COMMENTARY: We Will Not Calm Down, a Reflection on the Trump Derangement Syndrome Bill

 

A bill recently introduced in the Minnesota Senate by five Republican men — including one arrested days later for attempting to sexually exploit a minor — has sparked intense local reaction and attracted national media attention. The proposed legislation seeks to include “Trump Derangement Syndrome” in the statutory definition of mental illness. The bill characterizes the fabricated disorder as “the acute onset of paranoia…in reaction to the policies and presidencies of President Donald J. Trump,” accompanied by “hysteria.”

Similar rhetoric has been used by Republicans across the country to dismiss opponents as mentally ill. For example, Kentucky Congressman James Comer likened town halls to “therapy sessions for left-wing activists suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome” in a statement justifying his refusal to hold public meetings. A Wyoming Congresswoman referred to angry participants as succumbing to “hysteria.”

 

 

DFL leaders and community members have deemed the Minnesota GOP bill a waste of taxpayer money and a slap in the face of people with real mental health issues. I completely agree with these critiques. In the middle of Women’s History Month, I also think it is important to take the criticism a level deeper and call this bill what it is: the newest page in the American anthology of men attempting to suppress women’s political anger by trivializing it.

A March 17 Facebook post by co-sponsor Glenn Gruenhagen (District 17, which includes Carver, McLeod, Meeker, and Sibley Counties) acknowledged that the bill would never pass, and admonishes us to “Take a deep breath and calm down.”

No, Senator, we will not.

To be sure, many men oppose Trump’s policies. The “Trump Derangement Syndrome” talking point is being used to silence dissenters across the gender continuum. But with a 10-percentage point gap between men and women voting for Trump in 2024, and with numerous women’s rights under attack, the senators have joined a centuries-old tradition of men attempting to dismiss or demonize women’s emotions for political purposes.

The trope of the “hysterical woman” in the 19th and early 20th century was employed to prevent women from gaining suffrage.

Later stereotypes of the “mad housewife” and the “angry feminist” dismissed frustrated women as being mentally unstable rather than oppressed by restrictive gender roles.

This bill fits neatly within that lineage, mocking the anger of those who oppose Trump by suggesting it is a mental disorder rather than a legitimate political response.

The tactic of suppressing women’s rights in this way intersects squarely with racism. Tropes like the “Angry Black Woman” (weaponized by Trump against former Vice President Kamala Harris) have been used to dismiss and even vilify the real, lived experiences of women of color. These women face the combined weight of racism, sexism, poverty, and violence, yet their anger is time and again disparaged as pathological or dangerous.

Similarly, Indigenous women’s demands for justice for their lost sisters in the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women’s (MMIW) crisis have been ignored or downplayed by authorities for decades.

This bill is only one of a litany of MAGA-supported or -emboldened efforts to extinguish women, queer, and BIPOC voices in recent months. For example, a woman in Idaho was forcibly removed from a Republican town hall meeting after loudly expressing dissent. Government websites are being purged of everything from women’s health information to pages honoring female veterans. Navy Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first and only woman to serve on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was fired without clear cause.

The most marginalized women in our country — those without legal immigration status or on extended visa stays — are being apprehended and imprisoned in abhorrent conditions, their pleads for humane treatment ignored.

Women will not stay silent. History is repeating itself in many terrifying ways, but we have the power — and responsibility — to do what generations before us have done: transform outrage into action until justice prevails.

Alyssa Fritz is a maternal health researcher. She grew up in Central Minnesota and currently lives in the South Metro with her family.