The Trump White House has announced special guests at the address to Congress who will attempt to continue the administration’s unprecedented campaign targeting transgender people.
The facts are:
- Records show January Littlejohn of Tallahassee, Florida, worked with the school district to support her nonbinary child before Littlejohn sued the district with lawyers from a national anti-LGBTQ group.
- Payton McNabb, a former high school volleyball player injured during a match with a transgender player, is a paid spokesperson for an anti-transgender group that also advocates to ban medically necessary, best practice health care and to force schools to dangerously out LGBTQ youth without their consent.
- “Biological man” is not a term used by the medical or scientific community, but is used by opponents of trans people to spread fear and disinformation. Scientific research shows human biology is more complex and that sex and gender diversity has existed throughout history and cultures.
Additional background:
Payton McNabb played high school volleyball in North Carolina, where she suffered a traumatic brain injury after being hit with a volleyball during a match with a transgender player in 2022. McNabb has since been hired by opponents of transgender people to use her injury to argue that all trans youth should be denied the chance to play sports as their authentic selves.
- McNabb is a paid spokesperson for a group that aggressively lobbies against transgender people, the so-called Independent Women’s Forum (IWF).
- IWF has ties to Project 2025, has lobbied against access to contraception, and activates against transgender people under the guise of “protecting women” but has taken actions that do not protect women and instead tries to harm LGBTQ people, including:
- Pushing bans on essential health care;
- Supporting the harmful practice of outing LGBTQ students without their consent, without consideration of the risks to doing so to unsupportive parents. Up to 40% of all homeless youth are LGBTQ;
- Urging the dangerous and illegal relocation of detainees to facilities that do not match their gender identity, action that has been blocked by multiple federal courts as cruel and unusual punishment and a violation of the U.S. Constitution.
- McNabb is among more than 214,000 high school and college female athletes injured while playing volleyball since 2012. The vast majority of these injuries and accidents involve cisgender competitors and teammates. No one is calling for cisgender athletes involved in injuries and accidents to be banned from sports.
- There has been no legislation proposed at the federal level by anti-trans activists that addresses actual problems of safety and equity for women and girls’ sports, including how to protect athletes from abusive coaches and fans, ensure equal facilities, pay, and marketing, or ways to expand access to health care and recovery, for all players including people like McNabb.
Independent Women’s Forum’s former legal director, May Mailman, recently transitioned to serve in the White House. Mailman has promoted the White House’s unprecedented campaign against transgender people. Mailman and IWF worked with Riley Gaines, who has parlayed her fifth place finish into a career of testifying in states she does not live in to support full bans on transgender youth as young as kindergarten from playing sports.
- January Littlejohn filed a lawsuit against the Leon County School District in Tallahassee, Florida in 2021, claiming the school discussed restrooms and name change requests with their child without their consent. However, a public records request showed that the family had ongoing communications with the school and gave approval to let their child and their teachers lead on appropriate school protocols.
- The Littlejohns acknowledged at the time that their child was nonbinary and wished to use a new name.
- Littlejohn has since been associated with the disgraced book banning group Moms for Liberty, and Do No Harm, which produced model legislation in at least three states to strip access to health care, an Associated Press analysis found
Additional resources:
Fact Sheet: Term to Avoid: “Gender Ideology”
Fact Sheet: Transgender People in Sports
Fact Sheet: Intentional Mischaracterizations of Transgender Health Care
GLAAD: Analysis of Coverage of Trump Executive Orders about Transgender People, of 35 stories, only 13 included transgender voices
Media are urged to include transgender voices in all stories about transgender people, and facts to counter rhetoric from anti-LGBTQ politicians and activists.