The modern American political landscape is a pendulum with no sign of equilibrium in its foreseeable future. The dance between parties will take no final bows. The electoral tides will continue to ebb and flow with considerable turbulence.
As President Trump pushes the boundaries stemming from his 2024 victory, the Democratic Party has found itself pushed to the sidelines in a dramatic transfer of power.
As a newly pre-registered Democrat, I have found myself counting down the days until my 18th birthday. In 5 days, I can finally vote. But the Democratic Party isn’t what it used to be. In fact, I will go as far as to say that the very party I once cherished as a kid is facing an identity crisis — one that has shed my confidence in its ability to retake the mantle and lead this nation.
A Need to Prioritize
Immediately following his second inauguration, President Trump signed a series of executive orders aimed at dismantling the advancements in transgender rights made under previous presidential administrations. At the very core of these orders lies the notion that the United States government recognizes only two unchangeable genders: male and female. These orders include, but are not limited to:
- Executive Order 14168: “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government”
- Executive Order 14187: “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation”
- Executive Order 14183: “Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness”
The State Department will no longer issue passports with an “X” gender marker. Requests by transgender individuals to switch their gender markers will not be honored. Regulations will force transgender women to relocate to men’s prisons. The Bureau of Prisons will cease providing gender-affirming care of any kind. Agencies will limit access to restrooms based on sex assigned at birth. Transgender individuals will not be able to join the military. The use of federal money to support gender-affirming medical care for transgender youth under 19 years old will halt.
But what received the most headlines and public backlash was order 14201: “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports.” Signed by Trump in an attempt to ban transgender athletes from competing on girls’ and women’s sports teams, the executive order threatens to revoke federal funding from any institution that allows such actions — from elementary schools to professional leagues.
The progressive response? – Pure outrage.
This backlash is one of the most current and telling examples of a major flaw in the Democratic strategy: the inability to determine which fights to pick.
Up until the 2024 election, the Democratic Party was on the offensive. Progressives had made major strides in pushing issues of equality into the mainstream, but when faced with a new political reality, we must assess which battles require the most immediate attention. They must understand that while their end goal may remain unchanged, the strategy must be altered. The Democrats can’t win every LBGTQ+ battle. It’s time to play defense and protect the most important issues that affect the most people.
With the seats of Trump’s cabinet steadily filling up with Project 2025 architects and affiliates, the fundamental rights of LGBTQ+ Americans are increasingly under threat. Conversations of banning same-sex marriage have already emerged.
According to medical physicist Joanna Harper in an interview with Newsweek, “While we don’t know the exact number of trans women competing in NCAA sports, I would be very surprised if there were more than 100 of them in the women’s category.” On the non-professional level, the Save Women’s Sports organization identified only five transgender athletes officially competing on girls’ teams in school sports.
Other Trump executive orders, such as preventing gender-affirming care for minors and forcing the relocation of incarcerated transgender women, are not only impacting more people but are also more consequential and can even come down to life or death scenarios.
MIT Computer Science professor Daniel Jackson, claimed, “Of the 23 studies that met the inclusion criteria, the majority indicated a reduction in suicidality following gender-affirming treatment. According to The New York Times, “federal data shows that transgender prisoners are 10 times as likely as other inmates to report being sexually abused.”
The magnitude of the response to Trump’s sports order effectively fights the wrong battle. Rather than allowing Republicans to bait progressives into a narrow fight over sports participation, the movement must remain focused on the broader threats that put lives at risk.
As Ryan O’Connell of The Globalist wrote, “This is not a hill that Democratic candidates should pick to fight and die on.” The order serves to distract the public from the more consequential LBGTQ+ issues. This is not a matter of choosing one fight over another – they are all important, but of ensuring that the most urgent issues receive the utmost attention. The party needs to reconcile with themselves and ask the important questions: Which strategy is the right one to take? Should we fight at every turn or pick our spots? Democrats simply cannot afford to put this issue, while highly woven into the progressive narrative, at the top of their to-do list.
Learning How To Communicate
Democratic strategist Julie Roginsky put it into words better than I ever could: “Our Democratic leaders have lost the ability to fight, to speak English like normal people, to operate from any position other than fear. They spend so much time gaming out how they may be attacked that it has left them paralyzed.”
The Democratic Party has a messaging problem. Speaking to each group differently in the hunt for votes has brought on a major crisis; we have lost our language as a party.
This struggle can be attributed to the lethal combination of cancel culture, virtue signaling, and excessive pandering to special interests.
The term “Latinx,” a gender-neutral adjective for ethnically Latin American individuals, is a prime example. Quickly gaining traction in academic circles in 2020, the term serves as an alternative to the traditional gendered terms, Latino and Latina. However, the community itself has been anything but quick to accept it.
“Latinx” has been criticized for being disrespectful to the Spanish language as a whole. Like all modern Romance languages, Spanish uses a two-gender system consisting of masculine and feminine words. According to the Royal Spanish Academy style guide, “Latinx” clashes with the standard conventions of the Spanish language and is not grammatically proper.
Unsurprisingly, Hispanic Americans have reacted negatively to the term on a large scale. As indicated by a 2023 Pew Research Center survey, 75% of Hispanic Americans believe the term should not be used, with 36% believing that its increasing usage is displeasing. A ThinkNow poll revealed that “when it came to ‘Latinx,’ there was near unanimity. Despite its usage by academics and cultural influencers, 98% of Latinos prefer other terms to describe their ethnicity. Only 2% of [our] respondents said the label accurately describes them, making it the least popular ethnic label among Latinos.”
I do not wish to undermine the presence of Latin American gender-fluid individuals. Their existence should undeniably be recognized and respected. Yet, caught up in trying not to offend any group, progressives are perpetuating a cycle of alienation for the very same people they are trying to support. While the majority of Latino voters turned out for former Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 election, voter surveys from the Associated Press revealed that Trump won 43% of the overall Latino vote, an eight-point increase from 2020.
Excessively frightened about losing a cohort in our coalition, we Democrats no longer know who we are. We didn’t just lose the election; we lost our voice and our message as a party. Members of the progressive movement must come face-to-face with the harsh realities and work towards coalition building with the party’s more mainstream elements.
In his address to the nation following the 2024 election, former president Joe Biden said, “The road ahead is clear, assuming we sustain it.” Democrats are at a crossroads and I see one of two things happening: 1) Democrats will accept that they cannot win every fight and will return to being the party of “common sense.” Or 2) The Democratic Party will cease to exist as we know it.
Where we go from here cannot be known. But one thing is for certain. Democrats must understand where their party is in order to move it to where they want it to be. The far left has had a firm grip on the microphone since 2020. For the survival of the Democratic Party in this new Trump era, it’s time to give it back to the moderates.
We didn’t just lose the election; we lost our voice and our message as a party.