My sister, Katherine, came home from school in a state of panic and fear last month. She thought President Donald Trump banned gay people. My mom calmed her down and explained what being transgender in America means.
10-year-old Katherine has never met an openly transgender person. She only knows two gay couples, and one of them is fictional (Mitch and Cam from “Modern Family”). But her first reaction — after my mom explained Trump’s executive order recognizing only “two sexes, male and female” — was “that’s just rude.”
On FaceTime the next day, Katherine told me what had happened. One of her classmates said “trans-gay” people are ruining “our language” and Trump is fixing it. Katherine was confused. Scared. Angry. To top it all off, she had to read about U.S. presidents in class: George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Trump, of course. That was her breaking point.
She ripped up the printed-out article about Trump’s first term and threw it out.
“He doesn’t like anyone that isn’t rich,” Katherine told me. An astute analysis in the wake of Trump announcing sweeping “Liberation Day” tariffs last week, which will inevitably raise prices and hurt American families.
Trump is carrying out his threat of retribution against the European Union and countries like China, Vietnam and Cambodia. The White House prefers to say he is “on a mission to make America the manufacturing superpower of the world once again.” But Trump leaves one large figure out: $4.5 trillion, to be exact. He now has the political leverage and votes to fund his tax breaks without raising the national debt. Senate Republicans wasted no time taking action and voting to advance the budget plan, in line with Trump’s demands.
When I asked my sister if she knew anything about the tariffs, she said, “What thingamajigs? Ask Mama.”
She doesn’t claim to know what she doesn’t know. (Unlike some of our political leaders.) But she knows Trump is a bully; Katherine knows bullies all too well. Fourth graders are brutal. They laugh behind her back, call her “four-eyes” and make fun of her “goody two-shoes” nature. She frequently emails me to chat about it.
Katherine added that she only talks about politics with her friends when it’s “really bad,” like when Trump and Vice President JD Vance were “so mean” and “rude” to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the now infamous February Oval Office meeting (which to her credit, did feel like watching kids argue on the playground).
Trump really can be distilled into two words: mean and rude. His attacks on the press and universities are mean. His rhetoric about transgender people and immigrants is rude. This behavior festers. It allows children to be more reactionary, even if they don’t understand what they’re saying; it gives hate permission.
On a recent bus ride, Katherine overheard some boys composing a vile song about “illegals.” Again, she was confused and uncomfortable. Again, my mom had to clarify the president’s immigration policies.
Katherine, in her monkey shirt and pink scarf, was tired when I spoke to her on Thursday. If Trump was in Hogwarts, he’d be in Slytherin, she said, yawning over FaceTime. Then she clarified her statement: He’d be Voldemort.
“Yana, we don’t have to talk about politics,” Katherine finally said, heading to bed and passing the phone to my mom.
I know we don’t. But I think it’s important we do.