In speech after speech and panel after panel, the guests on the stage at one of the biggest platforms for right-wing activists and Republican officials lobbed casual attacks against transgender Americans, made jokes at their expense, or threatened to strip them of their healthcare and remove them from public life.
The guests at 2023’s Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, revived familiar right-wing tropes aimed at “safe spaces” and “wokeness” and “socialist” Democratic lawmakers, but prominent GOP elected officials and right-wing media personalities repeatedly returned to their alarmist visions of children in danger from LGBT+ people and gender-affirming care.
