Introducing bills like this serves a purpose even when they’re expected not to go anywhere.

That purpose is to make other legislative initiatives targeting human rights seem reasonable, and to pave the way for ever more radical authoritarianism.

Someday, this law could pass https://twitter.com/chasestrangio/status/1381641701245194244

Political scientists call the realm of socially acceptable policy discussion and debate “the Overton window.” Republican strategists have long since understood that you can craft messaging and actions as part of a deliberate strategy to shift the Overton window

When the unthinkable becomes thinkable—when it becomes possible to advocate in “respectable” society for something like the removal of transgender children from supportive parents—that action may eventually become possible. Meanwhile, slightly less extreme horrors become possible

We are already quite far down this road with respect to some marginalized groups in America, including trans people, and especially trans kids.

Genocide never just happens. Dehumanization of marginalized groups is the first step. Legal persecution is another. And we are there

This Texas bill ordering the removal of trans kids from supportive parents won’t pass, at least not yet. It wasn’t designed to. It was designed to make things like Arkansas’s ban on healthcare for trans kids look “reasonable” and “moderate” by comparison.

Call these patterns out