 The state of Texas is already one of, if not the most hostile states in the country towards trans people, and they are quite literally turning American citizens into political refugees because of the laws that they are producing. But, as if they weren't already hostile enough towards trans people, they now want a list of every single trans person within the state that transitioned within the last two years for reasons, I guess. The Washington Post explains, employees at the Texas Department of Public Safety in June received a sweeping request from Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton's office to compile a list of individuals who had changed their gender on their Texas driver's license and other department records during the past two years. Quote, need total number of changes from male to female and female to male for the last 24 months broken down by month, the chief of DPS's driver license division emailed colleagues in the department on June 30th, according to a copy of a message obtained by the Washington Post through a public records request. Quote, we won't need DL slash ID numbers at first, but may need to have them later if we are required to manually look up documents. Public records obtained by the Post do not indicate why the Attorney General's office sought the driver's license information, but advocates for transgender texts and say Paxton could use the data to further restrict their right to transition, calling it a chilling effort to secretly harness personal information to persecute already vulnerable people. Paxton's office bypassed the normal channels, DPS's government relations and general counsel's offices, and went straight to the driver license division staff in making the request, according to a state employee familiar with it, who said the staff was told that Paxton's office wanted numbers and later would want a list of names as well as the number of people who had a legal sex change. Now, this is downright dystopian and Orwellian, and imagine for a second that a liberal attorney general wanted a list of conservatives for whatever reason. Do you think that that would go over well? No, they would rightfully say that's tyrannical, and they're only going to use that list to persecute said conservatives. But when it's trans people, well, this is just, this is fine. I mean, we know why Ken Paxton, a transphobe, wants a list of trans people, so we can further target them. And what makes this story even creepier is that the Washington Post reached out to Paxton's office and asked for some of the documents that he had requested. And do you want to know what the response from his office was? There's no such records. So they're pretending like they didn't get a list from DPS. So in other words, he wants this list of trans people's names in Texas, and he doesn't want to tell anyone what he's going to do with that information. Needless to say, this is fascism, and this is reminiscent of Hitler's black book, which contained the names of 3,000 Brits that Hitler intended to round up after the Nazis had invaded the UK. And in a vice documentary, one family in particular with a trans child that may have to flee the state, I think put it best. Because my grandparents are Holocaust survivors, because my grandfather fought in the resistance, my grandmother survived Auschwitz. That language of calling on everyday citizens and mandated reporters to report families with trans youth to the authorities, felt eerily reminiscent of that directive from the Nazis to report Jewish families to the authorities. This is white Christian nationalism. This is fascism. And she's exactly right about that there. This is fascism, 100%. Now, we don't necessarily know how he's going to use this list specifically, but he's going to use it for bad things. He's going to use it to further marginalize an already vulnerable community. But given Texas's history of persecuting trans youth, that kind of gives us an indication as to what they want to do to trans adults. And for those of you who are unfamiliar with what they've been doing in this state, on September 16th, the Texas Tribune reported in February, following a non-binding legal opinion from Attorney General Ken Paxton, Governor Greg Abbott directed the Department of Family and Protective Services to investigate parents who provide gender-affirming care to their transgender children. The Texas Supreme Court had ruled that Abbott had no grounds to direct DFPS to investigate these families but overturned a statewide injunction on procedural grounds. The American Civil Liberties Union and Lambda Legal brought another lawsuit after the first injunction was overturned, seeking protections on behalf of all members of PFLAG. Travis County District Judge Amy Clark Meacham granted that injunction Friday, three months after hearing arguments. Now, Greg Abbott passed that directive where he told Child Protective Services to investigate families with trans children for child abuse and made any other citizen in Texas a mandatory reporter after the Texas legislature failed to pass a law criminalizing gender-affirming care for trans youth. So like the tyrant that he is, he bypassed the legislature to unilaterally overstep his own power and force these families to be investigated as if they're doing something wrong by simply seeking out medical care for their children. It's genuinely tyrannical, but this is the state of Texas. Now back to the driver's license issue and the names that Ken Paxton wants. Well, one trans woman who's 35 years old, her name is Alexis Salkeld Garcia. She just changed her name a year and a half ago on her driver's license and her gender. So she's one of the individuals who could be on Ken Paxton's list and she spoke to The Washington Post and I think reasonably so, she said this is terrifying news because how is this going to be used against her? She doesn't want cops to know that she's transgender because they may abuse her, hence why she immediately changed her gender on her driver's license right away. But now, will they have this information? What exactly is going to come of this? We actually don't know, but we can expect nothing but negative from this. So it's genuinely disturbing that in a populous state like Texas, anyone who's transgender is just automatically public enemy number one because this state government has deemed them the enemy. And the election at this point in time is over. So you can't chalk this up to them trying to throw red meat to the base even though this is indeed going to do that. This is them genuinely trying to do what they believe is good and that is persecute this vulnerable community. It's just devastating. And if you are a trans person in Texas and you have the resources to leave, you should do that. But it's easier said than done because trans people oftentimes don't have a lot of resources and especially trans people of color because sometimes during these economic situations where they're rejected by their families, they're kicked out, they become unhoused and then they don't have anything. So what do you do if you're in this hostile environment and you need to get out but you can't? That's a question that a lot of trans people are probably asking themselves in Texas. But certainly if you know someone in Texas who is trans, then reach out, protect them, let them know that you're there for them because this is a really horrifying time in American history for trans people. And it's not like there was ever a period in America where LGBTQ plus people, especially trans people, were 100% safe. But now things are getting scary to the point where they have to flee states because of the persecution that they're facing by these right wing tyrants. But this is completely unacceptable but unfortunately pretty expected for a state like Texas which has become a shithole in the United States.