Kudos to New York City Democratic candidate for mayor, Zohran Mamdani. Just a few days ago, he released his newest campaign ad. At a time when politicians from both parties shy away from defending the human rights of transgender people, for fear it will cost them votes, Mamdani prioritizes moral clarity over popularity, as an outspoken defender of transgender rights. During the presidential campaign of 2024, political candidates muted their voices in response to Donald Trump’s flagrant attacks on transgender people. Winning was the goal and transgender issues were a liability. We know how the story ends.
From his first day in office Trump declared war on the rights of transgender people. Pundits and politicians refer to the erasing of marginalized groups as the “new culture war.” That’s a euphemism that ignores a deadly war against those who are deemed by the Trump administration as not fully human. His cabinet, Congress, and the Supreme Court, like lemmings, have supported his anti-trans policies, while too many Democrats and others have passively acquiesced with their silence, including the media. On Jan. 20, Trump signed a series of executive orders entitled, “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government,” proclaiming that, “It is the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female. These sexes are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality.” Life has never been a proverbial bowl of cherries for many who identify as transgender, gender non-conforming or intersex, but a flourishing trans rights movement had been making gains prior to Jan. 20, 2025. On Jan. 20, 2021, then President Joe Biden signed the first of many executive orders affording protections to the LGBTQI+ segment of the U.S. population. Biden’s first executive order on the topic was signed on Jan. 20, 2021, titled Executive Order on Preventing and Combating Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity or Sexual Orientation, also known as Executive Order 13988. With the stroke of his pen, Trump, on his first day in office, terminated all of Biden’s protections for transgender people.
So much has been done in such a short time to try to exclude trans children and adults from fully participating in society. State and local governments have jumped on the bandwagon to eliminate basic human rights for trans people. The list below addresses executive orders and legislation aimed to erase trans identity.
- Trans people banned from serving in the military
- Gender affirming medical care for minors outlawed
- Compulsory misgendering in schools
- Defunding of LGBT+ non-profits and university programs
- Blocks on obtaining passports
- Forcing trans women into male prisons, where male guards can enforce pat-down searches on trans women, and are deprived of access to gender-affirming medications
- Increased bullying, threats, harassment, job loss
- Restrictions on teaching about gender identity
- Threats to withhold Federal funding for schools allowing trans students to use restrooms and locker rooms that match their identity
- Trans athletes, particularly female trans athletes, banned from team sports
- Scrubbing of DEI-related terms from federal agency websites and documents
Transgender immigrants are languishing in detention facilities after being abducted by ICE. Transgender care requirements have largely been eliminated, while the Trump administration closed the Department of Homeland Security office that reviews complaints from detained people. ICE has stopped reporting biweekly congressionally mandated data on transgender prisoners in order to “limit oversight and data transparency.” The last such report was published Jan. 17, 2025. Rendered invisible to the outside world, these human beings are risking physical abuse, rape, mental illness, and even death in concentration camp settings that “enable ICE to continue to harm people behind closed doors with little accountability.”
And let’s not forget the U.S. Supreme Court, where the outcome of three cases impacts the LGBTQ+ community. Chiles vs. Salazar will determine whether currently banned conversion therapy, a discredited practice designed to change sexual orientation or gender identity, violates the right to free speech of therapists who practice it, even though many of these so-called therapists aren’t licensed.
Trump vs. Orr could potentially reinstate Trump’s executive order to bar transgender, nonbinary, and intersex people from updating their passports with accurate sex markers, requiring instead that their passports indicate their sex at birth. This would potentially overturn a federal judge’s injunction against Trump’s executive order.
Little v. Hecox and West Virginia v. BPJ “challenges state-mandated anti-trans sports bans on the grounds that they violate Title IX and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.”
United States vs. Skrmetti, decided in June 2025, upheld a Tennesse ban on gender-affirming care for minors, paving the way for other states to impose such bans.
The war against transgender people is raging, with no ceasefire in sight. It’s not surprising that transgender people are fleeing the U.S. to seek asylum in countries that might allow them to live as themselves without persecution. U.S. residents also are fleeing their home states and moving to states that are welcoming of transgender people. Parents are sometimes sending their trans children to live with relatives in places where they will be safe and their gender identities respected.
The unrelenting oppression of transgender people by the Trump administration is an affront to the dignity of all human beings. Please be an advocate for transgender rights with those you know, with your local, state, and federal legislators, and with your media sources. Consider subscribing to Erin In The Morning. Erin is a trans journalist, who reports on news impacting transgender people. Her reporting is an oasis in the transgender news desert. (erininthemorning.com)
Sara Weinberger lives in Easthampton.