In Texas, a heated political battle is taking place over care provided to young transgender people, with Gov. Greg Abbott taking a leading role.

The story of this confrontation began, improbably, with the contentious divorce of a suburban couple from Dallas, and a nasty custody battle over their daughter.

We look at how a domestic dispute precipitated one of the fiercest political clashes in the country, and return to yesterday’s story about a trans teenager, Grayson, and his mother to explore the impact of this clash.

Guests: J. David Goodman, The New York Times’s Houston bureau chief, covering Texas; and Azeen Ghorayshi, a reporter covering the intersection between sex, gender and science for The Times.

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Background reading: 

• How a custody battle in the Dallas suburbs amplified a growing conservative cause and helped fuel a move to treat transgender medicine as abuse.

For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. 

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