The Final Days of the Campaign

Hey there. Before we get to today’s show, I have some exciting news. We’ve been nominated for two anthem awards for our two short films, American problems, trans solutions and artistic legacies, black trans fems in the arts, both are up for awards this year, and we need your help today, October 31 is the last day to vote, so make sure you follow the link in the episode description to learn how you can cast your vote, and make sure, of course, that you have a plan to get to the actual polls before on election day. To find out more information for trans voters, check out, transform the vote.org Hey, fam, it’s me. Amara, welcome to the translash podcast, a show where we tell trans stories to save trans lives. Well, today is Halloween. We’re in the middle of spooky season, and for so many people out there, the election itself is spooky. So today, I wanted to have a conversation with someone who’s been reporting on all the ways that trans people have been at the forefront of this campaign in a relaxed way, with the hope of perhaps speaking directly to what your fears are and perhaps even putting them at ease. So today, I’m excited to be joined by freelance journalist and contributing writer for them, Samantha Riedl, who shares what she’s keeping her eye on in these final days,

nothing has animated the base that they’re going for quite like hating on trans people.

And with that, let’s try out, as always, with some trans joy. You. As we count down the days until November 5, we want to celebrate the trans people who are working every day to strengthen our democracy and help make trans voices heard in politics. Ari Faber is a non profit leader running to represent Ohio Senate District 30 as the Outreach Director for United campus ministry in Athens, Ohio, Ari works to provide free meals and help people apply for housing assistance and Medicaid. And as a candidate, he’s built his progressive platform on addressing systemic issues around food, access, housing and the opioid epidemic in the state. Here’s Ari to tell us more.

I was graced to experience a lot of transphobia and things, but for the most part, like people have been great. They’ve been really warm and welcoming. People have been really respectful. I have had some transgender teenagers and parents of trans kids reach out to me on social media and thank me for running and like they are part of why I’m doing this is the representation giving the trans kids some hope in some really difficult moments recently in Ohio, definitely want to encourage the trans youth out there that like there are people that love them and care about them and are fighting for them every step of the way, no matter how bleak things can seem sometimes that they have people in they call

Me Ra Faber, you are trans joy. I’m really excited to be joined by freelance movement journalist and contributing writer for them. Samantha Riedel from state senate campaigns to the Trump fans ticket, Samantha has been covering anti trans rhetoric and campaign strategies from across the country this election season, but she isn’t just providing critical political coverage. You can also find her writing about film, TV and other moments of queer culture on them.us. Her brilliant work has been featured on vice The Huffington Post polygon bitch magazine and the 2019 anthology, burn it down women writing about anger. Samantha, thank you so much for joining me. Thank

you so much for having me. Amara, it’s great to be here.

Yeah, I think I should say again, you’ve been on before. What’s on your mind as we are going into the election just literally days away, with respect to so many of the issues that you have covered and written about, fluently and at great volume that are facing trans people, I. Say,

first and foremost, I’m very tired. I can’t imagine how tired you are. It’s been such a wild election year. From the point we were last year to today, there has been so much that has completely altered the way that we’re approaching electoral politics, and it feels like we have that sort of conversation every year. These days, it seems like this is a a really accelerating time for a lot of different issues that impact so many different demographics and communities of people. That’s, I think what has struck me a lot is seeing a lot of this like collapse, I guess, in terms of, you know, the things that, especially the Republicans have been coming out with about immigrant communities and the things that they say about trans people. I’m we’re seeing so much of that just collapse into a big congealed, weird mess of eliminationist, exterminationist, fascist rhetoric in a way that even a couple of years ago, I think we would have seen separate attacks, different lines of thinking. You know, the traditionally, the way that issues are trotted out is very like these sorts of issues apply to this type of people, these groups of people, and yes, there’s overlap, but you know, we’re going to talk about these broad demographics in a in a certain electoral calculus, and with things like Trump coming up and making, quote, unquote transgender surgeries on illegal immigrants in prison into the sort of the consolidated closing argument almost even a few weeks removed. I think we’ve, we’ve seen a sense that, you know, Republicans are really all in on this agenda that they’ve been pushing for years and years, and we’re seeing the the rest of the political class try desperately to figure out what the actual answer is to the rise of a fascist sympathy in the electorate. I

