What the Trump?!

For the past several years, we've seen attempts to define what “sex” is in states across the country in an effort to harm trans and nonbinary people and restrict our participation in public life.

• On January 20, 2025, the very first day of his second term, Trump signed an executive order that attempts to define “sex” by whatever sex an embryo had “at conception,” which is completely inaccurate.
  • This order incorrectly redefines the word "sex" in federal programs and services to refer only to biological characteristics “at conception," and falsely alleges that those characteristics are all that define someone’s sex.
  • This executive order is not rooted in science—it is an attempt to erase transgender and nonbinary people and force everyone to conform to outdated sex and race stereotypes that harm everyone, especially trans, nonbinary, and intersex people, and all women and girls of color.   
  • This framing comes from anti-abortion language and erases the existence of intersex people—another example of how our struggles for the bodily autonomy of pregnant, intersex, trans, and nonbinary people are deeply linked.   
  • The goal of this order is to deny trans and gender-nonconforming people essential services, spread anti-scientific falsehoods, and force people into restrictive gender stereotypes.
• The effects of this executive order have cascaded across government programs, and are increasing hostility against trans and gender-nonconforming people in public life.
  • The Administration has also enacted policies that limit women’s ability to participate in the workforce and overturned protections against sex discrimination for federal contractors.

• The Trump Administration continued its government-wide imposition of anti-trans ideology by proposing a rule that would consolidate power over federal grants, and other financial awards to nonprofits and state and local governments. If finalized, the rule would give political appointees broad discretion to block funding for programs that affirm the existence and equality of transgender people.

Thanks to the tireless work of advocates, trans people had been more easily able to get accurate passports since 2010. And since 2022, X gender markers have been available for trans and nonbinary people who want them as an alternative to M or F gender markers.

• After Trump’s January 20 executive order purporting to define “sex,” the State Department promptly stopped granting requests for new or updated passports and other federal identity documents with gender markers that don’t conform to a person’s assigned sex at birth. This has led to intense confusion and fear for trans and nonbinary travelers. 
  • Trans people’s previous gender marker changes are being reversed back to their sex assigned at birth upon passport renewal. 
  • In a change intended to erase nonbinary and intersex individuals, the agency is no longer issuing passports with an X marker as of January 30, 2025.   
  • Secretary of State Marco Rubio instructed consular officials to ensure that visas reflect assigned sex at birth. 
• The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) now only issues immigration documents with a sex marker of M or F based on the holder’s original birth certificate. USCIS also removed the X gender marker option across all USCIS documents and replaces the term gender with sex. 
• Unfortunately, in November 2025, the Supreme Court allowed this anti-trans passport policy to be enforced–but the fight is still ongoing in the lower courts.  

FIGHTING BACK

• At A4TE, we rallied our community to send over 62,000 comments to the State Department to tell them that these changes are unacceptable. 
• Along with our partners at the Transgender Law Center, Democracy Forward, and Arnold and Porter LLP, we have invited trans and nonbinary immigrants and visitors encountering problems with visas or other immigration benefits to contact us. 
• Advocates have been fighting back in the courts, especially in Orr v. Trump, one of the main cases brought by the ACLU to protect trans folks’ passports. On May 6, 2026, oral arguments were held in the district court as the plaintiffs seek relief for the trans people who have been affected by this harmful policy.  
• Multiple countries have issued travel advisories urging caution for trans people who might be coming to the US.  

This administration has specifically attacked any programs related to trans healthcare or health research, creating a climate of intimidation and fear for healthcare providers and patients across the nation. Most recently, in 2026, we have seen an alarming escalation of attacks against hospitals which provide healthcare for trans youth, with the Department of Justice serving both criminal and civil subpoenas as they try to obtain protected and private health information of our young people.

• An executive order issued on January 20, 2025 directed federal agencies to restrict access to affirming medical care for trans people in federal custody, including in prisons and immigration detention.
• Soon after, another order was issued on January 28, 2025, which also threatened funding for health care providers who treat trans youth. Multiple hospitals stopped offering gender-affirming care to trans youth under the age of 19.

  • However, because executive orders do not have the force of law, many proceeded to restart care.

• Health information about transgender people was deleted from government websites.

• Trump has named numerous anti-trans figures to hold positions of leadership at the Department of Health and Human Services. 

• Since the beginning of the administration, Trump appointees began cancelling research grants focused on, or merely inclusive of, transgender and LGBTQI+ health.

• Commissioned via Executive Order, the Department of Health and Human Services released a heavily biased and poorly researched “report” which promotes inflicting deeply unscientific, discredited, and unethical practices on trans youth – all with the goal of forcing them to stop identifying publicly as trans.

• Throughout the spring and summer of 2025, the Centers of Medicare and Medicaid Services sent multiple communications to providers intended to intimidate them into discontinuing trans care for youth.  

• In April 2025, the DOJ distributed an internal memo to set the stage for an aggressive push to restrict and eliminate access to gender-affirming care where it remains lawful. This inflammatory and animus-laden memo describes being transgender and supporting transgender people as a “sociological disease.”

• In June 2025, the Supreme Court decided in US v. Skrmetti to uphold Tennessee’s ban on transition-related health care for trans youth. 
• In July 2025, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), hosted a day-long symposium on trans youth care without any actual experts. They then launched an alarming effort to attack the field of gender-affirming care as an “unfair and deceptive practice.”

• On the same day as this event, the DOJ announced it had sent subpoenas to at least 20 providers of gender affirming care, seeking access to highly sensitive and protected health information about young patients and their families.

