a good idea to single us out,” she wrote back. “It’s because Trump has done nothing good and has no successes to brag about, so he makes us the enemy. Hopefully, Congress sees through this.”

She’s right. Hopefully, the SAVE Act will stall. The provisions will fester. And while Congress ties itself in knots around a hostage situation of Trump’s own creation, the real work of governing America will go undone. As it has been going undone since January 20, 2025.

Trump is betraying all of us with his sinister campaign targeting trans kids. This isn’t a left, center, or right issue. It’s about showing compassion for kids who only want to be themselves and to be happy.

Trump, the grumpy old man, is neither a compassionate person nor a happy one, and those types of people never win in the end.

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