State of the Trans Union
by Jay Wu and Cerys Beckwith
This evening, President Donald Trump will give a State of the Union address — his first since taking office just over a year ago. White House officials have told the press that the theme of tonight’s speech will be “building a safe, strong, proud America.”
Appeals to safety, strength, and pride likely ring hollow for many Americans. Under the Trump administration, the United States has become far less safe for some Americans over the last year. Transgender people, immigrants, Muslims, people of color, and women — just to name a few — have lost protections or been targeted by discriminatory policies.
The expected content of the President’s speech is no more likely to resonate with multiple portions of the population.
What the President is expected to address
Rolling back protections for consumers and patients
Politico reports that the President is likely to celebrate his “ongoing deregulatory agenda” — the rollbacks of federal rules like those that protect consumers and patients from being ripped off, abused, and discriminated against. Far from being a cause for celebration, deregulation is harming people.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)is a case study in the harms of deregulation: in April 2017, the President and Congress overturned a HHS regulation that protected Planned Parenthood and other family planning clinics from funding discrimination by states. As well as providing reproductive health care, Planned Parenthood is one of the nation’s largest providers of care for transgender people.
The next month, HHS also announced its intent to roll back regulations saying that the Affordable Care Act’s nondiscrimination provisions protect transgender people. While the agency has yet to take action on these specific regulations, it has issued a proposal that would promote discrimination by health care providers in a different way — by allowing providers to refuse care to patients as long as they can cite religion or morals as an excuse.
This new proposal also demonstrates the hypocrisy of the President’s supposed commitment to deregulation: his administration is in fact content to issue new regulations as long as they fit with an anti-civil rights agenda.
Immigration and “national security”
The Trump administration has focused on immigration for much of the last year. Most recently, the President and both parties in Congress have been engaged in a struggle over a path to citizenship for Dreamers — people who came to the United States at a young age and are undocumented.
The President created this crisis when he decided to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program last year. Since then, over 120 Dreamers per day have lost DACA status and are now at risk of detention and deportation. The President has continued to let the situation play out, rejecting a bipartisan deal several weeks ago and inflaming the debate with vulgar, racist comments.
While President Trump has made vague promises of a resolution to this situation with “heart,” his ugly rhetoric and actions clearly indicate that he is on the side of spending billions on an unnecessary border wall, limiting immigration from countries that are not predominantly white, and tearing apart families and communities by revoking protections for immigrants who are already in the United States.
President Trump may use the State of the Union to simply give a generic push for finding “common ground on immigration reform” — or he may double down on his push for cruel immigration policies. Regardless of what he says, it is important to remember that as the President refuses to sign the Dream Act into law, tens of thousands of LGBTQ Dreamers are at risk of being deported back to countries they do not know and where being LGBTQ is met with violence or even death.
Judicial nominations
One of President Trump’s major accomplishments early last year was beginning to reshape the courts by filling late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s seat by appointing current Justice Neil Gorsuch and confirming more new federal appeals judges than any other president in his first year.
While President Trump’s anti-LGBT and anti-civil rights agenda has faced many setbacks in the courts — such as rulings against his transgender military ban — he considers filling federal courts with appointees who will continue to advance that agenda long beyond his time in office as a signature achievement.
Though Jeff Mateer, the infamous nominee who called transgender children proof of “Satan’s plan,” was withdrawn from the long list of judicial nominees, many others have opposed policies and protections that would keep transgender Americans from discrimination.
Kyle Duncan has spent years arguing that federal law gives no protection to transgender students; Matthew Kacsmaryk makes similar arguments, further opposing ACA provisions that protect transgender and gender nonconforming people in healthcare; and Stephen Schwartz has fought for laws that would restrict transgender people from using public restrooms.
Each of these judicial nominees is being rushed through, along with extremist nominees for other positions, such as Eric Dreiband for the role of assistant attorney general for the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division. Many of these nominees nominees lack basic qualifications or have shown themselves incapable of fairness toward LGBT and other communities, showing the Trump administration’s commitment to holding back civil rights for years to come.
What the President will likely avoid addressing
Ban on open service by transgender troops
Despite how eager President Trump originally was to ban trans people from the military “in any capacity,” it is unlikely that he will address this topic in tonight’s speech.
In early July, President Trump tweeted to let the nation know that he wanted to ban trans people from enlisting in the military. After attempting to spread false information on the cost and impact of allowing trans people to serve, the Trump administration has seen heavy pushback from courts around the country. To date, four courts have put a temporary hold on the ban, and trans Americans are now openly enlisting in the U.S. military for the first time. But the Trump administration is still defending the ban in court, and promising a new “study” on how it will implement the ban.
The President is bound to leave out these obvious setbacks for his administration. Congressman Joe Kennedy (D-MA), however, who will be delivering the Democratic response to the President’s speech this evening, may address the topic. At the very least, he is bringing it up through his actions by inviting a trans service member, Army Staff Sgt. Patricia King, to be his guest to the State of the Union.
Keep an eye on NCTE’s Twitter account tonight, January 30, 2018, for live reactions to the State of the Union, beginning at 9 p.m. ET.
Jay Wu is the Communications Manager at NCTE.
Cerys Beckwith is an intern at NCTE.
