This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed human.

Call zone media.

The past few weeks, my social media feeds have been more apocalyptic than usual.

Oddly enough, not due to the escalating war with Iran, the shell-shocked economy or oil prices,

but because of a wave of posts and news articles proclaiming impending doom for trans people in the United States.

Attacks on trans rights are obviously not new and have steadily risen the past 10 years,

but this recent collection of worrying claims are especially grim or outright genocidal.

Just this month, I've seen viral posts citing online articles, saying that ICE is going to round up and quote-unquote disappear trans people, that the FDA is making a quote-unquote

registry of trans women, and that an adult trans health care ban is imminent.

Welcome to It Could Happen here, a show about things falling apart. I'm Garrison Davis.

For this episode, I'd like to emphasize the could in it could happen here.

It's not, it will definitely happen here, and there's nothing you can do to stop it.

These panic-inducing claims and the articles they're sourced from are referring to real things

or movements happening in either right-wing activism or anti-trans policy

and legislation, but are framed in a way to maximize catastrophe rather than actually understanding

what's happening at the moment and what we can do about it. Left unchecked, panic clickbait reduces the process of staying

informed to being in a state of constant doom and feeling hopeless against an unstoppable enemy,

or it makes someone completely check out and not believe anything they see online,

even if there is a real pressing threat, both of which cloud our ability

to assess and respond to very real threats. For the bulk of this episode, I'm going to focus

on an article that claims ICE is now permitted to detain anyone for quote-unquote looking trans.

This reporting and the online discussion around it

...