Will Trump curb transgender rights? After election, community prepares for worst

With Donald Trump’s re-election as president, longtime LGBTQ advocate Cathy Renna has heard from people in the U.S. transgender community panicked about job security or wondering whether they might need to scrub their social media presence to avoid becoming targets of hate.

Trump made gender identity issues a focal point of his campaign, targeting transgender rights in a barrage of TV advertising, speeches and campaign rallies and indicating that elimination of those rights would be among the initial priorities of his term.

Now, the community is aswirl in a mix of emotions and discussion as it waits to see whether the president-elect intends to follow through on his plans.

“There’s a tremendous amount of apprehension and fear,” said Renna, communications director for the National LGBTQ Task Force. “It’s not going to be like his first administration. He has a different group of people around him and he’s prepared to do significant damage to our democracy – and to the LGBTQ community.”

Since early last year, Trump has outlined the gender policy changes he would make or seek as president as part of Agenda 47, his official campaign platform. Most aim to curb the rights of transgender youth, their health providers and educators.

“They definitely want to deliver on the promises they were making,” said Isa Noyola, a trans Latina who serves as deputy director of the Transgender Law Center, a national civil rights organization based in Oakland, California. “They will go in with a lot of precision and effort to deliver for their base. They know the inner workings of the bureaucracy enough to now be very targeted, and they’re not wasting time. The attacks are going to come swiftly.”

The community believes it has reason to fear another Trump term. Under his previous administration, LGBTQ+ healthcare protections were rolled back and transgender individuals were banned from military service, though that ruling was later reversed by the Biden administration.

Attacking the trans community was part of Trump’s game plan, Renna said, a hallmark of his campaign rallies and speeches. While such rhetoric appealed to Christian conservatives, it also included numerous false or outlandish statements about transgender issues.

“The transgender thing is incredible,” Trump said in an August interview with Florida-based group Moms 4 Liberty. “Think of it: Your kid goes to school and comes home a few days later with an operation. The school decides what’s going to happen with your child.” The claim was later debunked.

Earlier that month, he falsely labeled as men two female Olympic boxing gold medalists who were both born and raised as women.

“It’s not surprising that he found the community a convenient target,” Renna said. “The community is very vulnerable, and the public still needs to be educated as to who our trans and nonbinary siblings are. But the rhetoric he puts out there creates a permissible climate of hate.”

A survey conducted late last year by the Trevor Project, a national LGBTQ+ youth support agency, found that 90% of LGBTQ+ youth felt the political climate negatively affected their wellbeing. The agency announced Friday that demand for its crisis services saw a nearly 700% increase the day after the election compared to weeks prior, and some regional organizations such as Missouri’s GLO Center offered extended hours for “post-election decompression.”

“When someone says the horrific, defamatory and inaccurate things he is saying, it has an impact,” Renna said.

Jami Taylor, a professor of political science and public administration at Ohio’s University of Toledo and a trans woman, described the current atmosphere as “an existential crisis for the trans community.”

“There’s a lot of fear, and it is warranted,” Taylor said. “It’s bad, and there’s no sugarcoating that. You can’t look at people and say it’s going to be okay when you’re not sure it’s going to be okay.”

What Trump has said about gender identity

In his Agenda 47 platform, Trump says he “will revoke Joe Biden’s cruel policies” on gender affirming care “on Day One.”

Gender affirming care, endorsed by major health groups like the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics, includes using hormones to delay puberty and promote physical development that align with a child’s gender identity.

About 5% of young adults identify as transgender or nonbinary, about three times the rate of the general population, according to a Pew Research Center poll released in 2022. Data compiled by the Williams Institute at the University of California Los Angeles indicates about 300,000 youth aged 13 to 17 identity as transgender nationwide.

Among Trump’s proposals are passing laws banning what he calls “child sexual mutilation,” eliminating healthcare providers offering gender-affirming care for youth from Medicare or Medicaid eligibility and supporting private lawsuits against doctors who offer such care.

Trump said he would also push Congress to pass laws establishing male and female as the only federally recognized genders, to be assigned at birth; promote school education focused on the traditional nuclear family; and defund schools whose staff members discuss gender identity with students.

Taylor said she expects Trump to be more aggressive on transgender rights in his second term compared to his first, with gender affirming care and restrictions on transgender sports participation among the incoming administration’s priorities.

“I suspect they’re going to go significantly further based on their rhetoric,” she said.

While the transgender community has previously weathered election campaign targeting, a fundraising letter distributed this week by national group Advocates for Transgender Equality said this cycle was different given the Trump campaign’s intense focus on gender identity issues.

