Finding Resilience in the Face of the 2026 They/Them Culture War
When the leopards ate their own faces
Author’s Note: If you would like to read the source for this article, please check out State-Sponsored Erasure: Navigating the 2026 War on Identity and Inclusion
Welcome to February 2026. If you’ve been paying attention, you know the vibe: The federal government has decided the biggest threat to America isn’t climate change or inequality, but the existence of people who use “they/them” pronouns.
We are witnessing a state-sponsored attempt to rewind the clock to 1950. But here’s the twist: The people winding the clock are fighting over who gets to hold the hands, and Corporate America is hiding under the desk.
The “Religious Liberty” Circus Acts
Let’s start with the crown jewel of this administration’s culture war: The Religious Liberty Commission (RLC).
On paper, this group exists to protect faith. In reality, it’s an exclusive club for conservative Christians to tell everyone else how to live. There are no Muslims, no Hindus, no Sikhs, and definitely no atheists allowed. It’s about as diverse as a country club in the 1920s.
But here is where the schadenfreude kicks in. Coalitions built on hating the same people are notoriously unstable.
In early February, the RLC held a hearing on antisemitism. It should have been straightforward. Instead, it turned into a reality TV brawl. Carrie Prejean Boller, yes, the former Miss California, decided to use her time not to fight antisemitism, but to argue that, as a Catholic, she doesn’t care about the state of Israel. She even pinned a Palestinian flag next to her American one and got into a shouting match with a Rabbi.
The result? The Commission’s chair, Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, fired her immediately.
The irony is delicious and terrible. This commission was built to enshrine “religious freedom.” But the second a member used her specific religious freedom to disagree with the approved religious narrative, she was tossed out. It turns out “liberty” only applies if you believe exactly what they tell you to believe.
“DEI For Me, But Not For Thee”
While the Right is busy imploding over theological purity tests, they are remarkably unified on one thing: destroying Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) for everyone else.
The administration has launched a scorched-earth campaign to ban DEI in the federal government and schools. They claim these programs are “discriminatory” and “anti-meritocratic.”
But let’s look at the receipts, shall we?
As legal scholar Justin McCulloch points out, the same people screaming about DEI are the biggest beneficiaries of it. They demand, and receive, massive accommodations for their religion. They get federal holidays for Christmas. They get weekends that align with their Sabbath.
And it gets better. The administration is currently pushing rules that force government agencies to let people telework for religious reasons, while simultaneously banning telework for everyone else, to force secular workers to quit.
They are effectively creating “Religious DEI”. They want special treatment, special schedules, and the right to preach to you at your desk, all while stripping protections from Black, brown, and queer employees. It’s not about merit; it’s about supremacy.
The Great Erasure
While the religious infighting is entertaining, the policy on the ground is terrifying. The government is trying to legislate trans people out of existence.
Executive Order 14168, laughably titled “Restoring Biological Truth,” mandates that the federal government only recognizes two biological sexes. It bans gender self-identification and prohibits trans employees from using bathrooms that match their identity.
They are even doing a “find and replace” on all government documents, swapping “gender” for “sex”. It’s the bureaucratic equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears and screaming, “LA LA LA I CAN’T HEAR YOU.”
But they didn’t stop at the bathrooms. They went after healthcare. The government has ordered insurance carriers to stop covering gender-affirming care for federal employees and their kids. If you need hormones for menopause? Covered. If you need them for the transition? Denied.
This is a targeted attempt to make life so miserable for LGBTQ+ public servants that they just leave.
Corporate Cowardice
So, where is Big Business in all this? Surely the Fortune 500, with their rainbow logos in June, are standing up for their employees?
Hardly.
Terrified of mean tweets and boycotts, Corporate America has folded like a cheap suit. In 2026, participation in the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index dropped by 65%. Companies like Ford, Lowe’s, and Walmart have sprinted away from DEI commitments because they fear losing federal contracts or angering conservative activists.
But this cowardice has a cost. The data shows that when companies ditch these protections, their employees stop working and start panicking. Productivity is tanking, and retention is in freefall. It turns out that people don’t work very hard when they know their boss won’t protect them from hate speech.
The New Resilience
Here is the silver lining, if you can call it that. The era of “grin and bear it” is over.
For years, “resilience” meant leaning in, working harder, and enduring toxic systems with a smile. Not anymore. In 2026, marginalized people are realizing that institutions, whether the government or corporations, are not coming to save them.
Resilience has gone militant. It’s no longer about endurance; it’s about agency. It’s about setting hard boundaries, building “skill security” so you can quit a toxic job at a moment’s notice, and organizing at the grassroots level.
Students are protesting. Employees are suing. Activists are neutralizing anti-DEI bills in hostility hotspots like Florida.
The government can ban words. They can fire commissioners. They can scare CEOs. But they have inadvertently done something dangerous: They’ve stripped away the illusion that we are all on the same team. And in doing so, they’ve forged a resistance that is tougher, smarter, and done asking for permission to exist.