1. United States
2. Ariz.
3. Letter

Stand with transgender people. The 2026 midterms delivered a clear verdict: anti-transgender politics is a losing strategy, and defending trans people costs nothing politically. Republicans and their allies spent nearly $200 million on anti-transgender ads this cycle. What did it buy them? Democrats flipped Texas blue, won Michigan's U.S. Senate race by 6 points with a candidate who refused to hedge on trans issues, and sent a western Montana smokejumper to Congress after he told voters the government has "no business sticking its nose into our personal lives" when it comes to transgender health care. A trans Democrat won a suburban Alabama district that Republicans carried by 16 points just four years ago. Of 160 races tracked with transgender implications, 107 went to the pro-transgender side. This was not a fluke. It was a pattern. The lesson is simple. Abdul El-Sayed said it best when he called the fight over trans people a manufactured "cultural flash point" and won anyway. Moreover, he said that “rights are rights are rights…The minute you assent to government taking anybody’s rights — whether you use them or you don’t — you are assenting to the government taking everybody’s rights.” That’s the heart of the issue when abandoning any minority group to government attacks on their freedoms to direct their own lives, healthcare, housing, education, and employment. El-Sayed is not the only candidate to win on a message that he will not trade LGBTQ rights for his own political career, but he is among the most eloquent. The voters have spoken loudly. There is no political cost to defending transgender people, and there is a real cost to abandoning them. I expect my elected officials to take that lesson seriously and to stand firm against any legislation, budget provision, or executive action that targets transgender people.