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Election victories for Donald Trump and other candidates whose campaigns demeaned transgender people reinforced a widespread backlash against trans rights. For America’s LGBTQ-rights movement, it adds up to one of the most sustained setbacks in its history. For transgender Americans, it’s personal: There is palpable fear of potential Trump administration steps to further marginalize them. But there is also a spirit of resilience — a determination to persevere in seeking acceptance and understanding. “I just went through an election where I couldn’t watch a sports event on TV without seeing a commercial where trans people were portrayed as monsters,” said Jennifer Finney Boylan, a transgender author who teaches at Barnard College in New York. “This hurts more than any other moment I can remember. We’ve been knocked down before. We’ll be knocked down again. All we can do is fight.” Anti-trans momentum has been growing for several years, with Republican-governed states enacting dozens of laws restricting trans people’s options for medical care, sports participation and public restroom access. Activists fear the movement will grow, with the Trump administration taking power as many Americans question the trans-rights agenda. Overall, 55% of voters — and 85% of Trump backers — said support for transgender rights in government and society has gone too far, according to AP VoteCast, a survey of more than 120,000 people who cast ballots nationwide. “There is an urgent need to show the American people the reality of transgender lives — the ordinary people for whom being trans is not the center of their lives,” said Shannon Minter, a transgender civil rights lawyer with the National Center for Lesbian Rights. “This is a frightening moment for transgender people and their families. There is a very real possibility that the new administration may adopt policies that cause them devastating harm.” Trump won the presidential contest over Vice President Kamala Harris after a campaign that included pervasive TV advertising mocking her support for trans rights. “Kamala is for they/them,” an ad that ran over 15,000 times asserted. “President Trump is for you.” Other Democratic candidates also were targeted with anti-trans ads. On an array of issues, Trump — and other Republicans who now hold majorities in both the House and Senate — have threatened to roll back protections and civil liberties for trans people. Education: Trump has pledged to impose wide-ranging restrictions on transgender students. His administration could swiftly move to exclude them from Title IX protections, which affect school policies on students’ use of preferred pronouns, bathrooms and locker rooms. Health care: At least 26 states have adopted laws restricting or banning gender-affirming medical care for trans minors. In Texas, Attorney General Ken Paxton is filing civil lawsuits against doctors he alleges were prescribing such treatments. Trump says any doctor or hospital providing gender-affirming care should be barred from Medicaid and Medicare. Sports: Trump and other Republicans embraced the anti-trans mantra opposing “boys in girls’ sports.” At least 24 states already have laws on the books barring trans women and girls from participating in certain women’s or girls’ sports competitions. In March, 16 college athletes filed a lawsuit against the NCAA, accusing it of violating their Title IX rights by allowing transgender woman Lia Thomas to compete at the 2022 national championships, where she won the 500-yard freestyle. Military: Trans-rights activists worry that Trump may reimpose a ban on trans people serving openly in the military or — as an alternative — bar any future recruiting of trans people and curtail the availability of gender-affirming medical care for service members and veterans. Trans-rights organizations are calling for coalition-building and renewed efforts to increase public understanding. They celebrated some notable victories. Sarah McBride won Delaware’s lone seat in the House of Representatives to become the first openly trans person elected to Congress. In Montana, transgender state Rep. Zooey Zephyr won reelection and will be able to return to the House floor nearly two years after she was silenced and sanctioned by her Republican colleagues. But nationwide, anger and anxiety were dominant emotions among trans activists. “This election season has been brutal,” the leaders of Advocates for Transgender Equality wrote to their supporters. “Trump targeted trans people since his campaign launch. He targeted our existence. He targeted our rights. He promised he would continue to target trans people if he won — and we know he will keep his promise.” Shelby Chestnut, executive director of the Transgender Law Center, said trans people “have become the pawn for political groups that don’t understand our communities.” “It’s