Behind the Scenes on The Anti-Trans Hate Machine

This year, The Anti-Trans Hate Machine has exposed how right-wing movements are weaponizing anti-trans hate to erode trust in teachers, school boards, and the idea of public education itself. In the new season of the show, The Destruction of Public Schools, listeners follow Jones across the country as she uncovers how the wave of attacks targeting trans inclusion in schools is actually part of a calculated strategy that’s decades in the making to dismantle public education as part of the larger goal to tear American democracy apart.

As Jones highlights during the course of the investigation, the anti-trans rhetoric is being used as both catalyst and cover for this plot as a powerful conservative network—spanning the Heritage Foundation, Moms for Liberty, extremist groups like the Proud Boys, Trump-aligned operatives like Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, and billionaire funders like Betsy DeVos—push extremists to seek political office at the local level and pour millions into political races, advancing these anti-democratic aims. 

In this interview, host and executive producer Imara Jones, gives insight into how this investigation unfolded, what it illuminated for her and what to expect in the future from The Anti-Trans Hate Machine.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

This year we investigated the anti-trans movement and its impact on schools—what factors led to you choosing this as a topic of focus?

One of things that really piqued my interest from season three was how we were seeing Proud Boys focus on education. We saw that they were showing up at educational places, like at school board meetings. They’re focusing on going local. There’s this transition of paramilitary groups into politics at a hyper local level that I just found really fascinating, and specifically the way that it was motivated, animated by anti-trans ideology. 

How did your understanding of this topic shift over our months of reporting? And how did you ultimately come to understand it was part of a bigger effort to dismantle public schools? 

I thought it was initially about a capture of the public school system. What I learned is that it’s actually about the destruction of the public school system, and that it is a much bigger enterprise, which is why there’s so many parts of the anti-trans hate machine that we’ve covered over the previous seasons involved in public schools. It’s a universal gathering place for their movement because they are trying to destroy the [more than] 13,000 individual school districts across the country. Which is a mighty enterprise, right? That’s a very important, from their vantage point, undertaking that’s going to require a lot of resources, thought, and energy.

What surprised you the most about this season?

I continue to be surprised by the personal destructiveness that people are willing to engage in in order to advance their agenda. These are not people who care about democratic discourse or convincing people to their side or the other. These are people who are willing to use any tool, including violence, including the politics of personal destruction, including not telling the truth, including manipulation in order to get their way.  I shouldn’t be surprised at this point, but I am. I’m not surprised by the fact that they’re doing it, but I think just on an individual basis, the depths that people are willing to sink in order to advance their worldview [surprises me].

We were able to travel for on-the-ground reporting to see first hand how the anti-trans hate machine impacted different communities. How did those trips inform your perspective for the series?

I’m constantly blown away by the seeming ordinariness of what I’m seeing with the reality that’s right underneath. There was nothing ordinary about the places we visited in terms of what’s actually happening below the surface. It seems totally normal, but underneath there is a tumultuousness that is bubbling underneath that presents itself. I think about the school board meeting that we went [to]. It was really boring until it wasn’t. I was like, “This isn’t a big deal. Why are all these cops here?” and then, at the very end, it got heated. Day to day, it may not appear that any of that is the case, and then you have these moments where it pops through and you’re like, “Oh, this is what it feels like to be in a space and a room and a community like this.” 

The topics we report on are very heavy and what’s going on can lead to a sense of fear and hopelessness. What gives you hope and keeps you going?

What gives me hope are the people that we meet who decide that this is not the type of world we want to live in, that’s not the kind of community we want to have. That’s not how we actually want to relate to each other. We want something different. It gives me hope hearing how Tami [Staas, an Arizona teacher,] is still at it, despite the fact that she’s felt that her life is in danger at various times. It’s the people that are inside the story saying, “No, we’re going to have a different future.” And those people are, I think, the hope in this moment.

TransLash has been making the Anti-Trans Hate Machine for about five years now. It’s a deeply reported investigative show coming out at a time when so many news organizations are scaling back on this kind of reporting. Why is TransLash making this kind of work a priority?

It is a really important contribution I think to not only people at this time to give meaning making, but it’s also a really important documentation of this moment for the future. Like, what happened and how did they get here and how did that happen? At some point people will be able to listen to the series, even if they weren’t in this time, and go, “Oh, that’s how they got there.”

What can we expect to see next from the Anti-Trans Hate Machine?

The Anti-Trans Hate Machine

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Right wing forces have taken aim at trans kids in schools, relentlessly targeting some of our country’s most vulnerable youth. In this season, journalist and host Imara Jones investigates this movement, uncovering how these attacks are part of a larger plan to dismantle public education and shatter democracy itself. 

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