The Trump Administration’s Steady Campaign Against Transgender People
The Trump administration has been quickly — and often quietly — stripping the rights of transgender people. In fewer than 100 days, Trump’s rollback of social progress made by the transgender community over the past two decades is spreading across the federal government, targeting everyone from trans public school students to LGBT elders, and preventing the nearly over two million transgender people in every state and territory from living, working, and fully participating in society.
As a candidate, Trump boasted of his support for the LGBT community. Since taking office, however, his actions have not even come close to matching his rhetoric. One need only to look at his picks for key administration jobs. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Secretary for Health and Human Services Tom Price, Secretary for Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson, and most recently, Secretary of the Army nominee Mark Green: this partial list is a litany of people who have called transgender people everything from “absurd” to “evil.”
Given these new agency heads’ records, it’s hardly a surprise that the departments they run have already acted against LGBT Americans, either by getting rid of measures that ensure transgender people are treated fairly, or erasing mentions of LGBT people from websites and surveys.
Most people know about the Departments of Education and Justice withdrawing Title IX guidance to schools, which helped to ensure equal opportunities for transgender students. But other government agencies have taken smaller actions that nonetheless render transgender Americans more vulnerable. For example, the Department of Housing and Urban Development removed from its website resources for transgender people about emergency shelter services.
At first glance, these actions appear small enough to fly under the radar. But the National Center for Transgender Equality and other advocacy and civil rights organizations — and, increasingly, media outlets — are keeping tabs.
That’s why we’ve released our Discrimination Administration page today. It’s a repository of the Trump Administration’s anti-LGBT actions in just the first 100 days in office. Given the pace and degree of their assaults, we will continue to update it over the next 100 days and beyond.
The list isn’t limited to actions that explicitly target LGBT people. We also include other egregious actions, such as defunding Planned Parenthood, which is one of the largest providers of healthcare to transgender people, as well as attacks on other groups in the United States. It’s imperative that we continue fighting to protect the tremendous political, social, and legal gains made by the trans community over the past few decades.
Be sure to like, subscribe and follow NCTE on Twitter, Facebook and Medium to stay informed, and to ensure your voices are heard every time we issue the call to fight back!
