Politics Are Personal | Miss-Information
hippie1984.substack.com
None of us are safe. None of this is okay.
I said that to a friend recently. She’s transgender. We were talking about the 4th Circuit ruling — the first of its kind — allowing states to ban gender-affirming care not just for minors, but for adults. And she started walking me through what’s already in motion. ICE detentions of people suspected of being trans. Forced detransition. Conversion therapy. Denial of hormones for people who have had surgery and have no other source. The v-coding of trans women in detention.*
I’m not going to pretend I had all of that on my radar at the same level she did. But I wasn’t surprised. Because I’ve been watching this conveyor belt move for a while now.
— — —
Here’s how it works.
First, you declare a group a problem. Mentally ill. Criminal. A burden. A drain. You don’t have to prove it. You just have to say it enough times that people stop questioning it. The rhetoric poisons the well before the policy even lands.
But here’s what people forget. These communities existed before they were declared a problem. Berlin in the 1920s had a thriving, visible, legally tolerated queer community. There were organizations. Research institutes. Publications. Nightclubs. A level of visibility that wouldn’t be seen again in much of the world for decades. The LGBTQ+ community wasn’t hiding. They were Thriving.
If you want to see what that world looked like — and what happened to it — I highly suggest you watch Eldorado: Everything the Nazis Hate on Netflix (dir. Benjamin Cantu, 2023). It documents the Eldorado nightclub, a queer haven in 1920s Berlin, and traces what happened to that community as Nazi rule took hold. It is essential viewing. It is also deeply uncomfortable viewing. Because you will recognize the pattern.
The Nazis didn’t just attack the Jewish community first. The LGBTQ+ community was among the very first targets. And one of the first acts of the Nazi regime was burning the books and research of Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institut für Sexualwissenschaft — founded in Berlin in 1919, the first organization of its kind in the world, dedicated to gender and sexuality research. On May 10, 1933, more than 20,000 books and irreplaceable records were removed and publicly burned. They didn’t start with cattle cars. They started with paperwork. With declarations. With stripping people of the identity the state had previously recognized.
The documentary covers something else worth naming. Ernst Röhm — Hitler’s close confidante, head of the Nazi SA paramilitary wing — was a not-terribly-closeted gay man who frequented queer spaces himself. He was inside the machine. He helped build it. Until the machine decided he wasn’t useful anymore. And then he was gone too.
— — —
No one inside an authoritarian machine is safe from it. Not even the people who helped build it.
That’s not a footnote. That’s the whole lesson.
Anne Frank was a citizen before the Nazis said she wasn’t.
The transgender community was legal, recognized, and documented before a state said they weren’t.
That’s not a metaphor. That’s a method.
And Anne Frank wrote about it while it was happening to her. While she was hiding. She described people being dragged from their homes at any hour of the day or night. Families torn apart. Children coming home from school to find their parents had disappeared.
She was describing what she could hear outside her hiding place.
She was describing ICE raids.
I know that’s a hard sentence to read. I wrote it anyway. Because if we can’t say it plainly, we can’t stop it.
There’s a poem most people learned in school. Pastor Martin Niemöller wrote it in the postwar years — a public confession of his own inaction, his own complicity. He watched them come for one group and then another and stayed silent each time because it wasn’t his group yet. He was, himself, initially sympathetic to the Nazi regime. By the time he understood the pattern, millions were dead.
That’s the moral of the poem. Not just that we must speak up — but that complicity has a cost, and the bill comes due for everyone. Even the people who thought they were on the right side of it.
A sign I saw circulating at demonstrations put it better than I ever could:
“First they came for the — [first line of the poem] — and I said NO, because I know how the rest of this poem fucking goes.”
When I was still demonstrating on the ground — before my body made that impossible — I made my own sign. My updated version. Because the groups have changed but the pattern hasn’t.
First they came for the LGBTQ+ community. And I said no.
Then they came for women’s rights. And I said no.
Then they came for people of color. And I said no.
Then they came for the poor. And I said no.
Then they came for the disabled. And I said no.
I’m not on a demonstration line anymore. I’m in a van with my service dog, writing this. But I am still saying no. Just in a different way.
— — —
I want to ask a question I don’t hear asked enough.
Why is it always trans women? Not trans men. Not non-binary people. Trans women. In sports. In prisons. In the crosshairs of every bill and every executive order. Specifically, consistently, deliberately — trans women.
I’ve thought about this a lot. And I don’t think trans women are the destination.
I think they’re the test run.
Look at what the so-called “protections” actually require. DNA testing. Genital inspections. Hormone level surveillance. Bills have been introduced in multiple states calling for physical examinations of girls in K-through-college sports. Not boys. Girls. Any girl whose body doesn’t conform to someone’s idea of what a girl’s body should look like. Too tall. Too strong. Too fast. The wrong shape. Intersex. Late developer. Early developer.