think that’s exactly right, and it’s why I wrote in a Newsweek op ed that the choice for trans people is existential. I don’t think that it is. That’s not hyperbole, and it’s become more so each year. I mean, you know, in Trump’s most recent rally, spent a lot of time on immigrants, but had to get in the trans licks in there. And said, you know, we have to get the transgender insanity the hell out of here. Yeah, it’s literally a quote, right? Doing a lot of things at once with that setting us up to be a part of the purge that we know that he wants. And says, laying the basis for doing so the fact that we are crazy or insane, right, allowing us to possibly be classified as such and therefore ruled without rights. Because we know that in this country, the way that you know, disability rights are in such a sham that if you are proclaimed in a different mental state, then literally, civil rights laws don’t apply to you in the same way. And saying that they have to get the hell out of here, right? Like that. There’s a necessity for violence, right, or some kind of physical removal, and I have to say that I was really shaken by it, and after a year where I shouldn’t be because of everything that’s happened, but it even for a person who is steeped in this world, it was a whole new level for me. Like it was, I was like, Oh, wow, they are. They’re all the way there, as you said, in terms of the annihilationist and fascistic rhetoric that they are putting forth.

Yeah, I think for me, it was, I had one of those moments when I was going through and reading the different policy arguments laid out in Project 2025, and I saw that the Heritage Foundation was really finally like making the explicit statement that trans identities are pornography and pornography should be banned in the United States of America, and like that is so much of the the GOP agenda since Reagan wrapped up into a little tiny bow that like there is the the seed of morally manned. Dating transsexuality out of existence. Sheila Jeffries, I think, put it and but it is such a gleeful, I would say, way to embrace these sorts of ideas that you know well we just need to, as you said, purge all of the undesirable elements out of society, and that nothing has animated the base that they’re going for quite like hating on trans people. There’s obviously so many different kinds of people that they really, love to hate on you certainly saw Republicans bet on xenophobia and anti immigration rhetoric for decades before this obviously, like this is that is, like, absolutely a bread and butter issue in conservative us. But I think when it comes to the trans conversation. I guess they really struck on a number of arguments that were very emotionally compelling for people in their base who are some of the least likely people to know a trans person or to have any passing familiarity with trans people, just in culture, it’s such a potent combination of factors that they can really lay into the fear mongering into because there aren’t even with immigrant issues, you’re much more likely, as a person in a southern state, Texas, Georgia, Alabama, you’re much more likely to casually have an experience with a person who is an immigrant from another country, and maybe have that sort of thought of like, maybe I should really look into more of this. There has to be something that I’m missing here, because I know this person. They’re not coming over and trying to kill people and etc, and all of the propagandistic rhetoric. But there is such a dearth of that opportunity when it comes to trans communities and the overlap thereof in all of these other communities that the GOP has already spent so much energy fear mongering for unfortunately, back in 2017 when we were really hearing stuff like the people at the Family Research Council and all of these groups explicitly talking about using trans issues as a as a wedge into to really drive into progressivism, unfortunately, they deployed that very well, and we are seeing a culmination of that in this election season. And as you said, it is even for those of us who make monitoring this stuff our job, that we do this pretty much every day. It’s eerie. It is chilling to see just how fully like engaged they are on this sort of rhetoric.

