If nothing else, Alabama politicians will meet the moment when an opportunity arises to uphold the state’s reputation as a socially regressive national punchline.
Recent tweets from Alabama Lt. Gov. Will Ainsworth inaccurately linked transgender people to an increase in mass shootings following the August 27 shooting at Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the 47th school shooting in the U.S. to date. The truth is, 96% of mass shootings are carried out by cisgender (non-transgender) men, a fact Ainsworth does not tweet about. Honing in on a marginalized community instead of the facts and his own duty to keep all constituents safe didn’t stop there. Ainsworth is are among many on the extreme political right who continue to use transgender people as a scapegoat, despite data debunking such claims, to avoid addressing the common denominator in every shooting that has occurred in America: guns.
Here are other facts the lieutenant governor could focus on: Transgender people are less than 2% of the overall population, yet four times more likely than cisgender people to be victims of crime. GLAAD’s ALERT Desk has tracked more than 2,100 anti-LGBTQ+ incidents from June 2022 to December 2024, including more than 750 incidents specifically targeting transgender and nonbinary people.
But here’s the thing about Ainsworth and other anti-LGBTQ+ politicians who are supposed to work on behalf of all citizens in their state: They are choosing to ignore the actual...
A Trump-appointed federal judge found Justice Department lawyer Drew Ensign made false claims to justify a “hasty operation” to deport Guatemalan children.