“He targeted our existence,” the letter read. “He targeted our rights. He promised he would continue to target trans people if he won – and we know he will keep his promise.”

Pre-election survey data collected by Data for Progress indicated 74% of Americans were turned off by anti-transgender political ads, but “an overwhelming number of candidates who ran those ads won,” Taylor said. “Winning is the ultimate metric. Correlation isn’t causality, but still, you look at the scoreboard.”

Noyola, of the Transgender Law Center, said the community “is exhausted” as a result of its use as a tool to push Trump’s agenda.

“The rhetoric and vitriol have been relentless – the rallies, the messaging, the way he’s used transgender identity as a wedge to instill fear,” she said.

Now, the mood has shifted to worry about what will happen next.

What will a Trump administration actually do?

Taylor, of the University of Toledo, said she finds Trump’s proposal to limit federal recognition of gender identities most frightening and questions whether it’s even possible given the historically state control over vital records.

“Federalism is going to come into play,” she said. “The Trump administration can’t just wave a magic wand and get rid of trans people.”

And such policy changes, she said, can be also become a liability should they go too far.

“I do think the administration runs the risk of overplaying their hand,” Taylor said. “If they go after things like identity recognition and health care for trans adults, that’s going to be harder to defend.”

In other words, while it’s one thing to wield such issues as a campaign strategy, it’s quite another to actually target a population through government policy.

“People don’t like to see other people victimized by government,” Taylor said. “Once government policy starts going after people, it starts to be less popular.”

Jen Grosshandler, executive director and co-founder of GenderCool, a Chicago-area-based national group uplifting the positive experiences of transgender youth, agreed. She believes the primary impetus for Trump’s election was the economy.

“Everyday folks do not want their elected officials trying to hold back the rights of folks raising transgender kids,” said Grosshandler, parent of an 18-year-old transgender daughter. “We know they may try to get some of this done, but there will be an inflection point where you will see everyday people say, stop focusing on this and focus on why we elected you.”

In the meantime, she said she expects to see more families of transgender youth move to Illinois.

“We’re in an extraordinarily supportive state, and we’re probably going to welcome more and more families,” Grosshandler said. “It’s really sad that that is going to be a reality. But good people are everywhere and the majority of them do not want to get up in the business of how we are raising our children. I really don’t think it behooves anyone to spend their time trying to hold back families like ours.”

Results of a Pew Research Center survey released in 2022 showed Americans closely divided on laws restricting instruction about gender identity in elementary schools, with 41% in favor and 38% opposed. About two in 10 respondents didn’t feel strongly either way.

And while 58% said they favored laws requiring trans athletes to compete on teams aligned with the sex they were assigned at birth, 64% said they opposed discriminating against trans people in jobs, housing and public spaces.

Transgender community prepares 'for the long haul'

Noyola said she is inspired by the community’s resiliency in the face of constant attack, which continued even after Trump left office as state legislatures nationwide saw hundreds of bills proposed over the last four years aimed at restricting trans rights, particularly for youth.

According to translegislation.com, 2023 marked the fourth consecutive record-breaking year for anti-trans bills considered in the U.S., including bans on gender-affirming care for youth and criminalization of physicians who provide such care.

“We will survive this administration like we did last time,” Noyola said. “Just as the Trump administration has learned, we have learned how to organize ourselves and we know the kind of stamina it requires from us for the long haul.”

Renna, of the National LGBTQ Task Force, said advocacy organizations are not naïve and have long been planning for various election scenarios.

“We’re shocked at the scope of Trump’s win, but not shocked it was possible,” she said. “How fast these things will happen, we don’t know. But as a community, we owe it to each other to be prepared.”

Renna thinks those who voted for Trump based on their wallets will soon realize the consequences of their actions.

“I think there will be voter regret,” she said. “My greatest hope is that no one election can destroy this great democracy. I think people will fight back.”

Noyola said the community already is fighting. The first Trump administration, she said, inspired a wave of trans leaders and the resistance has only grown.

“They want to see us cower and will try to weaken our movement, but if anything it’s going to bolster our organizing,” she said. “It’s called for us to show up in not just token ways.”

And despite the gloom, this week’s election brought signs of progress, Noyola said, with transgender persons making political inroads: This week, Delaware’s Sarah McBride became the first openly transgender person elected to Congress, while in Iowa, Aime Wichtendahl became the state’s first openly transgender lawmaker in a statehouse that has been hostile to transgender rights.

“We’re in all aspects of public life,” Noyola said. “Even though this administration will double down in its attacks against us, we remain unwavering. We’re not going away.”