“This is child abuse. People need to start to stand up against this bullshit. Enough is enough,” Don Jr. wrote on Twitter on Thursday morning. The president’s son, who has lately embraced the role of transphobic bigot, was referring to the case of a seven-year-old trans child named Luna Younger, whose mother Anne Georgulas has, for the past year, been battling her ex-husband Jeffrey Younger for custody of Luna.
Normally, custody proceedings, even contentious ones, would barely warrant a blip in the news—but because Luna is trans, the custody battle between Georgulas, who is supportive of her child’s gender identity, and Younger, who very vocally and publicly is not, has become the latest chapter in conservatives’ culture war against trans people. In the months that rightwing media has obsessively covered the case, Georgulas has become a villain, looking to abuse and “chemically castrate” her child, who in their minds has been pressured by her mother to identify as a girl.
On Tuesday, a jury in Dallas ruled against Younger, finding in an 11-1 decision that he should not get sole custody of Luna. In response to the news, a whole host of conservative blowhards waded in, delighted to use a seven-year-old child as chum in their ongoing efforts to paint gender-affirming practices as harmful to children. In a widely circulated tweet, Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk wrote that Luna “is being forced to become a girl against his will.” “Children must be protected,” Kirk added. Senator Ted Cruz echoed Don Jr., calling a parent allowing a child to medically transition (which is not what is actually happening in this case) “child abuse” and describing Luna as a “pawn in a left-wing political agenda.” Seizing on a story seemingly tailor-made to generate rightwing outrage—the maligned father, the tender age of the child, the “diabolical” mom—on Wednesday, Texas Governor Greg Abbott announced that both the state’s attorney general and the Department of Family and Protective Services were examining the case.