Democrats can win if they pledge solidarity. Wisconsin showed it’s possible. Solidarity doesn’t mean there aren’t primaries and debates. What it means is everyone pledges to support the winner of the Democratic primary. The midterm elections will be local elections. Democratic candidates must do whatever they can, often highlighting different issues, to get their voters to the polls. For my support in the general election, a candidate must pledge their first vote to elect Democratic leaders, whether in the statehouse, or Congress. 

It’s been clear for many years what the goals of the Democratic Party are. That doesn’t mean every Democrat is for everything the party espouses. That is what comes from having a ‘Big Tent.’ The party stands for: equality, gun control, raising taxes on the wealthy, and working to ameliorate climate change. It stands for choice, passing the ERA and Equality Act, fair immigration laws, being part of NATO, and the World Health Organization. The party supports raising the minimum wage, strong Medicare and Medicaid, robust Social Security, unions, and working toward a two-state solution in the Middle East. The party supports Ukraine remaining a free nation, fair trade policies, and making sure we have three equal branches of government; legislative, executive, and judicial, to ensure a vibrant system of checks and balances. The Republican Party, which today is Donald Trump’s MAGA party, paid for by his Nazi sympathizing co-president, Elon Musk, has clearly shown they believe in none of this.

So, my serious question to those Democrats and independents, who write and shout for one reason or another, “I will never again support a Democrat,” or those who believe in these Democratic Party values but then stay home and don’t vote: What is it you are looking for? Help me, and others, to understand. With this wide schism in values between the two parties, and the reality is except for a couple of rare districts, there are only two parties that can actually win a general election, what do you think you can accomplish by your actions, or lack of action? I am at a loss. So again, please help me understand.

I was brought up on institutional politics. I believe more strongly than ever in the Democratic Party. Do our leaders do everything right? No. Do they sometimes get me mad? YES! Should some of them retire and let younger people get elected, definitely YES! But despite all of this, the schism in values is so wide, the thought of continued domination by the MAGA Republican Party is so frightening, I believe we will not have a democracy left to fight for if we don’t stand together, and defeat them. 

We lost this past election and are stuck with President Felon, and his co-president, the Nazi sympathizing megalomaniac, Musk. We lost for a host of reasons, a big one is our voters either stayed home, voted for a third party, or some even for Republicans, to register their displeasure. Whatever the reason, they created this frightening reality we face today. 

I have a difficult time trying to understand how others don’t see this. Or if they do, why some still don’t want to join hands, to do something about it. That is my problem, and a huge problem for the Democratic Party. The question is, how do we reach those people who often say they share the Democratic Party’s values, but don’t come out to vote in huge numbers to help change things, or at the minimum, stop Trump/Musk, and what they are doing to destroy our country?

In 2024, Trump won 77,284,118 votes, or 49.8 percent of the votes cast for president. Trump won 3,059,799 more popular votes than he won in 2020. Kamala Harris won 74,999,166 votes or 48.3 percent of the votes cast. That was 6,285,500 fewer popular votes than Biden won in 2020. So had even half of those voters come out for Harris, she might have won. So those who didn’t vote for the Democrat in 2024, where do they see the country going? What is it they want? Will anything get them to vote for Democrats in the future? In 2024, 116,000 changed votes, out of over 15 million cast in three states — 40,000 in Michigan, 61,000 in Pennsylvania, and 15,000 in Wisconsin — would have changed the election.  

I hear Democrats attacking the party for not fighting back. They then follow that up with “I will never vote for Democrats again!” So, again, my question is “who is it they will vote for?” Some say they want younger people to lead the party. I agree with that. I have written there should be age limits, and term limits. I don’t like that nearly 60 out of 100 senators are over 70. Many over 80. They are in both parties. It is time to stop asking young voters to vote for their grandparents, or even great-grandparents. 

But then my question to those who complain is, “what are you going to do about it?” Seems to me unless you vote, it won’t change. I think to get the younger people you want as leaders in the future, you have to work to elect them. First, encourage the people you want to run for office. When they agree, you will then have to volunteer in their campaigns, donate money if you can, and come out and vote for them. In my mind, learned in old line institutional politics, that is the way you get change.

I recently saw a post on Facebook, “sign a petition to not give any money to Democrats until Schumer (D-NY) resigns as Senate minority leader.” I am not sure what that person expects to happen, and how not giving to Democrats doesn’t play directly into the hands of Musk and Trump. Knowledge of the system, means you understand the leaders of the party in the Senate are elected by their caucus. What happens if you don’t like the Democratic caucus’s choice to replace Schumer? 