a very precarious time,” Chestnut said. “We will get through this, but we have to step up and support each other. ... How do we see the long game, not just the immediate narrow view? Because it is very daunting right now. Where do we want to be in 15 years?” Public opinion on trans rights issues isn’t uniform. According to AP VoteCast, slightly more than half of voters in the 2024 election strongly or somewhat opposed laws that ban gender-affirming medical treatment, such as puberty blockers and hormone therapy, for minors. Slightly less than half of voters somewhat or strongly favored them. And according to a Gallup poll conducted last year, 69% of Americans say transgender athletes should be allowed to compete only on sports teams that conform with their birth gender. Over the past 25 years, arguably the most daunting previous phase of the LGBTQ-rights movement started in 2004, after Massachusetts became the first state to legalize same-sex marriage. Between 2004 and 2008, voters in 26 states approved ballot measures defining marriage as between one man and one woman — in effect outlawing same-sex marriage. By 2012, however, public opinion was swinging in favor of same-sex marriage. The Supreme Court legalized it nationwide in 2015, and it has had the support of most Americans ever since. Boylan recalled how that long-bitter debate tilted in favor of legalization when supporters of same-sex marriage popularized the phrase “Love is love.” “That opened doors and opened hearts,” Boylan said. “The challenge for trans people is we don’t have a phrase like that. ... The issues are more complex.” Boylan noted that the anti-trans campaign seemed to make headway with issues that are not among the core concerns of most trans people: “The primary thing we’re fighting for is not the right to play with other women on a soccer team. We’re fighting for dignity, for respect, for the right to be left alone.” Maxwell Kuzma, a transgender man working as a film editor and writer in rural Ohio, said he was “worn out” by the relentless targeting of trans people and blamed Trump for perpetuating it. Looking ahead, he said life as a trans person “has forced me to learn a resiliency that I will lean on as I continue to speak out against prejudice and discrimination.” Christine Zuba, a transgender woman from New Jersey, described a recent surge of Zoom meetings enabling trans people to express their concerns and determine next steps. “One of the best recommendations I have heard throughout this discussion is to not isolate yourself; rather surround yourself with your support group — the people you love and who love you,” she said. “Do not despair. There are a lot of people who will work with you and for you.” Get local news delivered to your inbox!
Tucson mayor vows to protect families from separation in Trump deportationsOne of my top shows of 2024 actually premiered in 2021. That’s because it took a couple of years for the Australian series “The Newsreader” to make its way Stateside. Alas, it was only legal to stream in the U.S. for a handful of weeks in September and then — pffft! — it was gone before most people had even heard of it. Well, I have great news. The show is available once again, this time via Sundance Now (accessible through the AMC+ streaming platform), which has licensed the first season. It stars Anna Torv (“Fringe”) and Sam Reid (“Interview with the Vampire”) as TV reporters in Melbourne, circa 1986. At the outset, Reid’s character exudes big loser energy, which is such an amusing contrast to his work as Lestat. The show is unexpectedly funny and terrifically Machiavellian in its portrayal of small-time office politics, and I’m thrilled audiences in the U.S. will get another shot at watching it. Overall, 2024 offered a modestly better lineup than usual, but I’m not sure it felt that way. Too often the good stuff got drowned out by Hollywood’s pointless and endless pursuit of rebooting intellectual property (no thank you, Apple’s “Presumed Innocent”) and tendency to stretch a perfectly fine two-hour movie premise into a saggy multipart series (“Presumed Innocent” again!). There were plenty of shows I liked that didn’t make this year’s list, including ABC’s “Abbott Elementary” and CBS’ ”Ghosts” (it’s heartening to see the network sitcom format still thriving in the streaming era), as well as Netflix’s “A Man on the Inside” (Ted Danson’s charisma selling an unlikely premise) and Hulu’s “Interior Chinatown” (a high-concept parody of racial stereotypes and cop show tropes, even if it couldn’t sustain the idea over 10 episodes). Maybe it just felt like we were having more fun this year, with Netflix’s “The Perfect Couple” (Nicole Kidman leading a traditional manor house mystery reinterpreted with an American sensibility) and Hulu’s “Rivals” (the horniest show of 2024, delivered with a wink in the English countryside). I liked what I saw of Showtime’s