cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/25441

Senator Hawley // CSPAN

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Tens of thousands of government workers waited with bated breath to see when they’d see their next paycheck as the partial government shutdown stretched from January into February. Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri used this time, and taxpayer dollars, to attack Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos over what he felt was a saturation of “transgender ideology” in children’s shows, all via a Senate hearing.“Almost half of your content for minor children promotes a transgender ideology,” Hawley barked at the visibly befuddled executive. Hawley did not provide evidence for this claim nor did his office respond when Erin in the Morning asked for the source of this statistic.

It’s also of note that buzzwords like “gender ideology” and “transgender ideology” are known to be far-right dog whistles used to repress women, gay people, and trans people worldwide, as per Human Rights Watch.Sarandos emphasized that the company features a wide variety of children’s shows and called Hawley’s characterizations “inaccurate.”

It’s not the first time Netflix has become the subject of public outcry—on both sides of the political spectrum—over its content, some of which happens to include trans people. In 2021, trans rights groups chastised the media giant for platforming Dave Chappelle’s comedy special, in which he took aim at the trans community.

Meanwhile, in October 2025, Netflix was subject to a boycott campaign called by far-right agitator Chaya Raichik (aka Libs of Tiktok) and anti-trans billionaire Elon Musk, who frequently uses his platform on X to stoke hate against trans people.

Far-right pressures have indeed seen some success in recent years in an effort to wipe LGBTQ+ representation from media. In 2022, Disney+ Junior Mode removed the wildly popular Owl House, potentially due to its queer representation. In 2024, the platform removed references to a transgender character’s gender identity in the Pixar series*Win or Lose.*

This hearing was supposed to be about a proposed merger between Netflix and Warner Bros., two of the most powerful media conglomerates already. It was titled: “Examining the Competitive Impact of the Proposed Netflix-Warner Brothers Transaction.”

One would imagine such a hearing would be more focused on, say, antitrust laws, but no. Republicans turned it into an opportunity for a HUAC-style shakedown, where they made a spectacle of soundbites to grill Netflix for being too “woke.”

Republicans called any programming with trans characters “sexualized” and therefore inappropriate for children. Of course, children’s programming that actively promotes the cisgender, heterosexual nuclear family is apparently not “indoctrination.”

“We have no political agenda,” Sarandos insisted. “We have a great deal of programming on Netflix, left, right and center.”

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