For me, again an older guy brought up on institutional politics, and having political science and public administration degrees, I have a hard time understanding young people today thinking they can get instant change in politics. We do not have a king or dictator, even though Trump thinks he is one, and whose heroes are Putin and Xi Jinping. The instant change he is trying for isn’t progress, but as we see, moving backwards. Is that what we want? Our Constitution is written, and our government is set up, so change, moving forward towards progress, is incremental. It takes time. Whether it’s progress in women’s rights, the rights of the LGBTQ community, the disability community, civil rights, or ameliorating climate change; it takes time. I know that’s incredibly frustrating. But to see progress one must stick with it. 

Over all the years I have voted, never have I voted for a perfect candidate. Perfect candidates, like perfect people, don’t exist. Is that what young people are looking for?  I don’t know, but I think the Democratic Party, and its local candidates, need to find out what it will take to get people out to vote, and vote for them.  

My thoughts are the 2025 and 2026 elections will be determined at the local level. From school board, to county council, from statehouse, to Congress. The debates, and fight for votes, will be on the ground. I believe as we move forward, the wins will come from the ground up, not the top down. It will be up to those over six million who didn’t vote for Harris in 2024, to decide if they will come out for Democrats locally in 2025 and 2026. If they do, we will win like we did in Wisconsin. If they don’t, we may actually lose our democracy. 

Peter Rosenstein is a longtime LGBTQ rights and Democratic Party activist.

The Transforming Hearts Collective led a webinar on Tuesday for pro-LGBTQ Christians. Featuring trans religious leaders and activists including Transforming Hearts Collective founders Zr. Alex Kapitan, Teo Drake, and Rev. Mykal Slack alongside trans and HIV human rights advocate Katie Willingham, Soulforce Executive Director Rev. Alba Onofrio, and legal and policy strategist and human rights advocate Sam Ames, the webinar foregrounded the moral and spiritual need to defend trans lives. 

Rev. Slack, community minister for Worship & Spiritual Care for Black Lives of Unitarian Universalism, began the webinar by grounding attendees spiritually. “My God is a God who I know loves me.” It is critical to be “doing trans justice work from a faith perspective because it is the ongoing, everyday outward expression of God as love that reminds us,” Slack continued at the start of the webinar, “especially when we’re constantly getting messages to the contrary, how valuable our lives are.” This is the work of disrupting hateful messages and harmful theology, Rev. Slack continued. 

The Transforming Hearts Collective, co-leader and Unitarian Universalist community minister Zr. Alex Kapitan shared, is a national trans-led, faith-based organization based in North Carolina that helps trans and queer people to access healing and resilience and helps faith communities be welcoming refuges for queer and trans people. 

“We do a lot of work with faith groups,” Kapitan said in an interview, “that are pro-LGBTQ but sometimes need a little bit of help to figure out how to live into that value in this moment, how to show up for queer and trans people right now.” 

This webinar, funded by the Arcus Foundation, is the result of year-long work to help pro-LGBTQ+ Christians understand trans identity and the ways in which trans people have been used as a mobilizing target among far-right politicians and faith leaders. This is why the webinar was specifically targeted at pro-LGBTQ+ Christians but welcomed all people because, as Kapitan explained, Christianity has been weaponized by white Christian nationalists against trans people.

“This particular webinar grew out of wanting to speak directly to progressive Christians,” Kapitan said, “and equip them to show up in this moment and not cede religion to the religious right.” As Sam Ames shared after an overview of current anti-trans legislation in the webinar, far-right politicians “have expected religion to be on the side of fear. We cannot cede morality to those who would use it as a weapon. It is our responsibility as people of faith to use it as a shield.” 

But even if people agree with this, Kapitan explained, the faith communities they work with often do not feel comfortable standing up for or discussing trans peoples’ lives because they do not know enough about trans lives and as a result become susceptible to anti-trans disinformation. 

The goal of the webinar and the companion resource collection–one of three courses by the Transforming Hearts Collective–offered to attendees is to mobilize pro-LGBTQ+ Christians around trans rights as a moral and human rights issue, that trans people are sacred and worthy like all other people, that trans people are being used as scapegoats by far-right Christian nationalists, and that gender affirming care is not only a form of spiritual care but also suicide prevention. This is more critical than ever with the growing anti-trans conversion therapy movement; most of the programs and practitioners involved are faith based. 

“I fully believe, as a person of faith,” Kapitan said, “that we are each called to be a full authentic self and that only we can know, in conversation with the divine, what that fullness looks like, so I do believe that gender identity and gender expression are a key component of our authenticity. If you are able to have the care that’s needed to help you fully embody that sense of self, that is 100% a spiritual thing for a lot of people.”

“Whether that is directly because there are trans people joining on the call who are at the end of their rope and they need to hear faith leaders say ‘who you are is valid, who you are is real, who you are is worthy and divine,’” Kapitan said, or helping people of faith make more space, show up more fully, be a stronger voice in their contexts, whether that’s inside their own church, whether that’s in their local legislature in a way that trans people see, this work is live saving. 

