Widespread changes to federal policy and rhetoric on gender ideology have taken hold since President Donald Trump was elected to serve a second term, introducing what some advocates call a “new phase” in the fight over the issue after the Biden administration kowtowed to the trans lobby.
In the season five premiere of the “Generation Indoctrination” podcast, host Brandon Showalter explores how legal, cultural and political momentum has shifted in recent months and whether it will be enough to achieve lasting change.
“As we make our way through 2025, there is no question that the political and cultural winds have changed regarding gender ideology,” Showalter says. “In many ways, it does appear that sanity is starting to prevail. … For some time, hope appeared lost, but no more.”
Showalter pointed to a series of executive orders signed within days of Trump’s inauguration in January.
One order defined “woman” strictly in biological terms across the federal government. Another condemned what it called the “sterilization and mutilation of children” through so-called gender-transition procedures, calling such practices “a stain on our nation’s history” and cutting federal funding for institutions that perform them on minors.
But even with those steps, Showalter cautions, “there’s a long way to go.”
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The episode features interviews with policy expert Jay Richards of The Heritage Foundation, political strategist Terry Schilling of the American Principles Project and Kate Anderson, an attorney with Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF).
Richards likened the movement’s progress to a World War II campaign. In a previous conversation in 2023, he compared the fight’s stage to the Allies reaching Midway Island, but not yet Normandy. Now, he said, “We have secured the beach, but Berlin is still a long way away.”
He said the most immediate goal is to close pediatric gender clinics, predicting they will shut down not primarily through criminalization, but because “malpractice insurance rates … are just going to go through the roof” amid a growing number of lawsuits from youth whose bodies have been maimed and irreparably harmed.
“That’s the pediatric gender medicine battle,” Richards said. “We haven’t taken care of the online influencers that indoctrinate children … [or] the teachers and the school curricula that teach gender ideology in every class.”
While acknowledging “broad ideological capture” in education, Richards said the leverage of the federal government is significant. Under the Biden administration, he said, opponents of gender ideology “basically played whack-a-mole” in Washington and focused on red states.
“That’s all changed,” he said. “Now suddenly we have agencies from the Department of Health and Human Services to the Department of Justice to the State Department that are not only allies, but they’re actively involved in this fight.”
Schilling discussed how the issue became a centerpiece of Trump’s 2024 campaign, including a widely aired ad portraying Vice President Kamala Harris’ support for taxpayer-funded transgender surgeries for prisoners and migrants. The spot closed with the line, “Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you.”
“It was the most widely seen campaign ad, most impactful campaign ad of the entire cycle,” Schilling said, contending that the issue resonates with voters across the political spectrum. “Only 10 percent of America actually supports giving kids sex-change procedures. … We’re talking 90 to 10.”
Schilling rejected the idea that Republicans were using the topic as a cynical political wedge. “This was not about helping the Republican Party. This was about helping the American people, specifically the children who have been killed, hurt and maimed by this horrific movement,” he said.
Schilling added that Trump “understands the gravity” of the issue, recalling a private meeting where the then-former president called the impact on children and families “atrocious.”
Anderson, who focuses on parental rights litigation at ADF, said the administration’s stance has cleared the way for local policies “that respect everybody’s rights on issues like free speech [and] religious freedom.”
Executive orders have targeted “secret social transition policies” in schools, where staff treat students as the opposite sex without informing parents. Anderson cited a Michigan case in which a middle school “began to push [a girl] to identify as a boy” and changed her name in school records while hiding it from her parents.
“This is dangerous, because kids need their parents, especially when they’re dealing with something as difficult as their identity,” she said. “Parental rights are not a Christian or conservative issue. They’re an issue for everybody.”
She noted that while executive orders can set policy, lasting change will depend on agency action and subsequent court rulings. “There are many courts that are poised to weigh in on this soon,” Anderson said.
All three guests warned that the current political climate might not last. Schilling posited that opponents must act quickly to dismantle what he called “the gender industry,” which he estimated generates $4.5 billion annually from surgeries and prescribing opposite-sex hormones.
“We have to destroy the gender industry, and we have to do it now,” Schilling said. “If we don’t defeat it now … there will be what’s called battle fatigue. People will get sick and tired of hearing it, and they’ll say, ‘Why haven’t you beaten this monstrosity yet?’”
He warned that failing to cut off funding could allow the movement to “shut down our ability to ever even oppose it vocally,” pointing to laws in the United Kingdom restricting protests outside clinics.
“The price of liberty is eternal vigilance,” Schilling said, quoting Thomas Jefferson. “We can never let this fight come back again. We’ve got to beat it and defeat it now and make sure it can never come back again.”
