It’s not just because POTATUS uses it all of the time.
It’s because the agenda of pushing transgenderism, asking for pronouns, and everything else associated with it is working in the public sphere. Because you’re not allowed to just call a group “guys” or “ladies” anymore.
Anyone else irritated by this?
Yeah, you're overreacting. It's always been used in some regions more than others. And what else do you call a mixed male-female group of people? It's a fine word by itself, it'll be fine later. Y'all and all y'all work sometimes, but we don't want them city folk to appropriate that neither. Even if it's a passive aggressive defensive language mechanism, it's still small potatoes.