Teo Drake, a fellow Transforming Hearts Collective co-leader and community organizer, speaks to the importance of being embraced by his own communities, during the AIDS pandemic of the 1980s and today. Drake was raised Catholic and educated in the Catholic school system in the 1980s as a visible queer and gender nonconforming person. Choosing to transition and live as his authentic self as a queer trans man gave him a reason to fight to survive living with HIV/AIDS. Drake is now a practicing Buddhist and says that the practice helps him to be resilient in hard times.

“For a lot of folks in faith,” Drake said in an interview, “it’s important to say that you can as one single human being be connected to many others. It makes a huge difference just simply holding someone personally, holding them in community, wrapping yourselves around them,” as the webinar invites pro-LGBTQ Christians to do. “As someone who has survived the AIDS epidemic and lived with HIV for a long time, the effects of people showing up, even though there was a fear of HIV, I’m here because of their courage to buck the system.”

Drake continues that this visibility of trans and queer faith leaders alongside cis faith leaders affirming the existence and belonging of trans and queer people is especially important for young people. “It’s really huge for youth in particular to see their congregation, the ministers they know down the street suddenly stand up and say ‘not on my watch.’ Kids and youth are hearing all the media, but they’re not hearing the good media. They need to hear it out in the public square that someone is going to put their body on the line for them.”

This webinar and the accompanying resources–or rather five-part-course–makes clear that it is the responsibility of all Christians to affirm trans lives. “People have a responsibility to learn about that disinformation,” Kapitan said, “that propaganda, and at the very least, be able to recognize it, if not be able to counter it,” and to educate their neighbors, friends, and families about rampant anti-trans disinformation, to invite and empower more people of faith to join the resistance against the far-right anti-trans Christian nationalist movement. 

Because as Kapitan explained, “these systems that trans people are suffering the most under right now, they affect everyone. They hurt everyone. They limit everyone. So much of my own call to ministry is to help everyone get free because if trans people are free then all of us can be free from gender-based violence, restrictions and norms.” Trans people are just one of many groups targeted by Christian nationalist groups, and it’s not just about trans and queer people today but about future generations of trans and queer children that will continue to be born into religious families. 

For them and for other LGBTQ+ individuals, religion may be a key part of how they approach the world, and it’s only by mobilizing queer and trans-affirming Christians–people whose communities have caused the greatest harm as a result of widespread anti-trans legislation and theologizing–that hearts and futures will be transformed for the better. 

The Defend Trans Lives resource collection was created by the Transforming Hearts Collective in partnership with enfleshed, Soulforce, and Queer Theology. It is a free course offered alongside the 6-session online course, “Trans Inclusion in Congregations,” and shorter course, “Responding to the Anti-Trans Movement,” also offered by the Transforming Hearts Collective. 

The Defend Trans Lives collection includes five videos featuring trans faith leaders and trans activists from the Transgender Law Center, the National LGBTQ Task Force, the Human Rights Campaign, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, and more–including several faith leaders and activists who presented at the webinar. 

These videos, like the webinar, seek to empower people of faith to become active, educated advocates and organizers for trans rights. Out of respect for the risks involved for interviewees, people accessing the course are required to sign into the site in order to access but once people sign into the website, all of the coursework is completely free.

What if the far-right’s endgame isn’t just stopping progress, but erasing it altogether? From banning trans healthcare to reversing climate policies, they aren’t just resisting change — they’re trying to force the world back into an imaginary past that never existed.

Across climate policy and trans rights, the right isn’t just opposing change — it’s actively detransitioning America, unraveling progress under the guise of “common sense” and “restoring order.” But this isn’t just about ideology. It’s about power.

From pulling out of the Paris Agreement to banning gender-affirming healthcare, the right has perfected a political strategy that frames progress as a mistake that must be undone. Whether it’s climate action or trans visibility, any step toward justice is framed as dangerous, unnatural, and in need of correction.

And if we look closer, these attacks aren’t just similar — they are deeply connected. By comparing the right’s climate rollbacks and its war on trans rights, we can see a broader strategy at work: One that fuels fear, manufactures doubt, and ultimately serves the interests of those already in control.

The fight isn’t just about policy. It’s about who gets to belong in the future.

The manufactured crisis: Who profits from reversal?

To justify rolling back both trans rights and climate protections, the right leans on manufactured crises — presenting change as a dangerous social experiment gone wrong. And the most effective way to do that? Weaponizing doubt.

Take climate change. Despite overwhelming scientific consensus, climate denialists cherry-pick uncertainties — using rare instances of changing climate models to cast doubt on the entire field.

Similarly, the right has latched onto detransition stories, amplifying a handful of cases where individuals regret transitioning to suggest that all trans people will regret their identities.