Yeah. I mean, in Project 2025, trans issues are in on page one, you know, yeah, literally page one and going into page two. So I think that, you know, it’s, it’s there in terms of the policy focus, and it’s pretty much, you know, their campaign boils down to immigrants and trans people. That’s essentially the argument, right? And this dramatic otherization that you can do with both. And I think that one of the things that I just keep telling people when they say, Oh, is this trans stuff really gonna work. You know, it hasn’t. Didn’t work in Herschel Walker’s race, for example. But, you know, Herschel Walker was down four points. You know, you’re not gonna get four to six points just off of trans stuff. In the closing days of a campaign,

Herschel Walker had a lot of stuff going on. He had a lot of issues. And

this was clear that it was also clear that it was a Hail Mary, like it hadn’t been an arm he had. Didn’t make an argument to the last minute so voters didn’t see it as credible. What’s different is that Trump has made this a part of his argument since his announcement, like it was in his why he’s running for president. And so it has a different like cohesion as a part of the argument for the campaign. But they know who they’re trying to get right, and they know they’re voters and they’re not just gonna drop $60 million in ads for no reason. Right? Like they’re not an incompetent campaign. They might be a frightening campaign. They might be a campaign who has a different strategy, but they’re not totally incompetent. And so, you know, and the whole point of trans issues is not to win over large amounts of voters. It’s designed to win over small numbers of voters in very close elections. And so thinking from their perspective, right, they’ve deployed this issue in exactly the right way at the right time for them, I think,

yeah, I think that’s right, and I think especially. Really, you see that in the particular rollout of these ads, they are very targeted in swing states and specifically targeting particular demographics of people that at least they believe based on whatever internal polling that they have. Yeah, that are that are weak on trans issues, or soft, rather, can be pushed on trans issues. Yeah, we saw this in previous election cycles. They were trying it again, trying to win over black cis men, trying to win over Latino voters. Right with these kinds of arguments that are sort of tailored to appeal to a more conservative subset of the of the overall demographic that, again, gets into the well, they haven’t been catered enough to by the Democratic Party. So let’s see if we can snap them up. And I think that sort of electoral calculus is something that at the very least in the public facing rhetoric from the Democratic opposition and their surrogates, we haven’t seen as much of a lot of the focus from the Harris walls campaign is on getting everybody out to vote. Every single vote counts in as many places as possible, right? And that’s sort of true. Rhetorically, it’s important for them to underscore, because the message is, this is the election, capital T, capital E, like this is your chance to fight for democracy. And leaving the truth of that aside, it is still true that we live in the electoral college math world, where actually only a subset of votes are going to make the difference. I’ve already voted in Massachusetts. I can guarantee I nothing that no decision that I made was going to push my state in any particular direction, but we’re seeing a willingness to try and make inroads on the Democratic coalition as the Democrats are trying to broaden that coalition and make an even bigger tent. So yeah, we’re seeing definitely a tale of two campaigns. That’s

right, that’s exactly, that’s exactly right, yeah. And the fascinating thing is that you you really won’t know if it pays off until whoever is declared the winner is declared the winner. And we don’t know how long that’s going to take. Yeah, when you’re out in the country talking to trans people, are they where we are, that is to say, just exhausted by these attacks in a way that you’ve not seen before. I mean, I think that people, but I talked to, are outside, even of the states where these ads are targeted, are feeling the impact of them emotionally right, and are feeling the impact of the conversation on their lives and are feeling less safe. Because I think that you know you could isolate the anti trans laws by state and say, well, that’s not my state, but now that you know your identity has become a large part of the campaign, and especially the closing argument of the Trump campaign. I don’t know it feels different. What are you picking up?

