How We Saved Trans Medicaid Healthcare Coverage

welcome to the show. Congratulations on your defeats of the Republican Party and helping to save trans healthcare for unbelievably large numbers of people in this country.

guess to give there's a little bit of context. So going back to May, there in the big beautiful bill that unfortunately did pass, originally Republicans included a ban on government funding for Medicaid for gender transition procedures, and originally

just from miners in the House. Then right before they passed it through the House, they actually removed the miners claw, so it was applying for all adults on Medicaid who are trans. At this point, everyone started kind of freaking out, which is very reasonable because you know, there's over two hundred thousand trans people on Medicaid depending on numbers like

hundred and seventy thousand depending on her us. And so what we found is that, you know, a lot of other sources have told us this that the bird rule, which is basically you know, parliamentary procedure in the Senate that only exists in the Senate because of the filibuster pretty much, is one way that we could kill this

is what they told us back in May. And so that's something that we reported on and tried to take like you know, basically like a don't panic angle or don't panic yet at least you know like that there's a lot of ways to fight back against this, and we provided you know, templates for here's how you can email your senators and this is exactly what you should tell them. You should call them you could call specific people on specific committees and tell specific things to them.

And you know, of course a lot of other organizations and people also chipped into this, you know, a for t te head of campaigns and whatnot. But I think you know, at the end of the day, what really pushed the needle was the people calling in and waking Democrats up to this issue. And basically what ended up happening is we both sent it. Widen basically argued to the parliamentarian that hey, this trans medicaid ban, it's not

a budgetary matter, it's actually a policy matter. And the parliamentarian agreed and ruled that it was basically a sixty vote threshold and not a fifty vote threshold. So what that meant is that as long as all Democrats, or at least forty Democrats forty one Democrats were opposing this measure, it was basically guaranteed to be kicked out of the bill.

And we did end up having enough Democrats basically ensure that the that provision didn't make it into law, even though unfortunately the bill did pass in to day.

we were not alone in this. I think there were a lot of grassroots organizations as well, and I think kind of the approach that emerged and was successful, I think it's kind of important how it happened, because one, it identified a specific weakness who weren't just vaguely asking

legislators to do something about this. And two I think it did something which traditionally definitely democratic politicians but even a lot of the gay ink to use a term popular among a lot of transactivists like big lobbying groups and establishment nonprofits, been loath to do, which is it got angry at democrats. It warned them that people were watching. It wasn't like, pretty please, you know, will you do something to stop this? And from two decades dealing with politicians,

that's a much more effective way to approach. If you're just going to ask nicely, they'll ignore you. They'll ignore your entire demographic. If you're marginalized if they're afraid of you. However, if they're worried about their phone lines being shut down with pushback, people are getting angry at them, then they get worried and feel like they need to do something. So I think both with our article and with some of the other grassroots groups involved, it really kind of

put the focus back on what people can do. But it did it by identifying a weakness and then pressing really hard on it. And I think that's kind of a break with how some of the very unsuccessful higher level tactics that have been used or not been used against transphobic legislation before.

we're this org. You want this thing to happen. And

we saw this a lot. This is something that our policy analyst friend Karine Green, who have had in the show before, was talking about with like with the Biden administration was the way that all of these orgs sort of just fell in line behind the Biden administration, like fucking over trans people's healthcare in ways that no one ever really talked about, and that kind of access model got flipped, you know, whatever they were trying to do before, and you can ar you know, you can have arguments

about like what they thought they were doing. At this point, it's just like no, like you're not existing to like protect queer people. You're existing to protect the Democrats from queer people.

votes together, like to actually vote against this stuff. And so like we're at a point where regardless of whatever you would have supported before, and again like I think I think they were wrong before, but like now no, you had this is the only way to do this shit, Like there's no other mechanism.

all the stuff with the birds role. When we initially started working in the story, it was just a small tip we had that there was going to be something big coming in the next funding bill, and I can definitely speak that at the time, Democrats, lobbyists and so forth, they were just very like business as usual, right, They were just even knowing that a lot of this was kind of had the chance of emerging, and that there was going to be a lot of bad stuff emerging.

A lot of it was still like trying to use these whole tactics Streme way back when to just act like everything is still as if it's you know, twenty fifteen, twenty fourteen, and once everything started to unferral and the medicaidvand became added in to the bill itself. Witnessing it all from just a reporting perspective with like it felt like watching them all go into panic mode and yet at the same time be like trying to find ways

to kind of push us to the side. Yeah, and and of course, like god so incredibly thankfully were able to play any type of role in getting this done.

