At the RNC, a party that called for unity also verbally attacked trans people

Republicans verbally attacked transgender people multiple times during their national convention this week in Milwaukee — messaging that quickly contradicted their initial commitment to tone down heated rhetoric amid a heightened concern about political violence.

Throughout convention week, a mix of governors, members of Congress and other Republicans backtracked from pledges of civility made in the wake of the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump when they criticized trans people and undocumented immigrants. (Some RNC attendees held signs calling for mass deportations — one of Trump’s campaign promises.)

Over the four-day gathering, some used their prime time speeches to ridicule people who don’t fit into a two-gender binary, blaming them for Easter falling on the same day as International Transgender Day of Visibility and embracing the false but inflammatory idea that trans people try to sexualize or indoctrinate kids at school.

Former President Donald Trump, whose address accepting the nomination went into early Friday morning, proclaimed that under his administration, “We will not have men playing in women’s sports.”

The reference to men competing in women’s sports is a common transphobic phrasing in politics that is used to purposely misgender trans people or deny that trans people exist at all.

Donald Trump Jr., the son of the former president, on Wednesday linked trans people with the party’s ongoing criticism of public education curriculums or policies that teach or reference gender.

“Left-wing activists are pretending to be educators, teaching our kids that there are 57 genders,” he said in his remarks. “But they can’t even define what a woman is.”

Eric Trump, his second-oldest son, fretted that “male athletes, guys my height, 6’5″, are swimming in women’s sports destroying the dreams of young girls who have trained every minute of their lives.”

Republicans’ anti-LGBTQ+ messaging, particularly against trans people and their rights, has become a staple in recent years. They’ve filed 652 bills targeting transgender civil rights across 43 states in just the last year. Of those, 47 have passed, with more than 100 still pending.

This kind of rhetoric has led to safety concerns for LGBTQ+ Americans, with gender identity driving record-setting numbers of hate crimes over the past two years , advocates say.

But the legislation itself is not popular. A 19th News/SurveyMonkey poll conducted in August 2023 found that only 17 percent of Americans said that politicians should focus on restricting gender-affirming care; 44 percent said politicians should not focus on trans issues at all.

A PBS NewsHour/NPR/Marist poll conducted in March 2023 found that 54 percent of Americans oppose laws that criminalize providing gender-affirming medical care to minors. Yet the same poll also suggested that, in other ways, anti-trans rhetoric was chipping away at support for transgender people. While most Americans don’t want care for minors to be criminalized, a growing percentage support banning it: 43 percent in 2023, a 15-point jump since 2021 .

Notably, Republicans have softened their most unpopular stance on LGBTQ+ issues coming into the convention: Earlier this month, the party presented a platform that scraps the definition of marriage as between “a man and a woman. ” They’re trying to quell fears that they would take aim at marriage equality, which the Supreme Court affirmed in 2015. The court has since become more conservative.

But Republicans’ newly approved platform also solidified that anti-trans hostility will be a political guidepost for the next four years. The platform recommends prohibiting trans people from participating in sports that align with their gender identity.

At the convention, Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin on Monday said Democrats’ “fringe agenda includes biological males competing against girls,” a commonly used phrase to intentionally misgender and deny the humanity of transgender girls.

He also described school curricula that include lessons about LGBTQ+ people as “the sexualization and indoctrination of our children.”

Montana Sen. Steve Daines, who heads the fundraising arm for Senate Republicans, said Thursday that “liberal senators” want “boys in girls’ sports.” He added falsely that men would end up in “your daughters’ and my daughters’ locker room.”

“Back in Montana, we know the difference between a bull and a cow,” he said.

Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, in a tirade against diversity and equity programming, said people who are part of a “a leftist agenda” want to “impose gender ideology” on large swaths of people, including young students. “They can’t even define what a woman is.”

In a convention speech on Monday, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia accused people who work in Washington politics of “selling us out.”

“They promised normalcy and gave us transgender visibility day on Easter Sunday,” she said to cheers from a crowd of the party’s most ardent supporters. “Let me state this clearly, there are only two genders, and we are made in God’s image.”

Easter falls on the first Sunday after spring’s first full moon, which was on March 31 this year. Trans people have celebrated Transgender Day of Visibility every March 31 since 2009.