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The depth of the shift hit hardest for me in a quote from White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt about Trump’s executive order on gender, which will affect trans and nonbinary Americans’ passports. “They can still apply to renew their passport — they just have to use their God-given sex, which was decided at birth,” Leavitt told NOTUS’ Oriana González. It was Leavitt’s use of “God-given sex” that threw me. Here was the chief spokesperson for the White House padding officially sanctioned bigotry with a religious justification. More concerning was the callousness with which she tossed it off, confident that it wouldn’t drive headlines or prompt any consequences for her.

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