Texan Goes Viral For Calling Out Legislators Over Anti-Trans Bill
A Texas resident gave an impassioned speech against an anti-trans bill during a Texas Senate committee hearing, asking legislators if they're tired of being on the wrong side of history.
'If we were sitting here like 50 years ago, maybe 60 years ago, instead of talking about trans women going into bathrooms, you'd be talking about Black women going into white bathrooms,' Nick Mollberg said at the May 15 committee hearing. 'Do y'all ever get tired of being on the wrong side of history? Opposed to women's suffrage, as you were, conservatives, throughout history? Opposed to interracial marriage, opposed to civil rights.'
Mollberg was speaking in opposition to Texas House Bill 229, which gives general definitions for only two sexes, male and female, excluding intersex and trans people. The bill states that 'only females' can get pregnant, as well as 'males are, on average, bigger, stronger, and faster than females.'
Mollberg asked the state senators what their grandkids would say to them in the future.
'They're going to look at you the same way the grandchildren of segregationists looked at their bigoted grandparents,' he said.
He continued: 'It was bigotry then. It's bigotry now. You don't care about actually about helping women in Texas. If you did, you wouldn't be letting them bleed out because they can't get access to abortion care. You wouldn't be letting them die of gun violence and not lifting a finger to help them.'
A clip of Mollberg has gained attention on social media, racking up more than 1 million views on TikTok and more than 2 million on Instagram. Mollberg did not respond to HuffPost's request for comment.
Several transgender people also testified against the bill, including Autumn Lauener, vice president of The Texas Transgender Nondiscrimination Scholars, a group that promotes inclusiveness toward different gender identities and expressions in public policy. She said House Bill 229 'accomplishes nothing.'
'It does not protect children,' Lauener said. 'It does not support families. It serves only to erase, to attempt to write transgender and intersex people out of the story of Texas. But our existence is resistance, and we will never stop resisting. Our community will not be erased. Nothing this legislator does can end who we are. We have always been here, and we are not going anywhere.'
During the 2025 Texas legislative session, Texas Republicans have introduced more than 120 anti-trans bills, according to Axios.
During his testimony, Mollberg said he remembered when Republicans 'for years' thought gay marriage was 'going to end the world' until public opinion shifted and they had to pick a 'new scapegoat.' Mollberg added that if any lawmakers were going to vote for the bill, he would look them in the eye while they were doing it and call them a bigot and coward.
'It's not that you can sit here and actually do the business of the people, make lives better for Texans like me,' Mollberg said. 'No, no, no, there's no time for that. We got to bully 1% of the population. We've got to harm them as badly as we possibly can.'
He continued: 'You are not interested in helping or protecting women. Period. Full stop. You're here to hurt trans people. No other reason.'
Elon Musk Is Leaving The Trump Administration After Criticizing 'Big Beautiful Bill'
California Sports Org Expands Finals Eligibility After Trump Tantrum Over Trans Athlete
High School Runner Slams 'Bully' GOP Lawmaker For Targeting Race's Trans Winner
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Bloomberg
15 minutes ago
- Bloomberg
Senate to Keep Spectrum Sales in Tax Bill, Key Republican Says
A key Republican said senators have reached an agreement to reauthorize spectrum sales to internet companies that would generate billions of dollars in revenue toward funding US President Donald Trump's sweeping tax cuts and spending bill. Spectrum sales were included in the House version of the reconciliation package but the provision had drawn objections from South Dakota Republican Senator Mike Rounds, who previously said they risked undermining the US military's communications capabilities.
Yahoo
17 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Musk Escalates Trump Feud, Says President Was in Epstein Files and He'd Have Lost Election Without Him: ‘Have a Nice Day, DJT!'
Tesla CEO and former special government employee Elon Musk dropped a 'really big bomb' on his relationship with Donald Trump on Thursday, alleging that the president is directly implicated in documents related to Jeffrey Epstein's crimes and is keeping those documents a secret for that reason. Musk also complained that Trump is being 'ungrateful' and would not have won the 2024 presidential election without his help. The rapidly disintegrating friendship between the two men appeared to completely fall apart Thursday morning when Trump acknowledged Musk's repeated criticisms of his Big, Beautiful Bill. 'Elon and I had a great relationship. I don't know if we will anymore,' Trump told White House reporters. 'I'm very disappointed in Elon. I've helped Elon a lot.' The president also insisted that he would have easily won the state of Pennsylvania and, therefore, last year's election even without Musk's endorsement and help. In response to a video of Trump's remarks, Musk tweeted, 'Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House and the Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate.' In an additional tweet, the billionaire accused Trump of expressing 'such ingratitude.' Earlier Thursday, Trump suggested that Musk was opposing his spending bill because of its proposed cutting of the federal electric vehicle tax credit. 'Elon knew the inner workings of this bill better than almost anybody sitting here,' Trump said of Musk. 'He only developed [a] problem when he found out that we're going to have to cut the EV mandate.' In the same press conference, Trump noted that Musk has not yet said anything bad about him personally, but remarked, 'I'm sure that'll be next.' Musk has disputed Trump's claims about both his knowledge of the spending bill's details and his purported, self-interested reasons for opposing it. 'This bill was never shown to me even once and was passed in the dead of night so fast that almost no one in Congress could even read it!' Musk wrote in one tweet. The billionaire spent part of Thursday morning retweeting and quote-tweeting 12 and 13-year-old tweets from Trump, in which he criticized the national debt and deficit under President Obama. Musk even created a poll on X asking users, 'Is it time to create a new political party in America that actually represents the 80% in the middle?' In response to a tweet from far-right personality Laura Loomer asking whether Republican officials will choose to side with Trump or Musk, the latter also replied, 'Some food for thought as they ponder this question: Trump has 3.5 years left as President, but I will be around for 40+ years…' For his part, Trump indirectly addressed on Truth Social Musk's latest tweets. 'Elon was 'wearing thin,' I asked him to leave, I took away his EV Mandate that forced everyone to buy Electric Cars that nobody else wanted (that he knew for months I was going to do!), and he just went CRAZY!,' Trump posted. The president further threatened, 'The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon's Governmental Subsidies and Contracts. I was always surprised that Biden didn't do it!' The post Musk Escalates Trump Feud, Says President Was in Epstein Files and He'd Have Lost Election Without Him: 'Have a Nice Day, DJT!' appeared first on TheWrap.
