Did y’all hear that the Iran war is “over”? So saith Secretary of State Marco Rubio, while being questioned by Sen. Cory Booker this week. 

Like most things the administration claims, this is, of course, a lie. The war isn’t over and worse, it looks like there’s no possible or at least likely way for it to end, since any possible conclusion will involve a deal that cements Iran as the winners. So Donald Trump is stuck. 

Rubio’s efforts suggest that one tactic the administration is considering is to give up on negotiations and slink away, pretending that everything somehow got resolved when it didn’t. Trump does have an extensive track record of using images and lies to create an illusion of success after a total failure. But since the war has resulted in soaring energy costs for all Americans, the “What war, look over there!” strategy may not work as well as his previous gaslighting efforts. 

Readers are no doubt aware that the entire GOP strategy against James Talarico, the Democrat running for U.S. Senate in Texas against state Attorney General Ken Paxton, is to call Talarico gay. Wait, no, not exactly: They’ve updated the hate speech now, and instead are calling him “trans.” Or a “vegan.” Or “Tala-freako.” 

Whatever the word, the underlying thesis is that Talarico isn’t a “real” man, because to be a “real” man you must spend every waking moment in utter terror of emasculation, a paranoia that can only be managed by eschewing everything that could remotely be considered feminine. 

Caring about others? Ew, girly! Actually reading the Bible, instead of just assuming it’s just “No homo” printed over and over for thousands of pages? Gross! Eating tacos instead of shotgunning raw meat for every meal? Nasty! Republicans are getting very close to simply declaring that it’s “gay” for a man to kiss his wife. 

The deep irony of right-wing masculinity is that it’s entirely defined by fear. Their terror of emasculation is a trap, keeping them in a closed, colorless world where the only emotions you get to have are anger and the only pleasure comes from bullying others. To be this afraid of being seen to eat a breakfast taco — which supposedly renders Talarico unmanly — is a level of cowardice that feels utterly stifling to me.  

No one would describe weakness as a masculine virtue, but all these right-wing men are pants-wetting weaklings. To live in so much daily fear is pathetic. None of them could imagine the courage it takes to be a drag queen. Or, for that matter, just to be a woman living in the world. Sadly, there are so many weak-willed conservatives who vote in Texas that it’s still possible this attack might work. 

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Whenever I write or post about trans rights, I tend to get little engagement from progressives. The reason is depressing: Many Democratic voters quietly blame this small minority for losing the 2024 election. 

It comes up all the time in focus groups. Democratic voters say they support trans rights, but then complain about “having to hear about it all the time.” The blame for that somehow gets put on trans people themselves, even though, as the Talarico saga shows us, it’s Republicans who find ways to inject trans issues into every discussion, even when they’re not remptely relevant. 

Too many liberals, however, get stuck on this idea that trans rights, as an issue, doesn’t impact the 97 to 98% of people who are cis. That’s flat-out wrong. MAGA is exploiting unease about trans issues to foment a larger social panic, and to demonize anyone who doesn’t follow their rigid rules on how to perform gender. 

Gallup’s new polling shows how serious this is. Republican support for same-sex marriage legalization has slipped from 55% to 37% in just the last five years. The panic over trans rights is a big part of the reason. There’s been a lot of rhetoric on the right about how the LGBTQ rights movement got overconfident after marriage equality, and went “too far” by embracing trans rights. That isn’t a fringe argument, either, since it’s also been proposed by Andrew Sullivan in the New York Times. 

The main reason we shouldn’t abandon trans rights, of course, is that supporting trans people is the right thing to do. They are human beings who deserve basic equality and civil rights. But it’s also not a political winner to throw trans folks overboard. They’re being used as a stand-in for the larger MAGA argument that literally everyone should be forced to live inside narrowly defined gender identities. That means everything from forced childbirth to denying men the pleasure of an egg taco. The only way we win is by understanding that we’re all in this together, and acting accordingly.

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