Trump had a busy Friday last week as he pushed an ever-expanding anti-LGBTQ+ agenda with new lies and conspiracy theories. One of the claims that Trump made is so far into the realm of fantasy that it rivals the time that Republican politicians believed that schools were giving kids litter boxes. Trump is now asking you to believe that if you send your kid to school in the United States, they might suddenly come home having gender affirming surgery.

His bizarre comments came during anappearance at the annual summit of Moms for Liberty. Moms for Liberty are a far-right group that pushes against teaching LGBTQ+ rights, critical race theory, and other subjects that get branded as “woke.” They have repeatedly backed anti-trans candidates for school boards who have then failed to win their races, even in Florida.

Before he got to talking about schools giving out surgeries, Trump made a quick swing by another major transphobic bandwagon of the moment. Railing against the inclusion of trans women in women’s sports, he brought up Imane Khelif again. While it has been made abundantly clear that Khelif is a cis woman, Trump held her up as an example of the problems around trans women in sports and claimed that she had “transitioned.”

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Getting back to the topic of education that Moms for Liberty is supposedly focused on, Trump explained the dangers that face children in schools today. Not gun violence but rather sudden gender affirming surgery and regretting transitioning in later life.

“Your kid goes to school and comes home a few days later with an operation […] The school decides what’s going to happen with your child.” Trump said. “And many of these childs [sic], 15 years later say, what the hell happened? Who did this to me? They say, who did this to me? It’s incredible.”

It’s fairly easy to categorically state that this is not happening. No child is getting gender affirming surgery of any kind at school, or anywhere else in the United States for that matter. Beyond puberty blockers, most trans care requires that the patient be at least 16 or older (depending on the state and the insurer). As far as Trump’s apparent tangent into talking about people regretting transition, that has been shown to be extremely rare and is most often tied to a lack of social support for the individual. All of Trump’s comments are simply more baseless fearmongering targeted at the pearl-clutching members of his base who seem to think that trans people are worse than Satan.

An extremely charitable argument might be that Trump simply misspoke. He might have been trying to suggest that children were being indoctrinated by what his campaign has called “radical gender ideology” at schools. Trump and his campaign (and Project 2025) have been pushing the idea that schools have too much control over education, and the idea that the school is going to “trans” people’s kids would at least be logically consistent, despite also being clearly nonsensical.

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One might have to dig deep to find enough charity to make that case, but the argument would be quickly undercut by the wider campaign messaging that was taking place the same day. Before the Moms for Liberty rally, Trump’s campaign held a call to “highlight Harris’ radical gender ideology and her agenda that would strip parents of their rights and allow children to be subjected to radical, harmful, and irreversible surgical and pharmaceutical interventions.”

Once again, we find trans people are a major target of the Republican campaign platform. While it has not worked very well for the party in the past, there’s a lot at risk with the 2024 election. If Trump loses, then maybe, just maybe, we’ll get some peace for a year or two. If he wins and gets to enact his promised executive orders, the result doesn’t really bear thinking about.

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