According to a new poll from Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, around half of American adults approve of President Donald Trump’s handling of transgender issues—this despite an almost non-stop barrage of mainstream coverage painting his policies as cruel. In fact, while 41% of American adults approve of his performance as president, 52% approve of his transgender policies.
Trump stated that he would combat gender ideology during his campaign, and the evidence suggests that his promised policies were a factor in his victory. He began to deliver on day one, signing an executive order titled “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government” hours after his inauguration.
He followed that up with a reinstatement of the ban on trans-identifying personnel in the military on January 27; an executive order condemning sex change “treatments” for minors on January 28, which prohibits federal funding for sex changes; an executive order banning men in women’s sports on February 5; and orders to purge government websites of gender jargon such as “non-binary” as well as a directive to end federal funding for programs that promote gender ideology.
In response, the press has attempted to shape public opinion with headlines like these:
CBC: “’We deserve a lot better,’ U.S. Navy Lt. says as Trump ramps up transgender military purge.”
CBS: “Colorado combat Army major pushes to keep serving country amid transgender ban.”
Reuters: “Pentagon halting gender-affirming healthcare for transgender troops, memo says.”
Fox9: “Military family faces upheaval as DOD moves forward with transgender ban.”
None of this, as it turns out, has worked. Around two-thirds of American adults—68%–agree that a person’s sex is “determined by their biological characteristics at birth,” constituting a fundamental rejection of the transgender movement’s fundamental premise that gender and sex are separate. A whopping 74% of independents affirm that view, and 89% of Republicans. Surprisingly, only half of Democrats believe that sex and gender can be separated.
According to NBC: “About 4 in 10 people supported requiring public schoolteachers to report to parents if their children are identifying at school as transgender or nonbinary. About 3 in 10 opposed it and a similar number was neutral.” Only four in ten people supported allowing trans-identifying personnel in the military, with a quarter staunchly opposed, and the rest neutral.
As the Associated Press noted, the survey that that “there’s more support than opposition on allowing transgender troops in the military, while most don’t want to allow transgender students to use the public school bathrooms that align with their gender identity and oppose using government programs to pay for gender-affirming health care for transgender youth.” In short, the average American voter is solidly on Trump’s side when it comes to rejecting the agenda of the transgender movement.
This latest poll, which affirms post-election data indicating that opposition to the transgender agenda was a net benefit for Trump, highlights the fact that the transgender movement was never an organic movement that changed public opinion on the fundamental nature of biological sex. Instead, trans activists followed on the heels of LGB activists in their decades-long takeover of institutions, and imposed their agenda top down. This produced staggering successes during the Obama and Biden administrations, and the cultural power they wield cannot be underestimated.
And yet, after all of that, nearly three-quarters of independents reject the foundational premise of transgender ideology, and even Democrats are split almost evenly on the issue—despite the fact that the Democratic Party was the primary political vehicle for the agenda that the Trump administration is currently attempting to roll back. If the Democrats decide to abandon the transgender movement—and there are certainly indications that some strategists are pushing for this—we may see a major tectonic shift in the culture wars.
