She’s a Republican, as are most of the people in her hometown, a rural community where about 54 percent of voters cast their ballots for Donald Trump in 2016. Evans is also transgender, as are about 1 million other adult Americans, according to rough estimates. Few combine the two identities. Evans is believed to be the lone openly transgender elected Republican — “my cross to bear,” as she puts it.
The tension involved in her unusual profile became acute over the weekend, when the New York Times reported that the Trump administration is weighing a move to define gender as strictly biological, denying the very basis of transgender identity.