Yahoo
17 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Chris Hayes: GOP civil war erupts as Musk ratchets up attacks on Trump's 'Big, Beautiful Bill'
This is an adapted excerpt from the June 4 episode of 'All In with Chris Hayes.' There's a civil war brewing in the Republican Party and it's threatening the centerpiece of Donald Trump's legislative agenda: his one big, beautiful, disgusting abomination of a bill, which the Congressional Budget Office says will add almost $2.5 trillion to the deficit, while depriving more than 11 million Americans of health care coverage in the next decade. That bill is now meeting new resistance from far-right members of Congress, thanks to the actions of Trump's one-time wingman, Elon Musk. Shortly after his DOGE days in the White House ended in embarrassing fashion, with a literal black eye and reports left and right about alleged drug use and other weird behavior, Musk started this week off by declaring war on Trump's legislation. (Musk has denied the reported drug use.) 'I'm sorry, but I just can't stand it anymore,' Musk posted on his social media platform, X, on Tuesday. 'This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination. Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it.' To say this leaves the Republican caucus in disarray would be an understatement. Just days ago, House Speaker Mike Johnson, who is shepherding the spending bill through Congress, posted a photo of himself riding in style with Musk and Trump. But on Wednesday, he said he couldn't even get Musk on the phone. 'We've gotta get it done, and I think Elon understands the weight of that,' Johnson told reporters. 'I hope he comes around, and I'd love to talk to him this week, and I hope he calls me back today.' (As of Thursday morning, Johnsons told reporters they were still playing phone tag.) Hours after that Wednesday news conference, Musk posted a call to action against the Trump legislation on X: 'Call your Senator, Call your Congressman, Bankrupting America is NOT ok! KILL the BILL.' (In case that was too subtle, eight minutes later, he also posted a movie poster for the film 'Kill Bill.') But this is more than just a food fight. Remember, Musk threatened to primary Republicans who won't toe the MAGA line. Now, the threat seems to be that he could primary Republicans who pass Trump's bill. And so some of those Republicans are tying themselves in knots to try to keep both Trump and Musk happy. When Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia was asked about Musk's criticism, she told reporters, 'Well, you know I have to agree with him on one hand. I always love it when Americans are angry at the federal government and express it … And so, do I like the price tag of the bill? No. But I want to get off the Biden and Democrat CR that this government is currently funding on.' At one level, this is a story of two people with enormous egos who were never going to be content as co-presidents. But the deeper story here calls into question the entire Trump enterprise and what Trump was using Musk for, which was to make really unpopular cuts across the government. Cuts that followed the Project 2025 playbook and appealed to the most hardcore anti-government extremists in the Republican base and far-right members of Congress, like the House Freedom Caucus, who want a government small enough to drown in a bathtub. But as a policy, that approach is substantively disastrous and politically unpopular. It is not even popular with Trump, who has no qualms about running up massive budget deficits. He told everyone he's not going to touch Social Security or Medicare. But he has to worry about pro-austerity Republicans, so he outsourced the austerity to Musk and DOGE. That way, Trump could say to the anti-government vanguard in Congress, 'Oh, don't worry about the deficit and the debt or spending, because I've got Musk going to town over there. He's just going to cut all the stuff you don't like, and no one in Congress is going to have to take hard votes.' But this was always a dubious play. First, because what DOGE was doing was illegal, as many courts have found. Second, Musk wasn't actually making a dent in federal spending. He decimated our international aid budget, but that was never where the big government spending was, contrary to all the lies and false conspiracy theories Musk spread. Most importantly, Musk's activities were so unpopular that the American people's outrage blew back on Trump and the Republicans. In town hall after town hall, it became clear that Trump's play for plausible deniability was a failure. That's why I believe the White House didn't keep Musk on and why he's freelancing now. Trump's special weapon against party division has always been his cult of personality. When it comes to voting for their own beliefs or voting for Trump, Republican lawmakers almost always vote for Trump. That was enough to get the bill through the House. But there are Republicans, particularly in the Senate, folks such as Sens. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, who are being very vocal about wanting to scale back Trump's legislation drastically, to pull it apart or to kill it. And now, thanks to political cover from Musk, senators such as Tuberville, Paul and Johnson may be even more emboldened to resist Trump. This is the Frankenstein's monster that Trump helped create: A guy who has virtually unlimited funds to primary politicians he doesn't like. Musk is giving these Republicans cover to rail in the way that they are politically comfortable with — and he has a massive social media platform that he can use to supercharge the debate, just as he used it to spread totally ridiculous stories and false numbers about what DOGE has been up to. That points to a real danger here: Musk's propaganda machine now rivals Fox News in its ability to influence and target the right wing of the Republican Party. It seems Trump is discovering that his oligarchy would be great … if it weren't for the oligarchs. This article was originally published on
