On January 28, 2026, the Republican-dominated Kansas State Legislature swiftly maneuvered to pass the latest piece of bigoted legislation targeting the rights of trans people, and, in early February, Idaho introduced similar legislation. The bill, dubbed a “Bathroom Bounty Bill,” not only threatens trans people who dare to use public restrooms with fines and jail time, but also emboldens individuals to sue any transgender person they encounter in a restroom. This alone marks it as perhaps the most cruel and repressive anti-trans legislation passed to date. Yet in addition to this, the bill also directs state agencies to revoke the identification documents of any trans person that do not reflect their ‘birth sex.’ In essence, the bill is a total criminalization of trans existence in public life.
In shamefully anti-democratic fashion, the Republican supermajority rammed the bill through without allowing for any public comment, making a complete mockery of any claim that these legislators “represent” their constituents. Kansas Governor Laura Kelly has vetoed the legislation, arguing it allows too much discrimination against cisgender people (that is, people who aren’t transgender).
“I believe the Legislature should stay out of the business of telling Kansans how to go to the bathroom and instead stay focused on how to make life more affordable for Kansans,” the governor said in a statement explaining her veto. Republican legislators are expected to have enough votes to override her veto, and if the bill does indeed become law, it will likely face legal challenges.
Anti-trans legislation intensifies
According to the Trans Legislation Tracker, there are currently 645 anti-trans bills under consideration across 39 states. Every year since 2021, more anti-trans bills have been introduced than the year prior. In 2025 alone, there were more than 1,000 anti-trans bills, with more than 100 of them being passed. These bills target the rights of trans people in just about every sector of public life, including health care, education, sports, employment, and more.
In following a similar playbook to Texas’ “abortion bounty” law, the latest bill in Kansas represents a clear escalation and intensification of anti-trans legislation. It is, in that sense, the canary in the coal mine for far-right forces to see how far they can push their bigotry. If this bill is allowed to stand in Kansas without opposition, it will signal the possibility for similar legislation to be pursued in other states, or even at the federal level.
The ultra-right agenda: divide, conquer, plunder
It is critical to understand these anti-trans attacks as part and parcel of a broader war on the gains won by the working class over decades of hard-fought struggle. We cannot separate the attacks on the rights of trans people from the war on DEI programs or the vicious campaign of ICE terror unleashed in the streets of Los Angeles, Chicago, Minneapolis and elsewhere. All of these are manifestations of a singular agenda that aims to implement a right-wing political dictatorship capable of extracting the maximum amount of profit with the least possible resistance.
Alongside deploying outright terror, this agenda utilizes a type of ideological warfare which seeks to pit working people against each other on the basis of arbitrary criteria like gender or citizenship status. While so many workers are struggling to make ends meet, we are rarely encouraged to take the billionaires and the system that they uphold to task — instead it is, we are told, the existence of trans people or immigrants that is making life so hard. These false answers lead only to false solutions.
The true path forward to resist this massive attack on our rights can be summed up with a chant that has rung throughout cities and towns across the country in the past few weeks: “general strike, shut it down!” As over 100,000 people took the streets in Minneapolis on January 23rd for a historic one-day general strike against ICE terror, and hundreds of thousands across the country, outraged by the murder of Alex Pretti by federal agents, participated in a national shutdown on January 30th, a new tactical horizon has opened up for millions of people.
We know how to fight back and win
The LGBTQ movement has a long history of mass struggles to shut down business as usual. This incredibly rich history, one that has been deliberately obscured and sanitized, must be recovered and studied by our movement as we fight back against bigotry today.
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, a boycott campaign against Coors Brewing Company, initially launched by Mexican-American workers who faced discrimination at the company, took on a truly massive character. What began with one group of workers speaking out against racism ballooned into a united fightback movement against racism, sexism, anti-LGBTQ bigotry and union-busting. In 1977, workers at Coors went on strike and were met with severe repression from the company, prompting a significant escalation in the boycott campaign. Huge sectors of the labor movement moved to endorse the boycott, and gay bars across the country refused to sell Coors beer. The campaign would go on to successfully force concessions from Coors and, more importantly, demonstrate to workers across different backgrounds that our strength lies most fundamentally in our unbreakable solidarity.
More recently, the LGBTQ movement won a significant victory when it forced the repeal of HB2, a 2016 anti-trans bathroom bill in North Carolina. When North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory signed into law a statute that prohibited trans people from using the restroom associated with their gender and overrode local anti-discrimination ordinances, mass protests erupted in the streets. Students occupied university campuses across the state, demanding the law’s repeal. Musicians like Bruce Springsteen refused to perform in North Carolina. Major conferences and events were cancelled throughout the state, corporations cancelled contracts and froze developments in the state, and state and local governments across the country barred their employees from non-essential travel to North Carolina.
On April 25, 2016, a massive sit-in demonstration was held at the North Carolina state legislative building, led in large part by the NAACP and Black Lives Matter, demanding the repeal of the law. The LGBTQ movement, united with anti-racist, student and labor organizations, continued its determined struggle. Thousands took the streets in February 2017 for the Moral March on Raleigh, uplifting the calls not only to repeal HB2, but also in support for the expansion of Medicaid, livable wages and more.
On March 30, 2017, the bathroom bill was partially repealed after threats from the NCAA to prohibit North Carolina from hosting championship games, with a full repeal of the bill going into effect in 2020.
A united fightback can shut down bigotry
The struggles against Coors and anti-trans legislation in North Carolina highlight key lessons for our movement today. We can only win if we are united in our fightback. This means we cannot fight on the narrow terrain of ‘single-issue’ struggle. The LGBTQ struggle must unite with other popular struggles to create a united front against bigotry and repression. As trans revolutionary Leslie Feinberg explained, “what unites us is not a common sexuality or experiences or identities or self-expression. It’s that we are up against a common enemy.”
We cannot wait for the midterms or the 2028 elections to resist these anti-trans attacks. The time is now, we cannot wait. While we have witnessed corporations, healthcare providers and other institutions retreat in the face of Trump’s threats, we have also witnessed millions of people across the country reject the racism, bigotry and anti-immigrant terror of the Trump administration.
In the final analysis, it is these millions of people who can decisively turn the tide and defeat this far-right agenda. To defeat anti-trans bigotry, to stop ICE terror, to defend all of our democratic rights: we must shut it down!