Like so it's becomon narrative among so many for lack of better phrasing, proponents of gay ink, proponents of the status quo, proponents of just you know, your social democracy types, that the way forward is to be nice, to beg and plead for our rights, so hopefull they give us it if we ask really, really nicely and we beg in clead and we say thank you and we don't be too rude or else we'll earn it and we'll deserve what a will give. You know, It's like what

ultimate need became. The final stroll was like we sent out a push for every single just reader follower, every single listener podcast like everyone at home who just bread this around. Put pressure on the politicians, made it clear the wasn't acceptable, made it clear that no, they can't just ignore us and act like we don't exist, and that no, they can't just wash their hands away and pretend like this is all fine, and that their records

came that No, it's this is something that matters. This is something that has to be thought, and it really boiled down to just the endtense like pressure everyone put publicly like yeah, And I think it is just a very ultimate testing to how the true power in any political system lies not with just a handful of elected NEPO babies that end up getting into office, but with the regular people who make their voice heard, who band together and aren't afraid to say, hey, this shit is

fucked up, we need to do something about it.

If you don't have some other kind of leverage? And one thing I've seen consistently local, state, and federal levels is the odds are a lot better if people are angry and the politicians are afraid. So I think living that that's the real vantage the grassroots have, you know, stop caring about if politicians are your friends or really care about us, because generally the answer is they don't.

None of them are our friends, and more focus on what can you and your communities, your friends, the larger networks you're part of, do to make their lives miserable until the part of the sascore you're trying to fight becomes unsustainable for them too.

Lompias and maybe some staffers. But until it was being publicly advocated for this specific tool to be used by constituents towards senators Democratic senators specifically, it wasn't really like hugely in consideration or like that wasn't something they were planning to do in a very strong way, Like maybe it would have happened eventually, But it definitely does seem like the constituent pressure specifically did help kind of make

Democrats realize that hey, we're watching, you're watching you do like whether you're invoking these parliamentary procedures that you aren't supposed to know about. Like you're not supposed to know about this stuff, right, And it's like it's really obscure stuff that no one knows about except like super autistic paulicy Neer. It's like like me and a current probably, but yeah, and this kind of stuff is really what

turns the needles. And like you can look at the other side too, right, Like, you know, there are extremely effective lobbies in Congress you can look at you can look at the lobby that literally got this provision into the bill. They sent a letter to Speaker Johnson saying, hey, you should expand this from miners only to adults because we think this will actually help it survive the bird rule better. And this was a public letter, right, And you know you might say, oh, well, that's not a

big deal, right, it's a letter. Right, But how many gay rights organizations released a letter to Democrats saying they should invoke the bird rule. I'm not aware of any, like.

That came after the grassroots pressure, came after weeks of people getting angry at them, blowing up their phones, very public criticism, all the things that I think we're told a lot of the time by liberals and Democrats we're not supposed to do, you know, be nice or you know, your concerns won't be heard. Well, it turns out is that the Isaac alas is the case. And you mentioned that those conservative lobbyists people know, you know, I don't think it's always a rule that the tactics or enemy

can be adopted for various reasons. But the NRA and all of these terrible groups don't go into Congress going, hey, please be nice to us. They go in going do this or we're going to make your life hell yeah. And if you're if this is a terrain people are going to fight on, that's how you have to fight as far as because that's what moves politicians at every level is it's oh my god, I do not want this group angry at me.

one else matters. I want to strongly emphasize that that is not only not true, but dangerous rhetoric.

plenty of opportunities prevent this and they didn't. And ultimately, the reason that this narrative spreads is because, at the end of the day, gay yank is called back for a reason because well, yes, their interests happen to align on the realm of queer rights because they themselves are queer.

At the end of the day, they are still representing the upper class, and their primary interests are still going to be with protecting the upper class and protecting the role they have in subjugating the lower class and subjugating marginalized people who are not in their economic class.

wider communities in a lot of ways. They also just have had incredibly different lives almost always, with some exceptions, they've been part of the gentry their entire lives, and most queer trans people, especially trans people, are as far from the gentry as you get. So that does create like this massive gulf. But also I think it's one reason these groups are so out of touch. But also

I think it does. You know, if we put the power back on ourselves, if we realize that this kind of grassroots anger is much more representative of where queer and trans people are, If this willingness to fight directly in whatever tactics people choose is much more like in keeping with like queer culture and tradition and history, then I think there's a lot of power there. And I

think this is an example of successfully wielding that. I think Mirror was correct about this propaganda that's kind of been spreading in the wake, and it was particularly I think egregious because it specifically like tried to credit Sarah McBride, who had just come off a really obnoxious interview with The New York Times where she was literally against all the aggressive trans rights, and then after the band finally got killed, this you know, various sources and honestly, I

don't know anyone hearing this stuff, and whatever capacities the journalist act is, whatever, I think it's just professionally good to be more skeptical when these kind of convenient narratives emerge. But kind of embers, Oh, behind the scenes, she'd been doing so much. Yeah, sure, in public, she'd been you know, very either low key or refusing defend trains rights at all, even justifying some of the narratives of our enemies. But sure she was doing all this behind the scenes.

don't like something, you will know. If they support something, you will know they will be very loud and very public, because the public platform is one of the biggest powers they have, as well as doing whatever behind the scenes.

