By Brynn Tannehill

At the 2023 Conservative Political Action Conference, Michael Knowles took the main stage and called for the “eradication of transgenderism from public life” to a standing ovation. Not long after, Project 2025 (led by the Heritage Foundation) published the “Mandate for Leadership,” a 900-plus-page blueprint for the next Republican administration. The first legislative item in the executive summary declares that “transgender ideology” is a form of pornography, and that all pornography should be outlawed. It then goes on to call all trans people “child predators and misogynistic exploiters of women.” It further demands that anyone who is a “purveyor of transgender ideology” be put on sex offender lists and imprisoned.

This an explicit call to make being transgender illegal, and to put anyone who fails to flee or detransition in prison, or maybe camps if there are too many for the existing system to handle. This is already the solution Donald Trump is proposing for other “undesirables.” It’s not coming from fringe organizations: This is the mainstream of the GOP. When Trump promises to be a dictator on day one, it’s so that he can implement draconian policies and laws like these. Average Americans might think, “Surely we would never go this far? This sounds positively Naziesque, and it is, and we’re better than that, right?”

Wrong.

We already have the first state proposing bills to do exactly this (and more) less than a week into the new legislative year. By January 17, more than 200 anti-transgender bills have already been filed. West Virginia’s Senate Bill 197 defines the existence of transgender people as “obscene” and bans them from being within 2,500 feet of any school. Senate Bill 194 would not only ban all transition-related care for anyone over the age of 21, but would also require that all providers (including therapists of all types) attempt to “cure” them. It would define being transgender as a “sexual deviation,” like pedophilia, exhibitionism, masochism, sadomasochism, or fetishism. Senate Bill 195 in West Virginia would declare that any material related to being transgender is obscene, which would have far-reaching implications for the internet and the First Amendment.