The Trump administration is threatening the existence of transgender people. It is demonizing them, seeking to erase them from society, and preventing them from living healthy lives.
Transgender Identity Has Long Been Misunderstood
Transgender people experience a significant and persistent disconnect between the gender they experience and their assigned sex. Known as gender dysphoria, this puts one’s body at odds with one’s self. Most transgender people experience gender dysphoria when they are young, often leading to a desire to transition to the gender not assigned to them at birth.
Transgender people are not new; they have been documented across cultures for millennia and have long existed in the United States. Nor is hatred toward trans people new. In 1933, the German Institute of Sexology, a private group that researched gender identity and facilitated gender transition treatments, was destroyed by the Nazis, and its books and documents were burned in the street by youth brigades.
Importance of Gender-Affirming Health Care
Gender-affirming health care is recognized by major international and American medical associations—including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Association—as an effective treatment for gender dysphoria. Gender-affirming health care is individualized, comprehensive, monitored, and adaptive, typically involving a psychologist, an endocrinologist, and a general practitioner.
Studies have shown that gender-affirming health care decreases suicide attempts by transgender teens and improves transgender patients’ quality of life and well-being.
Trump Targets Transgender People
President Trump has attacked the transgender community from the first day of his second term, issuing four executive orders trampling transgender people’s rights.
Exclusion from Civil Rights Protection
Executive Order 14168, Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government, denies the existence of transgender people by erroneously defining the term “sex” as a person’s “immutable biological classification as male or female.” This language expressly rejects the concept of gender identity.
In enforcing sex-based distinctions, the executive order requires federal agencies to use the term “sex,” not “gender,” in all their policies and official documents. Government-issued identification—such as passports, visas, and federal employment records—must reflect the holder’s sex at birth.
Despite the lack of evidence of harm taking place in single-sex spaces by transgender women, the order mandates that these spaces, including women’s prisons and rape shelters, be designated by biological sex, not gender identity.
The order also narrows the protection of transgender people under Supreme Court case law. Even as the Supreme Court ruled that trans people cannot be discriminated against at work, the executive order asserts that they are not protected from discrimination in schools.
Baseless Dishonorable Discharge from the Military
Executive Order 14183, Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness, requires that transgender people be dishonorably discharged from the military. The order states that trans people can never meet the standards for military service strictly based on their transgender status, regardless of their service record, and categorically asserts they are dishonorable, untruthful, and undisciplined.
Deprivation of Essential Health Care
Executive Order 14187, Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation, characterizes gender-affirming health care for youth as “maiming and sterilizing” children. Contrary to research, the order maintains that “countless children soon regret that they have been mutilated.” The order requires federal agencies providing research or education grants to medical schools and hospitals to ensure that they cease providing gender-affirming health care to youth.
Exclusion from Sports in Schools
Executive Order 14201, Keeping Men Out of Women's Sports, seeks to prevent transgender women and girls from participating in sports in public schools and universities that receive federal funding. This overly broad ban applies to transgender girls who have never undergone male puberty and even includes sports like darts, pool, fishing, and chess, where muscle mass and strength play no role. Parents and school administrators have expressed a legitimate concern shared by many about competitive fairness in certain sports—particularly when transgender women who have experienced male puberty may retain physical advantages in strength and size that could impact safety and equity in high-contact or strength-based events. However, demonizing transgender young people as the administration has done, instead of having important fact-based discussions, is not acceptable.
Trump’s Orders Tie Directly to Project 2025
Laying the groundwork for Trump's executive orders, the administration's 900-page authoritarian playbook—Project 2025—calls for excluding gender identity and gender equity from civil rights protection and enforcement, as well as prohibiting transgender people from serving in the military on the grounds that they are incapable of meeting the demands of military service.
The president's executive orders on transgender people mirror Project 2025, which cruelly characterizes the “omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology and sexualization of children” as “pornography,” and states that those who support transgender people are “child predators and misogynistic exploiters of women” who “should be imprisoned.” Project 2025 also says that educators and public librarians who allow books about transgender people in their libraries “should be classed as registered sex offenders.”
Project 2025’s Foreword states that “the noxious tenets of gender ideology…poison our children, who are being taught…to deny the very creatureliness that inheres in being human and consists in [sic] accepting the givenness of our nature as men or women.”
Echoes of McCarthyism
Trans activists played a critical role in the 1969 Stonewall Uprising that catalyzed the fight for LGBTQ+ rights. In February, the administration erased references to transgender people from the federal website for the Stonewall National Monument in New York City.
Like gay people and communists in the 1950s, trans people have been dishonorably expelled from the military with a code labeling them a national security risk, despite years of exemplary service. The designation appears on job applications and government forms and jeopardizes their ability to get jobs requiring a security clearance.
The administration has threatened to fine and withhold medical and research funding from hospitals and universities that provide necessary gender-affirming health care.
Some Institutions Cave; Others Fight Back
Reaction to Trump's assault on transgender rights has been mixed. Some hospitals, including Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, have capitulated to Trump’s demand to halt gender-affirming health care for patients under 19 years of age. Columbia University signed an agreement that included a sports ban and a dormitory ban for transgender students. The University of Pennsylvania agreed to vacate wins by transgender athletes in sporting competitions. Brown University agreed to all the above, as well as a ban on transgender students in bathrooms—a policy that could violate state civil rights law.
In New York, which has strong trans legal protections, Attorney General Letitia James has encouraged gender clinics to stay open. Denver Public Schools and Chicago Public Schools have defied Trump’s U.S. Department of Education and will continue to allow trans youth to use the bathroom of their gender. Five Virginia public school districts have done the same and have sued the administration to maintain access to federal funding.
Why This Matters
Civil rights, a cornerstone of our democracy, are critical to protection against discrimination. They are at the core of the guarantee of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in the Declaration of Independence and of equal protection of the law in the U.S. Constitution.
The assault on one minority in America threatens the civil rights of others. When our progression toward a freer and fairer society is reversed, our democracy is fundamentally eroded.
Trump's dehumanizing attacks on transgender people jeopardize the health care they depend on and erase them from history and society.
What's worse, erasing and dehumanizing people pave the way to committing atrocities against them. If it can happen to one vulnerable group, it can happen to any of us.
Ellen R. Hornstein is an attorney who recently retired after 35 years of service from the United States Department of Agriculture, Office of the General Counsel. For most of her career she represented the United States Forest Service. Ellen Hornstein is also a volunteer with Lawyers Defending American Democracy.
