February 25 2026, 08:15 
ACLU attorney and out trans man Chase Strangio pointed out how transphobia is being used to take attention away from the Trump administration’s human rights abuses.
Noting that he doesn’t like calling transphobia a distraction, he said on Ilana Glazer’s It’s Open podcast last week that it’s important to look at “when it is deployed by this administration.”
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He brought up how the Education Department (ED) in January referred its investigation of Minnesota schools to the Department of Justice (DOJ), a critical step to denying the state federal funding as part of the president’s anti-trans crusade. Strangio noted that this happened just after Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) agents killed nurse Alex Pretti, who was standing up to them because they pushed a woman.
The DOJ and ED investigation, Strangio said, was into how the state “let one trans girl play on a softball team in high school.”
“One?” Glazer asked incredulously.
He said it’s like the administration was saying, “Look over here,” to distract from the abuses ICE and Customs and Border Patrol agents were perpetrating on the people of Minnesota.
“Look! Everyone hates trans people! Let’s go back to that!” Strangio said, explaining the administration’s alleged mindset. “We’re gonna threaten Minnesota because they had one trans softball player.”
“These things are happening, and they are connected.”
Later in the interview, Strangio discussed queer joy in the face of oppression.
He pointed out that while there are “huge” consequences to the administration’s attacks on LGBTQ+ rights now, “We have to build through it.”
“It’s OK and necessary to find happiness, exhilaration, joy, pleasure in that,” he said. “One of the things that makes queerness so thrilling and beautiful across all movements is queerness seeks out joy, pleasure, celebration, parties, fun. And that’s not all it is, obviously, but queers are fun.”
“That is why you get a lot of queer people in creation. You have existed outside of one of the fundamental demands of a constrained society, which is that you be a man or you be a woman, and you have this one form of intimate bond, and if you’re already outside that, you already failed that game, you’re free.”
“There’s a freedom to queerness that scares the s**t out of people because it offers so much choice, and choice scares people,” he continued. “The thing that scared me the most when I was a little closeted kid was ‘What is my life gonna be like?’ Now the thing that gives me so much hope and joy is like, ‘whatever else is going on, thank f**king god I’m gay and queer and trans and all these things.”
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