I should point out, a lot of my work does rely on local reporting from all around the US. I am based in Massachusetts, and I don’t myself, personally, I don’t get the opportunity to go out and travel around and talk to a whole lot of people in my day to day, but I will say in the conversations that I have with people who do live all around the country, I have heard a lot of fear, yeah, as you said, you know it It’s one thing to talk about the specific impacts of the legislation that has happened, and the concerns that seeing a particular ad airing in your state would give you, but there is a difference in for a number of reasons. For one thing, these ads are, yes, airing state by state, but also in highly visible markets that air nationally, on the the in the World Series, the the MLB playoffs, right NFL games, college football games. You know, the reach of the Kamala is for they them. Campaign has been much broader than the market by market ads that we’ve seen previously in this cycle and in previous cycles. But I think, I think also, what we can’t emphasize enough is that you. The impact of all of this rhetoric has much broader consequences than just the immediate fallout of a politician or a candidate saying one thing and stirring up some of their base right? I felt this very strongly right after the 2016 election, I was just approaching a full year being out as trans, and that was really the time when I could actually, like, internalize what it meant to be part of a hated group of people. I thought that I had really understood what transphobia was, what it felt like, and I thought that that was like something that I already understood. And then it kind of came crashing into me, and it only increased over the next few years, and I’m seeing a lot of that from trans people across the country that that are posting about what’s going on in their families, just what they’re seeing from their elected officials, from elected officials in other areas, there is a big sense that the best case scenario here is that nothing changes in November and when we’ve just been through multiple record breaking years for trans legislation and all of the attendant consequences of that, that alone feels really bad. So then if the alternative to that is outright, you know, witch hunting, trans hunting, transvestigating fascism that is bent on eliminating every demographic that is is deemed unacceptable in a great America. Then you know it is. It’s really, really easy to feel scared and hopeless, and I think that is you, even when you try your best not to be I think that’s where a lot of trans people are emotionally,

yeah, but it reminds me, you know, like black people and have had a long history of this in the US, and have often approached it elections like this, as you know what they call defensive voting, right? That like we know that we’re not going to get the optimal, but we know that we at a minimum, we have to do something defensive in order to create space for us to have a chance in the future, right? I think that like that is a, you know, that is a that’s a framework for resistance, right? That’s been a framework for resistance in the US, right? This idea that you vote defensively, and that that is actually a strategy for navigating a country that’s hostile to you, you know, which, which, I think is a useful frame, especially for people who may be voting for the first time. For sure, a lot of people were lifted and buoyed by the naming of Tim walls as the vice presidential nominee because of a lot of the things that he’s done on trans issues in Minnesota, been very full throated even in the campaign, has given kind of the clearest answer over the last couple of weeks about the importance of trans people. Are you surprised that he’s hasn’t been deployed more to make this argument? Because I think that he says it in a way where everybody understands it like he is from rural Wisconsin and knows how to talk that way. And so even when he talks about trans issues, he talks about it in that way, you know, like and it’s not, you know, othering, and not easily to take a sound bite from what he says and to demagogue it like he’s actually quite good on it. Are you surprised that he hasn’t been deployed more by the campaign to even talk about it in that kind of generic, you know, broad church way