That apparatus — once built, once normalized, once written into law — doesn’t stay pointed at trans women.
And look at what’s happening to cis women at almost exactly the same time. Women investigated for miscarriages. Abortion restrictions tightening past what most people believed was legally possible even five years ago. Women in active labor, who said no to a C-section, who wanted to give birth their way — having a judge wheeled in on a tablet to issue a court order overriding them. While they were in labor.
A judge on a screen. Telling you what happens to your body. While your body is in the middle of happening.
The common thread is not trans women. The common thread is the state asserting the right to inspect, regulate, and override women’s bodies. Trans women are where they’re practicing. Seeing how much resistance they meet. Refining the tools.
The rest of us are next. Some of us are already there.
(I’ve written about the assault on women’s healthcare in depth: When Politics Invade the Exam Room | Why I Can’t Stay Silent)
— — —
Then you strip their documentation.
Kansas just made it illegal overnight for transgender residents to have a driver’s license reflecting their gender identity. No phase-in. No warning. The state sent about 300 notices — but the law also invalidates birth certificates with updated gender markers, affecting more than 1,800 people. Just: your ID is now invalid.
A driver’s license isn’t just how you get to work. It’s how you prove who you are to access almost everything this society runs on. Benefits. Banking. Housing applications. Healthcare. A paycheck.
Overnight, with one policy, thousands of people became administratively invisible. You don’t need a detention center at the door if you’ve already made it impossible for someone to function legally in society.
That’s a paper roundup. And it works just as well.
(For more on the gender-affirming care rulings: Gender-Affirming Care)
— — —
Legal. Until they said you weren’t.
Anne Frank. Trans residents of Kansas. But the list is longer than that, and it’s growing.
Visa holders. Green card holders. People who are here legally by every measure that existed last week. DACA recipients — people who were brought here as children, who registered their biometric data with the federal government in good faith, who went to American schools and built American lives on a status the government created and promised. Between January and November 2025, 261 DACA recipients were arrested and 86 were deported, according to DHS figures provided to the Senate. These are people who did everything right by the rules that existed when they did it.
The government created DACA. People trusted it. Built their entire lives on it. And now the same government is using the registration data those people submitted in good faith to find them.
That’s not enforcement. That’s a trap.
Jose Valdovinos was in the passenger seat of a car his wife was driving when ICE stopped them outside a Circle K. When she asked why they were taking him, the officers told her: DACA is no longer considered a legal status in the United States. And then they closed the door and drove away. Outside a Circle K. His wife watching.
That’s the system. That’s what it looks like from the outside of the car window.
Asylum seekers belong on this list too. Seeking asylum is not illegal. It has never been illegal. It is explicitly permitted under both U.S. law and international law. And yet people are being detained, deported, and disappeared for doing exactly what the law says they are allowed to do.
I know someone who served this country for eighteen years. Iraq. Afghanistan. Deployments I don’t even know the names of. He was a non-citizen veteran — which is its own category most people don’t know exists. A residency status offered to people who served but couldn’t complete the citizenship paperwork while being moved from base to base and deployed overseas. He got blown up. He almost didn’t come home. When he did, Texas was getting bad. People yelling at him on the street to go back where he came from. He was afraid of being scooped up. So he left. He’s in Ukraine now, volunteering. He chose an active war zone over living in the country he served because it felt safer.
I don’t have editorial commentary for that. I just have the fact of it.
I have another story. From my own neighborhood. Trump’s first term. My lawn guy — green card holder, married, kids, his own small business that his kids sometimes helped with. He was on a potential client’s lawn giving a consultation when ICE took him. No call to his family. No call to a lawyer. He was detained for three months. Shipped from detention center to detention center, moved constantly. That’s not administrative chaos. That’s strategy. You move people so their families can’t find them. So lawyers can’t reach them. So they vanish into the system.
When he finally came back — a month late for the season, his business disrupted, his family put through three months of not knowing where he was or whether he was okay — he told me what happened. I hugged him. I cried. I said I was so sorry.
What else could I do.
That was the first term. This is the second.
— — —
The Constitution has something to say about all of this.
The 14th Amendment doesn’t say “all citizens.” It says “all persons.” Due process. Equal protection. Warrants. Those protections were written for everyone on American soil — and that’s not my interpretation, that’s settled constitutional law, litigated and upheld for over a century.
But settled law only works if someone enforces it. And right now, the administration doing the rounding up is the same one deciding which laws apply.
We are winning some of these cases in court. Federal judges are pushing back. But the wheels of justice are slow, and the damage doesn’t wait for the ruling. The trauma is already done. The families are already separated. The people are already gone.
The conveyor belt doesn’t pause for appeals.
(On the historical parallels and constitutional thread: Fascism v. MAGA | Same Hate, New Target)
— — —
Then you take away their housing stability.
