New York Times in a full court press on Trans Politics [View all]

[Prairie Gates]

For the second week in a row, the New York Times has featured a major story that has essentially accused trans activists of overstepping, and characterizes the trans activism of the last decade as a failure.

Last week, an opinion piece by conservative columnist Andrew Sullivan ("How the Gay Rights Movement Radicalized and Lost its Way " ) excoriated what Sullivan views as a shift from LGBT civil rights activism to a far more radical (again, in his view) gender ideology. Sullivan, of course, is famous as a gay Republican - the substance of the piece is that trans activism overstepped and now threatens to harm progress in gay rights. The opinion piece - a long and extended argument - was featured on the cover of the Times Opinion section, precious real estate for public argumentation.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/26/opinion/gay-lesbian-trans-rights.html

We can, of course, see a conservative columnists opinion piece as just an opinion piece - front page or not. Now, however, just a week later, there's a massive piece by Nicholas Confessore titled "The Road to United States v. Skrmetti: How the Transgender Rights Movement Bet on the Supreme Court and Lost." The piece presents itself as long feature that covers the recent history of the legislative and legal battles on transgender rights, but it is pretty openly a critique of trans activists who pushed what it suggests is a radical and unpopular (and here it is again...) gender identity ideology. The villains in this piece are not the Tennessee and Alabama legislatures who voted for bans on medical procedure for trans adolescents, but WPATH (the body seeking to set trans medical guidelines), trans attorney Chase Strangio (who comes off as a reckless fanatic in the piece), and members of the Biden administration, who are presented as miscalculating badly when not being arguably dishonest (Rachel Levine at HHS comes off particularly badly). I mean, I do ask that you read this piece and suggest some other interpretation: it could be read as an open hit piece, especially on Strangio. It is on the cover of the New York Times Magazine, and is as long a piece as I've seen in the magazine in some time.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/19/magazine/scotus-transgender-care-tennessee-skrmetti.html

Two weeks in a row, the NY Times has now devoted major publication real estate to this argument, though in two different registers (one opinion, the other journalistic feature). It would seem Ezra Klein's interview with Sarah McBride covers similar ground, though certainly with a more sympathetic critic (McBride, obviously). This does, then, seem to be a major moment. The New York Times is signaling rather clearly that it (and the nation, one presumes) is done with the trans activism of the last 10 years, and using US v. Skrmetti as its sign and cudgel.

Difficult days ahead.