I am, and I’m really glad that you that you named that it has been such an interesting couple of months for the Democratic campaign after they actually got the message and Biden withdrew, Harris stepped up. Harris had her dark Brandon meme moment, where she’s going viral for all of these Charlie XCX brat means, and getting more goodwill in an electoral sense than pretty much ever. And then bringing on waltz, who purely by dint of being a little bit more progressive than Josh Shapiro, already a huge surprise to a lot of people. We start looking into Waltz’s history, a lot of things to be encouraged by in there, as you mentioned, and again, as you said, he’s so rhetorically strong on meeting and putting. Pushing back on what the Republicans have made the conversations into his deployment of weird and all of the attendant stuff, even in the past week or so when he straight out called Elon Musk a dipshit, it is honestly so I think his bringing him onto the ticket was a big part of why a lot of people were saying this feels like a different Democratic Party. This feels like a Democratic Party that is here to say, actually, no, let’s win an election and let’s stand on issues that our voters want, right and then we have not heard a whole lot on that. It seemed like very quickly after that, they just wanted to back away from all of those things that were getting more Democrats and even people on the left who will still like, hold their nose and go in and pull that lever. You have a lot of this good will and the political capital, but it has not been there in the closing weeks of the campaign as much and certainly not in the specific realm of talking about trans issues. And I think the Democratic strategists were talking to the New York Times about this when Trump started unveiling the kamalas for they them ads and calling them a killer. I think there is a sense in the party. And I don’t know, obviously, who among their strategists is giving them this impression or telling them this outright, but it does seem like there’s a big idea that trans issues are simply radioactive. That’s right, and they have to be precariously precise in figuring out how to talk about us in any way, lest it completely lose them the election. And that is just not true, and that is the big takeaway that I think that they could and should be taking from these national polls, like everything that I said about the electoral math still stands. But what you can take away from the national polls, I think, is that a lot of the Democratic base and people that could be in that big tent coalition are people who are wanting them to step up and take more of an active role in saying, hey, you know all of this incredibly transphobic propaganda that you’re peddling. It’s getting people hurt. It’s causing Ted Cruz to transvestigate minors in Oregon, for some reason. What’s the matter with you? Why are you inciting violence against children? Why are you doing any of this? This is macabre, it’s obscene, and there is an unwillingness to take it to the mat, to that degree, because I think the Democrats want to bring themselves as the party of maturity here, because they’re presenting as we are going to protect democracy, and by democracy, we also mean the attendant civility that has been stripped away from you, the sense that politics are something that can be set aside for the general collective benefit of being able to have a nice Thanksgiving, you know, so, and I think that that’s like, it’s such a it’s, It’s a very limiting way of approaching, in particular this election, I think there was a real mood where if Democrats wanted to stand up and say, Actually, we are the party of common sense, trans rights, and we are backing these things, we are going to stand by our interpretation of Title Nine, and in the coming years, we are going to double down and we are going to get the Equality Act passed with trans protections in it. I think that’s an incredibly strong statement to make in 2024 that gets people who are ambivalent about Democrats because they are trying to present this huge, big tent and bring in the cheneys and everything, I think that would have potentially been a stronger and maybe even savvier political move. I don’t have all of the polling data. A I am one reporter up here in Western Massachusetts, noted queer Bastion, but I am very surprised that with the momentum that the Harris walls campaign had with him in September, that they did not seize on this kind of obvious thread of having walls go out and really give them the business, like we know you can,

yeah, I think that, you know, the campaign is just incredibly cautious. I think that’s the thing that strikes me. It’s just a cautious campaign. It is in a lot of ways, and it’s very cautious, like how cautious they were about ruling her out to outlets, how, you know they just, you know they they prefer to be one step behind or a little behind rather than ahead, like they don’t want to get ahead of themselves, and maybe that’s a part of the contrast with Trump. But I also just think that they, whoever’s running that campaign, is just naturally cautious, and that’s just the way that they’ve approached it. And I think that that explains a whole lot about a lot of things, right? Yeah.

I mean, listen, I’m a I’m a Mets fan. I know from come from behind the victories, but as this year’s National League pennant proved, you can’t always come from behind. Sometimes you got to get those early inning runs in,

right, right, right. Or I’m a Liberty fan. Sometimes you have sometimes you just grind it out again. Congratulations. By the way, thank you. Thank you so much. Yeah, I think that you know who knows? We’ll we’ll see whether or not the strategy pays off, but they’re just a cautious lot. As we wrap, I’m going to ask you two questions. One is, what are you as a reporter, looking for, looking at on election night, and what’s your expectation? And then, how are you as Samantha, as a trans person, what are you also looking at, and how are you preparing yourself for whatever is gonna transpire either way. I

mean, think about that. Actually. That’s a great question. How am I showing up for myself in this election season?

Yeah, I mean, I don’t. I don’t know how.