You make it harder to afford rent. You criminalize living in your car. You pass rules — like the ones MDOT is currently trying to push through in Michigan — that would make it a criminal offense to be unhoused on state land. A 93-day misdemeanor. For existing somewhere.
(On the criminalization of being unhoused: Criminalizing Shelter | I Called It)
— — —
Then, once they’re destabilized, displaced, documented out of existence, and labeled — you round them up.
For their own good, of course. Wellness farms. Treatment facilities. Involuntary commitment. On March 11, 2026, the DOJ and VA announced a partnership allowing VA officials to initiate legal guardianship or conservatorship proceedings over veterans deemed “vulnerable” — including those experiencing or at risk of homelessness. Once guardianship is granted, someone else controls your medical decisions, your housing, your life.
This came from the same administration that in July 2025 cut funding to Housing First — the program that had successfully moved more than 170,000 veterans into stable housing since 2012. Trump called it “a terrible model.” They eliminated what was working. Then they replaced it with the power to institutionalize people against their will.
Veterans. The people who have seen authoritarian regimes up close. Who took an oath to the Constitution. Who have been among the most vocal about recognizing these patterns because they lived through watching them happen somewhere else.
They know. And that’s exactly why they’re first.
My friend put it plainly. If you declare trans people mentally ill, engineer a housing crisis in their community, and then criminalize being unhoused — you have everything you need to start rounding people up and calling it healthcare.
This isn’t a new playbook. I’ve written about it before. The disabled. The infirm. The unhoused. History shows us who gets used to test the methods first. And history shows us where it goes from there.
— — —
Mark Twain said history doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.
This one is rhyming loud enough to hear from a van in a rest area in Michigan.
None of us are safe. None of this is okay.
And if you’re waiting for them to get to your group before you say something — I’d start talking now.
The disabled community is the only minority group anyone can join at any time. It just depends on when that time comes for you.
*See footnote for explanation of v-coding.
Footnotes:
V-coding: A documented practice in some U.S. male prison facilities of deliberately housing transgender women alongside aggressive male inmates, frequently resulting in sexual assault. Studies have found that 58.5% of trans women in male prisons report being sexually assaulted; a 2022 California study found 69% were forced into performing sexual acts against their will. It is not a technical classification system — it is institutionalized abuse used to manage male inmate violence at the direct expense of transgender women’s safety and bodily autonomy. Sources: Indiana Journal of Law and Social Equality (2012); UCLA Journal of Gender and Law (2012).
Kansas SB 244: Effective February 26, 2026. Invalidates state-issued driver’s licenses and birth certificates with updated gender markers. Approximately 300 notices sent; estimated to affect more than 1,800 people.
Anderson v. Crouch, No. 22-1927 (4th Cir. 2026): Decided March 10, 2026. First federal appeals court to uphold a state Medicaid exclusion for gender-affirming surgeries for adults, following the Supreme Court’s 2025 ruling in United States v. Skrmetti.
Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institut für Sexualwissenschaft: Founded Berlin, July 6, 1919. Library contents publicly burned May 10, 1933. More than 20,000 books and irreplaceable records destroyed.
Eldorado: Everything the Nazis Hate: Dir. Benjamin Cantu. Netflix, June 28, 2023.
Martin Niemöller, “First They Came…”: Originated from Niemöller’s postwar public lectures beginning in 1946. No single published source — evolved through speeches. Authoritative citation: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia, entry on Martin Niemöller (1892–1984).
Anne Frank diary citation: Frank, Anne. The Diary of a Young Girl. Passage describing people dragged from homes, families torn apart, children returning to find parents gone. Written while in hiding, Amsterdam, 1942–1944.
DACA arrest/deportation data: 261 DACA recipients arrested, 86 deported, January–November 2025. DHS figures provided to Senator Dick Durbin. Source: CBS News.
Jose Valdovinos / Circle K detention: DACA recipient detained outside a Circle K convenience store. Officers told his wife: “DACA is no longer considered a legal status in the U.S.” Source: CBS News, 2025.
DOJ-VA guardianship partnership: Announced March 11, 2026. Allows VA officials to initiate guardianship or conservatorship proceedings over veterans deemed vulnerable, including those experiencing homelessness. Sources: Slate; Task & Purpose; KFF Health News.
Housing First program funding cut: July 2025. Program had moved more than 170,000 veterans into stable housing since 2012. Trump called it “a terrible model.” Sources: Smart Cities Dive; KFF Health News.
Forced C-section / judicial intervention during labor: Cherise Doyley case. Hospital supervisor brought tablet with judge, lawyers, and hospital staff to bedside during active labor. State filed emergency petition to compel C-section over patient’s objection. Source: ProPublica, March 2026.
Ernst Röhm: Head of the Nazi SA. Known to frequent queer spaces in Weimar Berlin. Executed during the Night of the Long Knives, June 30 – July 2, 1934. Source: Eldorado: Everything the Nazis Hate (Netflix, 2023).