When President Donald Trump first took office in 2017, it wasn’t self-evident that the transgender community, in particular, had anything to fear.
Prior to his presidency, Trump had said largely positive, or at least tolerant, things about LGBTQ+ people. He said he had no problem hiring gay people and supported amending the 1964 Civil Rights Act to explicitly bar discrimination based on sexual orientation. He ended a ban on trans participation in his beauty pageants. He opposed North Carolina’s bathroom bill. He said his friend, transgender reality star Caitlyn Jenner, could use “any bathroom she chooses” at Trump Tower. He portrayed himseld as a “friend” to LGBTQ+ people.
However, in his first term, he passed several anti-trans measures, including banning transgender people from serving in the military and removing nondiscrimination protections for trans people in health care and health insurance.
In his 2024 presidential campaign, the rhetoric against “radical gender ideology” and “transgender insanity” grew more hostile. A frequently-run Trump television ad claimed that “Kamala is for they/them. Trump is for you.” And as his second term has progressed, Trump’s attacks on transgender rights have become increasingly virulent.
Today, Explained host Noel King spoke to Kate Sosin, who reports on LGBTQ+ issues for The 19th, about how the Trump administration’s anti-trans policies are affecting transgender Americans.
Below is an excerpt of their conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full podcast, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.
This is President Trump’s second term, and a lot has changed between 2016 and today. How would you describe Trump’s attitude towards trans people this time around?
Trump is generally viewed as the most anti-LGBTQ+ president in history, and a lot of that has to do with his approach to transgender rights. When he first got into office in 2017, there were still some questions about how he was going to approach LGBTQ+ issues, and he made a number of anti-trans moves in his first term. But this time, he really campaigned on anti-trans issues, and he’s made them a staple of his administration.
I think it’s pretty clear that what we’re seeing is a backlash to increased visibility in rights for transgender people and also the result of marriage equality. Republicans lost on marriage equality. It’s now been 10 years. It’s the law of the land, and it’s overwhelmingly accepted by the American public. So then, the focus turned to transgender issues, both for advocates who wanted to see transgender issues and transgender rights take center stage and also for people who are against trans issues. We saw a lot of bathroom bills in different states and cities, and those failed. And then we saw attention turn to sports bans and health care bans, and that’s where we saw some traction start to form right around 2020.
That debate in 2020 brings us up to the present day, where, as you said, President Trump campaigned, in many cases explicitly, on anti-trans rhetoric. What has President Trump done specifically this term?
There’s four different buckets or categories that we can sort things into. We have the general erasure of trans people from government and public life. We have him limiting health care access specifically for trans youth and revoking federal funding for medical providers that offer it. We have the reinstatement of the transgender military ban. And then, denying transgender people passports.
What do you mean by erasure of trans people?
On day one, Trump signed this executive order stating that his administration will recognize just two genders: male and female. And that proclamation pretty much governs everything that comes next, because he’s trying to scrub trans people from public life. So, we see it in school censorship. He directs the federal government to eliminate funding for schools that promote “indoctrination” based on “gender ideology.” And he signs an executive order asking the Department of Justice to help ban trans girls from sports. We see the NCAA falling in line with that. Mentions of trans people are purged from government websites. Mentions of transgender people are removed from the Stonewall National Monument. And so, anywhere that we have mentions of the existence of transgender people that the federal government has control over, they seem to be moving swiftly to eradicate the existence of transgender people to move freely or to exist within the public sphere.
We made an episode earlier this year about the military ban on trans people being reinstated. This was a fairly blunt action by the administration.
Transgender people are twice as likely as their cisgender peers to serve in the military historically. The military is the largest employer of anyone in the United States. So, this military ban represents the largest layoff of trans people in history. There are an estimated 4,200 trans people in service right now, according to the Pentagon — or there at least were. And in January, Trump announced that he was going to bar trans people from service. We saw lawsuits aiming to block that ban, but in May, the Supreme Court held up the ban and these troops were given a deadline to voluntarily separate from service. Those who haven’t are now being removed.
You mentioned also limiting access to gender affirming care. This is something that in some cases, as I understand it, the states have control over. How is the Trump administration limiting this care?
You’re absolutely right. Before Trump took office, 27 states had moved to block gender affirming care for youth. And all those laws have happened in the last five years; this has been just really quick. All major medical associations recommend this care for youth, but it’s already really hard to get. Some families have to travel really great distances, because it is specialized care, and there are these bans. Trump’s order takes away funding from hospitals and clinics that provide it. Twenty-one hospitals and clinics have stopped providing that care nationwide, so we’ve seen a great decrease. Some states have fought back. In California, for example, the attorney general sent a letter reminding hospitals that they were required by state law to continue those services. But not everyone has restored those services. Some, like Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles, have not resumed that care. Others have continued to provide it.
Has the Trump administration been able to change how adults are able to receive care?
As of now, no. But there is a fear around this. And one of the points about this comes down to a case that we heard from the Supreme Court last year, which was the Skrmetti case. The Supreme Court basically ruled in Skrmetti that transgender care is special. It is not like other protected care. If we say that trans kids can’t get the kind of care that their doctors recommend, it doesn’t bode well for transgender adults.
And then, you mentioned a difficulty getting passports for trans people. What’s been going on there?
When you apply for your passport, you mark male, female — or recently, you had the option to mark a gender marker X, which is either unspecified or non-binary. The Trump administration was rejecting all gender marker changes, so you couldn’t update your gender marker, which meant a lot of people were unsafe, and in some cases, they were seizing the documents of transgender people and not sending them back. And this caused a lot of panic and confusion, because a lot of trans people wanted to flee the country. There was a lawsuit from the ACLU, they won an injunction, and as of July, trans people have been able to update their passports. There is a fear, however, that this is temporary. So, the advice has been, if you are trans and you need a passport, you should apply for one right away, because this is changing so quickly, and it’s uncertain how this will play out.
How much harder have the last 10 months in the second Trump administration made life for trans people? What are you hearing?
I have heard a number of parents of trans kids who have just left the country or are preparing to. They can’t access the health care that their kids need. They are afraid of violence directed at their kids, and they feel like even if their state is safe at the moment, it won’t be much longer. And the fear that I hear from my trans sources and friends is just really profound, that this country is becoming unlivable for trans people, and that seems like it’s by design.