By focusing on individual regret rather than systemic realities, these movements create the illusion that climate action and trans healthcare are harmful mistakes rather than necessary progress. The message is clear: We must “correct” these wrongs by detransitioning the country back to a time before this supposed damage occurred.

But who actually benefits from this rollback?

• Fossil fuel companies profit from climate skepticism, ensuring we remain dependent on dirty energy.
• Right-wing politicians fundraise off anti-trans fearmongering while avoiding economic issues that might actually improve people’s lives.

By making people believe they are “fighting back” against elites, the right obscures the actual elites profiting from this manufactured outrage.

The spectacle: Turning trans lives and climate policy into distractions

None of this would work without media spectacle. Right-wing politicians and media outlets know that the most effective way to keep people from questioning power is to keep them emotionally invested in a performance.

Take the far right’s obsession with trans youth. They flood the airwaves with panic over puberty blockers, despite the fact that gender-affirming care is exceedingly rare.

A peer-reviewed study analyzing private insurance claims found that out of more than 5 million adolescents ages 8 to 17, only 926 received puberty blockers and 1,927 received hormone therapy between 2018 and 2022.

Similarly, climate policies are attacked as elitist schemes to control the working class — painting green energy initiatives as an attack on personal freedom, just as gender-affirming care is framed as an attack on children.

By shifting the focus onto symbolic enemies — the “radical trans activist” or the “climate elitist” — the right gives people someone to hate while avoiding the real sources of economic and environmental crisis.

And this isn’t just a cultural strategy. It’s a business model.

Capitalism is in the business of creating problems, then selling solutions.

• Oil companies push carbon capture technology while continuing to pollute — ensuring the crisis is never fully solved, only managed.
• The right promotes “detransition support” while banning trans healthcare, creating a crisis where one didn’t exist.

Both strategies ensure that nothing actually changes, while making people feel like they’re participating in a fight for freedom.

It’s a distraction, and it’s working.

Nature as a battleground: The far-right’s fear of fluidity

At its core, the war on trans people and the war on climate action stem from the same fear: The fear of change.

Queer ecology tells us that nature itself is fluid, adaptive, and in constant transition. Yet, the far-right insists on rigid, binary categories:

• Man/Woman.
• Fossil Fuels/Renewables.
• Traditional/Disruptive.

In both cases, fluidity is framed as unnatural — something that must be controlled through political intervention.

• Fossil fuels are labeled “natural” energy, while renewables are framed as “forced” and “unnatural”—a rhetorical tactic explored in a 2025 study on far-right climate discourse.
• Trans identities are labeled “unnatural choices,” requiring government bans to prevent people from making “mistakes.”

But what’s truly unnatural? The attempt to freeze society in time. The climate has always changed. Gender has always been fluid. The far-right isn’t defending nature — they’re defending control.

The far-right’s detransition obsession mirrors climate rollbacks

Capitalism is not interested in actual progress — it only cares about control.

The obsession with detransition mirrors climate rollbacks in that both are framed as necessary corrections to a mistake.

• The Paris Agreement withdrawal was presented as a return to “energy independence.”
• Trans bans are framed as returning to “biological reality.”

But the goal isn’t returning to a real past. It’s about constructing a version of the past that justifies present oppression.

• Climate denial isn’t about scientific debate — it’s about maintaining corporate power, as Time reported in 2025. 
• Anti-trans laws aren’t about protecting kids — they’re about enforcing gender hierarchies, according to a 2025 New York Times editorial.

Neither of these rollbacks is accidental. They are part of a deliberate strategy of control — one that tells us that progress is always temporary and can always be reversed.

Who owns the future?

If we allow the right to detransition America, we risk a world where progress is always reversible, and power remains in the hands of those who benefit from disorder and fear.

The real question isn’t whether these issues are linked — it’s why they were ever separated to begin with. The fights for climate justice and trans rights are one and the same:

• A fight against the illusion of permanence.
• A fight against manufactured crisis and controlled reversal.
• A fight for a future that actually belongs to all of us.

So what do we do?

• We must refuse to accept their manufactured doubt — trans rights and climate action are not mistakes that need fixing.
• We must reject their false nostalgia — there is no past to return to, only a future to create.
• And most importantly, we must recognize that these struggles are connected.

If we fail to see this, we risk allowing reactionary forces to shape the future. But if we understand their playbook, we can disrupt the spectacle and refuse to let them dictate what comes next.

Because this fight isn’t about going back. It’s about moving forward — and making sure no one can take that future away.

Cody Hays is a Ph.D. student at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School, researching media psychology, public understanding of science, and digital misinformation, with a focus on ideological worldviews; they are a Graduate Research Fellow in the MIDaS and Views and Values Labs, executive editor of the Journal of Public Interest Communications, and a nonprofit communications strategist with over a decade of experience in combating disinformation and mobilizing action.