Trump’s Transgender Mice Fetish, GOP Censorship, and the Politics of Erasure.
The Specter of Eugenics!
Donald Trump’s recent comments mocking research on transgender mice may seem like just another absurd soundbite in a political landscape saturated with disinformation. But dismissing them as mere ignorance misses the point. His words are part of a much deeper ideological campaign – one rooted in the legacy of eugenics, the systematic policing of identity, and the erasure of marginalized histories.
Trump’s speech, delivered with his usual mix of bravado and contempt, took aim at federally funded studies examining genetics and health studies in mice. His ridicule wasn’t about scientific oversight or fiscal responsibility – it was a calculated effort to delegitimize trans people by reducing their existence to a punchline. It’s the same tactic used by authoritarians throughout history: mock, dehumanize, and then legislate out of existence.
This isn’t happening in isolation. The GOP has been aggressively censoring history itself, with one of the most egregious examples being the banning of “Maus”, Art Spiegelman’s Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel about the Holocaust. The book, which depicts Jews as mice and Nazis as cats, was pulled from school curricula in Tennessee under the guise of protecting children from “inappropriate” content. In reality, the ban was part of a larger conservative effort to sanitize history, erase uncomfortable truths, and control the narrative around oppression.
There’s a direct throughline between Trump’s transgender mice comments and the GOP’s war on books like “Maus”. Both are attempts to rewrite reality: to erase trans identities from public consciousness while simultaneously suppressing historical evidence of state-sponsored persecution.
Eugenics didn’t die in the 20th century; it simply evolved. Where it once operated through forced sterilization and racial purity laws, today, it manifests in political campaigns to “eliminate” transgender people through legislative means. Trump and the GOP are working tirelessly to ensure that trans people are denied access to healthcare, legal recognition, and even the language to describe their own existence.
The banning of “Maus” and the mockery of trans existence are two sides of the same coin: an attempt to control who is seen, who is remembered, and, ultimately, who is allowed to exist. The question isn’t whether Trump’s comments are ridiculous – it’s whether we’re willing to recognise the dangerous ideology fueling them.
Trump’s transgender mice comments are more than just another display of his ignorance – they are a rallying cry for the bigots who see science, history, and human dignity as threats to their manufactured reality. His followers, eager to embrace any opportunity to ridicule and dehumanize, took his words as validation of their own biases. The irony is that the very research Trump mocked – is crucial to understanding human biology, including medical treatments that benefit *everyone*, regardless of gender identity. But for Trump’s base, facts are irrelevant. Their loyalty hinges not on truth but on the shared thrill of cruelty.
The same people who cheer Trump’s mockery of trans identities are the ones banning “Maus”, dismantling reproductive rights, and rewriting history to fit their ideological agenda. They are not just uninformed – they are willfully ignorant, actively choosing bigotry over understanding. They cling to an outdated, hierarchical worldview where deviation from the norm is something to be eradicated, whether through censorship, policy, or public humiliation.
But history has shown that attempts to erase people – to make them invisible, to deny their existence – never succeed in the long run. Whether it’s the survivors of forced adoption reclaiming their narratives, Holocaust educators fighting book bans, or trans activists refusing to be legislated out of existence, resistance will always rise. Trump’s followers may laugh at the idea of transgender mice, but they should be less concerned with policing rodent genetics and more concerned with the fact that they are on the wrong side of history.
