Who Is Sage Blair: Wounded by falling approval ratings and faced with constant Epstein files bombshells, US President Donald Trump on Tuesday, at his State of the Union speech, attempted to evoke support for himself by again stirring transphobic rhetoric.
The US President had invited Virginia teenager Sage Blair and her mother, Michele, who in 2023 filed a lawsuit against the Appomattox County School Board, alleging that the district failed to inform them about Sage, who was a biological female, identifying as ‘male’.
In the lawsuit, the family had contended that the alleged withholding of information by the Appomattox County School Board contributed to the altered mental status of Sage, who ran away from her home and was later raped, sexually abused, and trafficked across state lines.
During his speech, Donald Trump welcomed the family while asking people to stand up in a show of respect for them.
“Sage is a proud and wonderful young woman with a full-ride scholarship to Liberty University,” a visibly elated Trump announced.
Trump also took a hit at the medical concept of biological gender, a consistent Republican political stance.
“Surely we can all agree no state can be allowed to rip children from their parents’ arms and transition them to a new gender against the parents’ will,” he said, adding, “We must ban it, and we must ban it immediately.”
Trump also took note of the Democrats not standing up and cheering for Sage and her family; he declared them crazy.
“These people are crazy, I’m telling you! They’re crazy!” he said.
In a statement, Human Rights Campaign National Press Secretary Brandon Wolf described the move as “the latest effort by Trump and allied MAGA politicians to strip American families of medical autonomy while diverting attention from their inability to address the nation’s most urgent challenges.”
Wolf added that healthcare expenses remain high, families continue to bear the impact of Trump’s tariffs, federal agents are still conducting aggressive enforcement actions, and controversy surrounding the Epstein files persists. “No amount of transphobic fearmongering will alter the reality of the state of our union,” he said.