espionage thriller “The Agency” (although the bulk of episodes were unavailable as of this writing). The deluge of remakes tends to make me cringe, but this year also saw a redo of Patricia Highsmith’s “The Talented Mr. Ripley” on Netflix that was far classier than most of what’s available on the streamer. Starring Andrew Scott, I found it cool to the touch, but the imagery stayed with me. Shot in black and white, it has an indelible visual language courtesy of director of photography Robert Elswit, whether capturing a crisp white business card against the worn grain wood of a bar top, or winding stairways that alternately suggest a yawning void or a trap. As always, if you missed any of these shows when they originally premiered — the aforementioned titles or the Top 10 listed below — they are all available to stream. Top 10 streaming and TV shows of 2024, in alphabetical order: “Couples Therapy” (Showtime) The least cynical reality show on television remains as absorbing as ever in Season 4, thanks to the probing questions and insights from the show’s resident therapist, Dr. Orna Guralnik. Everything is so charged. And yet the show has a soothing effect, predicated on the idea that human behavior (and misery) isn’t mysterious or unchangeable. There’s something so optimistic in that outlook. Whether or not you relate to the people featured on “Couples Therapy” — or even like them as individuals — doesn’t matter as much as Guralnik’s reassuring presence. “Diarra From Detroit” (BET+) Created by and starring Diarra Kilpatrick, the eight-episode series defies categorization in all the right ways. Part missing-person mystery, part comedy about a school teacher coming to grips with her impending divorce, and part drama about long-buried secrets, it has tremendous style right from the start — sardonic, knowing and self-deprecating. The answers to the central mystery may not pack a satisfying punch by the end, but the road there is as entertaining and absorbing as they come. We need more shows like this. “English Teacher” (FX) A comedy created by and starring Brian Jordan Alvarez (of the antic YouTube series “The Gay and Wondrous Life of Caleb Gallo”), the show has a sensibility all its own, despite a handful of misinformed people on social media calling it a ripoff of “Abbott Elementary.” There’s room enough in the TV landscape for more than one sitcom with a school setting and “English Teacher” has a wonderfully gimlet-eyed point of view of modern high school life. I’m amused that so much of its musical score is Gen-X coded, because that neither applies to Alvarez (a millennial) nor the fictional students he teaches. So why does the show feature everything from Laura Branigan’s “Gloria” to Exposé’s “Point of No Return”? The ’80s were awash in teen stories and maybe the show is using music from that era to invoke all those tropes in order to better subvert them. It’s a compelling idea! It’s streaming on Hulu and worth checking out if you haven’t already. “Fifteen-Love” (Sundance Now) A one-time tennis phenom accuses her former coach of coercing her into a sexual relationship in this British thriller. The intimacy between a coach and athlete often goes unexplored, in real-life or fictional contexts and that’s what the show interrogates: When does it go over the line? It’s smart, endlessly watchable and the kind of series that would likely find a larger audience were it available on a more popular streamer. “Hacks” (Max) There’s real tenderness in this show. Real cruelty, too. It’s a potent combination and the show’s third and strongest season won it an Emmy for best comedy. Jean Smart’s aging comic still looking for industry validation and Hannah Einbinder’s needy Gen-Z writer are trapped in an endless cycle of building trust that inevitably gives way to betrayal. Hollywood in a nutshell! “Hacks” is doing variations on this theme every season, but doing it in interesting ways. Nobody self-sabotages their way to success like these two. “Interview with the Vampire” (AMC) I was skeptical about the show when it premiered in 2022. Vampire stories don’t interest me. And the 1994 movie adaptation starring Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt wasn’t a persuasive argument to the contrary. But great television is great television and nothing at the moment is better than this show. It was ignored by Emmy voters in its initial outing but let’s hope Season 2 gets the recognition it deserves. Under showrunner Rolin Jones, the adaptation of Anne Rice’s novels is richly written, thrillingly inhabited by its cast and so effortlessly funny with a framing device — the interview of the title — that is thick with intrigue and sly comedy. I wouldn’t categorize the series as horror. It’s not scary. But it is tonally self-assured and richly made, rarely focused on the hunt for dinner but on something far more interesting: The melodrama of vampire existence, with