 I think that most people can see that the right has made it their mission to demonize LGBTQ plus people, especially trans people. And you don't really get a sense as to how bad this hate campaign is until you see it. It's put into the proper context and you realize just how broad and sweeping it is. So NPR just released an analysis not too long ago and it shows you the extent to which the right is demonizing are trying to demonize trans people and legally roll back the rights that they previously had and it is genuinely shocking to see how many bills have been proposed. So NPR reports an NPR analysis of this fast-changing landscape found that over the past two years state lawmakers introduced at least 306 bills targeting trans people. More than in any previous period, a majority of this legislation, 86%, focuses on trans youth. While not every proposal has succeeded, about 15% of the bills have become law. The surge of legislative activity reflects what many advocates see as an increasingly hostile environment for LGBTQ plus rights in state houses across the country and even some corners of Congress. Some of the new laws have been temporarily blocked by the courts but legal challenges have done little to slow the pace of new proposals according to Katie Eyre, a professor at Rutgers Law School. It's an echo, she says, of the period after Brown v. Board of Education when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down segregation in schools but many states kept trying to pass laws to obstruct the ruling. Regardless of if these bills pass, it is already having a negative impact for LGBTQ youth. Generally says Sam Ames, director of advocacy and government affairs at the Trevor Project. For many, Ames says, we are talking about life and death. And that last point is something that I think really needs to be emphasized. We are literally talking about life and death here. So when we're talking about gender affirming care, people don't realize that there's a reason why it's deemed medically necessary for trans and non-binary youth. It's because without it, many of these kids see increased depression, increased suicidal ideation. And this is something that could lead to them dying because they kill themselves because they don't feel as if they're outside, matches their inside. And this is why the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Association all endorse gender affirming care for trans youth, which is a pretty broad term, right? Sometimes it just means you allow your child to socially transition and go by different pronouns, a different name. Other times it means puberty blockers. This is all medically necessary because without it, these kids in many instances do not want to live. And when you look at all of those proposals, the number of trans kids that this could affect is massive. Like we're talking about a massive crisis here. So approximately 300,000 American adolescents between the ages of 13 and 17 identify as transgender. Now, when you consider the bills that could be passed, more than 50,000 of the 300,000 trans adolescents are at risk of losing gender affirming care according to a study by the UCA School of Law. Now, this means that more than one in six trans adolescents could not just lose access to gender affirming care, but in some instances be forced to detransition. Because if you're on HRT and you're a 16-year-old and you've been on it for a couple of years, well, if you get off of HRT, you're essentially being forced to detransition. I don't think that people understand how catastrophic this is going to be on their mental health. And I want to point you to a Teen Vogue article where they talk about how outlets have missed the mark when it comes to gender affirming care for trans youth. It's not being talked about in a responsible manner and people just don't take into consideration how devastating it is for a trans kid to be forced to live as a gender that they don't identify with. Now, let's look at how prevalent these bills are. So as you can see, Arkansas and Alabama both passed total bans on gender affirming care and states like Arizona, Tennessee, Texas and Florida have passed partial bans. Now, these include bans on puberty blockers and hormone replacement therapy. Now, looking at other issues, more than a dozen states have banned trans girls from high school sports. After Idaho was the first to do this in 2020, it started a domino effect and other states followed suit. Now, some states have even enacted bathroom bans with states like Tennessee, Alabama and Florida being the most hostile overall to trans youth across the board. Now, the most common anti-trans law is these sports bans, although a 2021 analysis by the Associated Press found that a majority of the Republicans who are sponsoring these bills literally can't even cite a single example of a trans girl causing an issue in their school sports team. This is based off of hate and nothing else. Period. End of story. It's not like they see an issue and they're responding with a solution. They're trying to find solutions for problems that don't exist. And it just goes to show you how evil the modern Republican Party is. And to be clear, they've always marginalized or they've always gone after marginalized groups. But the way in which they've targeted children in particular is especially nefarious because children are the most innocent. They can't advocate for themselves adequately. So when they go after adults, when Republicans demonize LGBTQ plus grown ups, you know, when they try to roll back our civil rights, that I find really gross. But to demonize children, that's just a different level of evil. So this is the modern day Republican Party where they don't care if they know that their policies will literally endanger the lives of children. What they care about is using them as a political football so they can galvanize their hateful base. And this is why we have to reject their disgusting agenda.