A Twitter post by Canadian professor Eric Kaufmann showing a sharp decrease in students identifying as transgender or nonbinary went viral yesterday. It contained this graph:
Kaufmann explained the findings in greater detail in this article:
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), which conducts a large annual survey of US undergraduates, polled over 60,000 students in 2025. My analysis of the raw data shows that in that year, just 3.6% of respondents identified as a gender other than male or female. By comparison, the figure was 5.2% in 2024 and 6.8% in both 2022 and 2023. In other words, the share of trans-identified students has effectively halved in just two years.
Columnist Steve Sailer predicted that transgenderism would become the next big cultural push even before the LGBTQ+ victory in Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015, and he was proven correct. Yet a movement built on convincing people that male and female are imaginary social constructs—and that demanded drugs, surgeries, and a level of propaganda that would shock George Orwell—was never going to last long.
Anyone not caught up in the mass transgender hysteria knew it could not endure. Biology remains undefeated. Humans are male and female (aside from a very small number of genuine hormonal abnormalities), no matter what creative lies people may spin today.
What interests me now is identifying those who refused to see that the emperor had no clothes—those who bought into the hysteria and believed transgenderism was the future.
In 2020, with the COVID panic just over the horizon, Rep. Barbara Ehardt sponsored House Bill 500, the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act. Ehardt, a Division I basketball athlete and coach, saw the danger of allowing men who “identify” as women to play on women’s sports teams. As Sailer noted in his article, the new zeitgeist was to believe that a man should be allowed to step into the boxing ring and beat a woman bloody—all in the name of equality.
Gov. Brad Little signed H500 near the end of the session, making Idaho one of the first states in the union to require that only women play on women’s teams in high school and college. Lindsay Hecox, a 19-year-old runner who had testified against H500 in committee, quickly joined the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in a lawsuit against the new law. Hecox, a biological male who claimed to be a transgender female, demanded to run on the women’s team at Boise State University.
At the time, cultural power seemed to be on the side of transgender activists. Fresh off their victory over traditional marriage in 2015, our culture was contorting itself to satisfy the whims of the mentally ill. Corporations began requiring pronouns in email signatures, entertainment promoted transgender icons like Jazz Jennings, and some states even passed laws mandating jail time for “misgendering.”
Yet Idaho fought back. Following H500, the Legislature passed numerous laws protecting children from transgender propaganda and halting the advance of the transgender movement. Senate Bill 1100 in 2023, sponsored by Sen. Ben Adams and Rep. Ted Hill, required K–12 students to use the bathroom that corresponded to their biological sex. The bill aimed to prevent incidents like the one in Loudoun County, Virginia, where a boy entered a girls’ bathroom and assaulted a teen girl.
Rep. Hill returned in 2024 with House Bill 538, prohibiting schools and other government entities from requiring employees to use pronouns that do not correspond to reality.
Meanwhile, Hecox v. Little was making its way through the federal court system. In August 2020, a district court issued an injunction prohibiting Idaho from enforcing the law. This was appealed to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which upheld the injunction via a three-judge panel. Idaho appealed again to the full circuit court but was denied. The next stop was the Supreme Court.
In April 2024, the Supreme Court ruled against the injunction, calling it too broad. The Ninth Circuit reissued the injunction but applied it only to Hecox himself. Earlier this year, the Supreme Court granted certiorari, agreeing to hear the case early next year.
The ACLU, however, had a few tricks up its sleeve. After the Court ruled in United States v. Skrmetti last year that Tennessee had the authority to ban genital mutilation surgeries for minors, it seemed clear the Court would likely rule in Idaho’s favor. Hoping to avoid a national precedent, Lindsay Hecox filed to dismiss the case.
This morning, District Judge David Nye rejected the motion, saying it “flaunts principles of equity and fairness and is, thus, void.” Attorney General Raúl Labrador, who has made this case a top priority since taking office in 2023, responded to the ruling:
From day one in office, defending this law has been a top priority because Idaho’s daughters deserve fair competition based on biological reality,” said Attorney General Labrador. “The district court has ruled that after years of litigation, Idaho has earned the right to present our case to the nation’s highest court. This decision keeps our lawsuit alive, and I won’t stop until women and girls are safe to compete, participate, and excel in competitive sports.
Remember the cultural zeitgeist pushing transgenderism over the past few years? Things are different in 2025 than they were in 2015 or even 2020. One of the most impactful ads of last year’s presidential election was the one that said Kamala Harris was for “they/them” but Donald Trump was for “you.”
Pay attention to which Republicans and self-described conservatives were willing to go along with the lie that led our society to support mutilating children. Seven Republicans voted against H500 back in 2020: Reps. Greg Chaney, Bill Goesling, and Caroline Troy, and Sens. Jim Guthrie, Dan Johnson, Abby Lee, and Jim Woodward. Chaney, to his credit, voted for the bill after it was amended to clarify which schools it applied to.
Guthrie and Woodward remain in the Senate today, with Guthrie now chairing the powerful Senate State Affairs Committee.
Even Guthrie voted in favor of 2023’s House Bill 71, banning child genital mutilation in Idaho. But several Republicans voted no—Reps. Matt Bundy, and Sens. Treg Bernt, Linda Hartgen, Abby Lee, Geoff Schroeder, and Julie VanOrden. Most of them were ousted by their voters after such an awful decision, but Bernt and VanOrden still represent their constituents in the Idaho Senate.
Of course, Democrats voted in lockstep against both H500 and H71. Note also the supposedly nonpartisan groups that aggressively pushed the transgender narrative. For example, the League of Women Voters claims to be a nonpartisan organization dedicated to expanding democracy, yet it filed an amicus brief on behalf of Lindsay Hecox urging the court to allow biological men to compete against women.
Thanks to brave young men and women like Chloe Cole, America is learning that transgenderism is not a harmless “fix” for being born in the wrong body. It is an evil cult that leaves its victims physically, emotionally, and spiritually scarred. America appears to be waking from this fever nightmare, and not a moment too soon. Those who thought the future was transgender are suddenly realizing they backed the wrong side. Will they continue doubling down on irreversibly mutilating children, or will they admit they were wrong and rejoin the community of people who believed in truth all along, even in the face of relentless propaganda?
I so appreciate those who have long stood on the front lines of this battle, especially Idaho leaders such as Rep. Ehardt, Rep. Hill, Attorney General Labrador, and even Gov. Little, who took a stand to protect women’s sports before it was popular, when the culture was still pushing the transgender lie.
This is a winning issue, for Republicans and for the children of Idaho. But we must not let down our guard. The last decade has shown how fragile society can be in the face of relentless propaganda.
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About Brian Almon
Brian Almon is the Editor of the Gem State Chronicle. He also serves as Chairman of the District 14 Republican Party and is a trustee of the Eagle Public Library Board. He lives with his wife and five children in Eagle.