I think one way that I’m trying to prepare myself, personally and professionally, is simply in accepting ahead of time the likelihood that, as I think you mentioned before in the pod, we will not know immediately on Tuesday night is going to be the next president. There are a lot of different counties and different areas that are likely not going to be reporting until Wednesday. So I think that a big part of this is setting expectations and remaining as calm as possible, and not everything that we have just talked about notwithstanding, it is really important to, I think, for all of us to remember that again, for the best case scenario, in a lot of ways, is going to end up being that everything is going to stay about The same. A big part of that is going to be the ways in which we continue to show up for each other in our communities. And yes, I am going to be that person who comes on a week, less than a week before the election, and says, We need to remember that we’re still organizing locally, but I think that is a really important thing to keep in mind. I think that we get very keyed into the election as the one, not the ultimate harbinger of what is to come, but certainly a big reason that things will definitely go one way. Things will definitely go another way. I think that it is really important, especially right now, to remind ourselves that we keep each other safe. We are the best purveyors of safety in our own communities when we show up. And it is so hard to do that in 2024 yet we’re we are still dealing with an ongoing pandemic, it is hard to show up for each other in person. Is hard to show up for each other online in the ways that we all need, and it’s hard to build community when that infrastructure doesn’t already exist or is decaying, but it is one of the you. Most Important things to avoid that sense of doom and despair and hopelessness that we were talking about before. I think as easy as it is to feel that and as understandable as it is to feel that, it is even more important to not be consumed by it, and not completely give in to despair, and that that is, honestly what I fear a little bit, maybe a little bit more so than some of the attendant policies that are being threatened, is that folks in our community are going to accept some of this as inevitable, and it’s when we accept things as inevitabilities that they are. So I think that the biggest thing that if you’re a trans person like me who’s sitting at home on a Tuesday night come election night, and you’re feeling terrified as the best thing that you can do is to not let yourself be alum, and to find the ways in which you’re able to show up for your community. Ask your community to show up for you, and by making sure that bond is strengthened and that we have these lines of communication that can act as bulwarks against the kind of exterminationism that is being proposed on the right, those are the networks that are going to be more important than ever, no matter who wins, no matter who wins, that that is going to be the the the project that brings us closer to liberation, and that’s what I think we have to remember, to keep in mind, even when it’s hard, Even when things are really scary and it feels like there’s no way out. Yeah, I

think that’s right. Don’t be alone, form a community and think about what you will need, and also be patient. You know, you can’t freak out, because I think that the count could go anywhere from, you know, the night of to what’s more likely is at least a week, maybe longer, with, you know, challenges and all the rest of it. So I think that we just have to strap ourselves in and, as you say, form community, take care of each other, connect with each other and form a sense of safety. Well, Samantha, thank you so much for joining us, and you know you continue to be safe and take care of yourself too. You too. Amara,

thank you so much for having me. It’s always a pleasure to talk to you. Thank

you. Thank you so much. That was journalist Samantha Riedl, thank you so much for joining me on the translash podcast. Now listen all the way through to the end of the show for something extra. If you liked what you heard, please go to Apple podcast to rate and review us. You can listen to translash wherever you get your podcast. Check us out on the web@translash.org to sign up for our weekly newsletter. Follow us on Tiktok X and Instagram at translash media, like us on Facebook and tell your friends the translash podcast is produced by translash Media. The translash team includes Oliver ash Kline and Arby Calloway. Xander Adams is our senior sound engineer and a contributing producer. The music you heard was composed by bendraghi and also courtesy of zzk records. The translash podcast is made possible by the support of foundations and listeners like you. What am I looking forward to? Well, the possibility of going to the New York Halloween parade is going to be 80 degrees that day in New York City. And when else on Halloween am I going to be able to experience 80 degrees in New York and be outside and see the legendary thriller dance. So I’m thinking about that, but wrestling with my costume, I don’t know if I can get it together like I want to, because I just decided to do it, you know, in not enough time. So we’ll see if I can pull it off by tonight. But if not, I’m still gonna go, maybe I’ll just get a mask, like one of those, like 1970s costume masks, and go as Wonder Woman or something, and keep it pushing. I’m also looking forward to the election and to go into whatever the next phase is, because it’s time like we’ve been in this, wherever we are for a year now at least, and whatever we’re going into, it’s just time for us to move to the next phase. So I’m kind of looking forward to that, even though the outcome is uncertain and there’s a lot of trepidation about what’s to come. You know, as the saying goes, the only way forward is through. Oh.