If they're quiet about something or even seem opposite to especially if it involves a group on the front lines like trans communities, and then later on they try to kind of take back credit of saying, oh, look, you know, we were doing so much behind the scenes that is pretty universally attacked to commit to demobilize people.

they would literally not be even in office without. Like I did the math in an article way back in that last November, and there's like exit polls showing that like eighty six percent of LGBTQ people voted for Democrats

last year. That's like a crazy margin. That's like it's up there with you know, black voters and LGBTQ people are like the biggest bass of the Democratic Party, right Like, they would have lost three or four more Senate seats they it would have been like a fifty six or fifty seven seat chamber if it were not for literally

the people that are advocating for this healthcare. And it's it's so absurd that, like Sarah McBride, what she did was, if we assume everything that's been said is true about this is what she's done is basically she got Democrats to not vote to take away the healthcare of two hundred thousand trans people, which is like, why was that even a qu question like this? This is the actual

story that came out of this. In my opinion that was bigger is that this was ever in question that there might be like seven or eight Democrats who would vote to ban Medicaid from two hundred three hundred thousand trans people, like and the fact that we're supposed to like give them a huge applause for not doing that is is kind of obscene to me.

do not want those queers mad at you. That's where you want to get closer to if putting pressure on politicians is is what needs to happen, And so buying these narratives thanking them, that takes the pressure off.

another reconciliation bill. And at some point it's going to come down to the wire where Democrats will have to publicly defend the right of trans people to have healthcare and to be alive and to exist. That's that's going to happen at some point. And what McBride has been telling everyone, what she's been telling as her client on New York Times, what she was telling Democrats behind the scenes, according to the notice article, is that you can't talk

about these issues. You have to be really quiet. You just have to do it behind the scenes because it's too hot topic of an issue. You know, you don't want to accidentally, like I don't know, show the world that trans people might actually deserve to exist. It doesn't it doesn't even make sense. I think they just it doesn't. They just like feel gross arguing it, like personally like they don't there's no political like, there's no like good

political calcitalists. They just feel gross talking about trans people. Is my opinion that this is why they don't want to do it. There's it's like it's bad for them politically. They will lose votes, they will like lose political power. They just like hate us. Basically, I don't know.

You would be surprised to things I've heard behind closed doors that they have said they are not your friends. They hate every single fucking poor person. They will never say that bocally, but they.

not even only not anyone in this call, this podcast. Now, no one at all should be idolized, because doing that is placing all the power in the hands of people you don't know, in the hands of people who are just as human as anyone else. And even if they're very good, people who do good things are fundamentally capable of fucking up and doing bad. And if you idolize someone, you end up condoning everything they do, whether you even

stay it or otherwise. It comes with the territory. Fundamentally, you should not rely on other people to save you. You should rely on you and your community. You need to fucking work with your community to bring about the outcomes you want. And I mean you, the listener, like you specifically, Yes, you need to work with your community to bring about what you need.

And we're also moving off subset to beehive. And so, you know, as Mirat and David were saying earlier, like we don't want you to rely on us to stay you like it's kind of like a team effort, right, Like, we do have a part to play. Will help will help you give you information, but we also could use help from you. We could use help from the listener, especially people who do have you know, some people have

more time, some people have more resources or money. And one thing that we are looking to do with our relaunch is to fundraise so we can basically, you know, ensure that basically our journalists, like you know, Mirah and David have the financial stability they need to continue making journalism like this. And so we're launching with a fundraiser and we're gonna we'll have a link, I guess with the podcast description and there will be like you know, you can get a free gift if you donate a

certain amount. That's a huge way to help. But as well, you know, you also need to actually listen to the things that people in your community to say, like what are the things people in your community are saying that can help? What are other ways that you can contribute back to save yourselves, basically because we're all in this together.

that is badly needed. And I think we are from our own experiences and from kind of what we've all built working together, like able to be part of that.

we need to fucking keep doing this work. We want to, we need to support, we need help. Yeah, and we're joining the bandwagon of all these news outlets doing workers co ops because that's the only way you can fucking make money in this industry nowadays.

lot of us have dealt with. And number one is, you know, the material need for money basically, and I'm going to say what I said in that episode again, which is that one hundred dollars for some people, like you know, let's say a working class transferson is very different compared to one hundred dollars for people in other

social classes. You know, maybe someone in tech or something like, maybe you'll get a dinner at the one hundred dollars and it's not a big deal to you, right, it could be life changing for someone else who's literally like spending their life creating news to help trans people like you know, this article that we wrote, it wasn't a huge amount of money that that took to create that. But at the same time, we don't have a lot of money to go around, like it's it's being basically

a small number of people. We have a we have a good number of like paid subscribers to but really in order to keep expanding the way we want to, we really need more money. And it's going to be so huge to trans people everywhere.

organ human Rights Campampa? Yeah, yeah, you resume that one.