its combination of boredom and lust and tragedy and zingers. Already renewed for Season 3, it has an incredible cast (a thrilling late-career boost for Eric Bogosian) and is well worth catching up with if you haven’t already. “Nobody Wants This” (Netflix) It’s been too long since the pleasures of banter fueled a romantic comedy in the spirit of “When Harry Met Sally.” But it’s all over the place in “Nobody Wants This,” one of the best shows on Netflix in recent memory. Renewed for a second season, it stars Kristen Bell as a humorously caustic podcaster and Adam Brody as the cute and emotionally intelligent rabbi she falls for. On the downside, the show has some terrible notions about Jewish women that play into controlling and emasculating stereotypes. You hate to see it in such an otherwise sparkling comedy, because overall Bell and Brody have an easy touch that gives the comedy real buoyancy. “Nolly” (PBS Masterpiece) I suspect few people saw this three-part series on PBS Masterpiece, but it features a terrific performance by Helena Bonham Carter playing the real-life, longtime British soap star Noele “Nolly” Gordon, who was unceremoniously sacked in 1981. She’s the kind of larger-than-life showbiz figure who is a bit ridiculous, a bit imperious, but also so much fun. The final stretch of her career is brought to life by Carter and this homage — to both the soap she starred in and the way she carried it on her back — is from Russell T. Davies (best known for the “Doctor Who” revival). For U.S. viewers unfamiliar with the show or Gordon, Carter’s performance has the benefit of not competing with a memory as it reanimates a slice of British pop culture history from the analog era. “Shōgun” (FX) The year is 1600 and a stubborn British seaman piloting a Dutch ship washes ashore in Japan. That’s our entry point to this gorgeously shot story of power games and political maneuvering among feudal enemies. Adapted from James Clavell’s 1975 novel by the married team of Rachel Kondo and Justin Marks, it is filled with Emmy-winning performances (for Anna Sawai and Hiroyuki Sanada; the series itself also won best drama) and unlike something like HBO’s far clunkier “House of the Dragon,” which tackles similar themes, this feels like the rare show created by, and for, adults. “Slow Horses” (Apple TV+) The misfits and losers of Britain’s MI5 counterintelligence agency — collectively known as the slow horses, a sneering nickname that speaks to their perceived uselessness — remain as restless as ever in this adaptation of Mick Herron’s Slough House spy novels. As a series, “Slow Horses” doesn’t offer tightly plotted clockwork spy stories; think too deeply about any of the details and the whole thing threatens to fall apart. But on a scene-by-scene basis, the writing is a winning combination of wry and tension-filled, and the cumulative effect is wonderfully entertaining. Spies have to deal with petty office politics like everyone else! It’s also one of the few shows that has avoided the dreaded one- or two-year delay between seasons, which has become standard on streaming. Instead, it provides the kind of reliability — of its characters but also its storytelling intent — that has become increasingly rare.Bowl season is here, and your Miami Hurricanes are gearing up for the final game of the year. To wrap up the 2024 season, your Miami Hurricanes are back on the road in Orlando for the Pop Tarts Bowl. The Canes have played in this game under numerous names, and return to Orlando yet again. And in this bowl game, the Canes face off against another ranked team who fell just short of the College Football Playoffs: the Iowa State Cyclones . Here’s the info for this week’s game: #13 Miami Hurricanes (10-2, 6-2 ACC) vs #18 Iowa State Cyclones (10-3, 7-3 Big 12) Kickoff time : 3:30pm Eastern TV : ABC Online Stream : WatchESPN Radio : 560 WQAM , 990AM ESPN Deportes , WVUM , TuneIn app has a channel for CFB broadcasts , which may help you as well. Sportsbook odds : open: Miami -3.5 (DraftKings, Caesar’s, MGM, FanDuel, Bet ESPN), Miami -1.5 (CircaSports), 56 (CircaSports); as of 6pm Friday: Bet ESPN: Miami -4, Caesar’s/DraftKings/MGM, FanDuel: Miami -4.5, Bally’s/BetRivers: Miami -3.5, Over/Under 57.5 The final game of the 2024 season is upon us, and it should be a good one. Iowa State lost their conference championship game, so they want to win. Miami is looking for their first 11 win season in 20 years. These teams are tough, and talented, and should be in for a good game. Be sure you clear your calendar and make time to watch the last game of Cam Ward’s incredible season, and his Miami Hurricanes career. See you tomorrow at 3:30pm. Go Canes
AP News Summary at 4:36 p.m. ESTNone
Ian Schieffelin, Clemson topple Penn State to win Sunshine SlamJ&K L-G extends terms of two V-Cs, ‘bypassing’ consultation with CM Abdullah
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