• In September of 2025, the DOJ proposed legislation to Congress intending to restrict access to gender-affirming care by creating an extreme private right of action against providers. This would put providers at risk of frivolous civil lawsuits, and was masked as supporting people who detransition—which remains incredibly rare.

• In December 2025, HHS Secretary RFK Jr. published a “declaration” making a number of false claims about trans healthcare and claiming that medical professionals who provide this care for young people are not following best medical practice.
  • The agency then attempted to enforce this document by threatening hospitals in multiple states – including Colorado, Minnesota, and Washington–that provide much-needed care for trans young people. The document also suggested – contrary to existing law – that HHS has the authority to exclude providers and hospitals from Medicaid and Medicare programs if they provide such care. 

• In December 2025, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) began sending “warning letters” to manufacturers and sellers of chest binders, based on bizarre claims that these garments are somehow "medical devices.” 

• In December of 2025, CMS proposed two rules intended to block federal funds from covering any gender-affirming medical care for youth—and to prohibit hospitals providing this care from receiving any federal funding. This would force hospitals to choose between providing essential care or losing vital funding. 

• In December of 2025, the HHS Office of Civil Rights proposed a rule to modify regulations that define disability in Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act and exclude gender dysphoria from the definition. If finalized, this rule would do enormous harm to trans people living in prisons who are trying to access medically necessary care. 

• In February of 2026, the Bureau of Prisons established a policy intended to forcibly detransition trans people living in prisons. 

• As of February 2026, at least 40 hospitals have stopped providing medically necessary puberty-delaying medications and hormone therapy to young trans people. Several clinics have cited federal threats and the weaponization of the Inspector General’s office at HHS–which is supposed to investigate actual fraud and mismanagement, not shut down safe and necessary healthcare.  

• From April to June, 2026, we’ve seen an alarming escalation in attacks on hospitals providing much-needed care to trans youth. The administration has sent over 20 civil subpoenas to hospitals. These are dangerous attempts by the administration to threaten and surveil gender-affirming care providers and patients, making this life-saving care even harder to access.  

• Throughout 2026, HHS has reversed or removed a multitude of forms and policies intended to prevent discrimination against transgender and gender diverse people in health care settings. 

• In April of 2026 ACF’s Family and Youth Services Bureau and Administration on Children, Youth, and Families announced their intention to remove sections of the “Runaway and Homeless Youth (RHY) Program”—including regulations that prohibited the practice of so-called conversion “therapy” in programs for homeless youth.  

• Throughout the first half of 2026, the administration revised the annual program evaluation report criteria to remove “gender identity” from relevant information collection lists. 

• In May 2026, the FDA proposed a rule to revise numerous regulations to replace the word “gender” with “sex.” This could seriously impact how the experiences of trans patients are reflected in clinical trials, how safety issues are reported, and more.

FIGHTING BACK

• In February 2025, a lawsuit was filed against the administration, PFLAG v. Trump, on behalf of trans youth and their families. They won an injunction to stop the January 28 executive order from being carried out while the court case proceeds. 
• In March 2025, three incarcerated trans women filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of over 2,000 trans inmates across the nation whose health care and basic safety are threatened by this policy. 
• When the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) proposed a rule that would prohibit states from requiring coverage for gender-affirming care as part of their Essential Health Benefits under the Affordable Care Act, Advocates for Trans Equality collected over 9,000 comments to make sure that trans voices were heard as we fight to protect our health care. 
• To fight back against a proposed budget that would strip Medicaid funding for gender affirming care, A4TE rallied the community to send over 20,000 emails to Congress in support of trans health care. 
• Lambda Legal, alongside other partners, has sued the National Institutes of Health over the termination of research and grants, which would have an extremely negative effect on LGBTQI+ health overall. In August 2025, a federal court in Maryland issued a preliminary injunction blocking the NIH’s attempt to end those grants, ruling that such actions unlawfully discriminated against LGBTQI+ health researchers.  
• Following RKF Jr’s “declaration,” 21 states and the District of Columbia states have sued HHS, laying out how the agency’s actions appear to violate federal law.  
• On January 6, 2026, the states reached an agreement with HHS stating that the agency cannot tell providers that they are excluded from Medicare and Medicaid before a federal court has had the opportunity to weigh in on whether or not this document is legal.  
• On March 19, a federal judge in Oregon vacated this “declaration,” noting that the administration’s actions regularly go against the principles of the rule of law. 
  • “That notion that ‘I will go forward, issue a declaration and see if we can get away with it,’” said Judge Kasubhai, “is not a principle of governance that adheres to the overarching commitment to the democratic public that requires the rule of law to be regarded and respected and honored as sacred.”
• The Rhode Island Child Advocate, who is responsible for the well-being of children in state care, filed to quash the subpoena that the DOJ was trying to enforce in front of a Texas judge, explaining that trans children deserve to have their private medical records protected. The subpoena was quashed, but the hospital is now going to provide some anonymized data to the Texas court. For now, this information will only be seen by the court, and not Trump’s DOJ, but the related cases are still ongoing.  
  • Multiple families of trans youth have now filed class action suits to block the DOJ from accessing their private medical records, arguing that having this personal information turned over would be unlawful, invasive, and harmful. 
  • A number of courts have agreed that the administration lacks any lawful basis for seeking the records, and is only pursuing them because they disapprove of trans healthcare. 
• It is vitally important that health care providers continue providing affirming care to trans, nonbinary, and intersex patients. Multiple federal nondiscrimination laws are still in place protecting our access to health care and health insurance. Our care is lifesaving, and it must be protected.

• During his first days in office, Trump signed an Executive Order that would require schools to essentially deny the very existence of transgender people. It would ban any federally funded educational institutions from respecting the identities of trans and gender-diverse students, blocking them from using the correct restroom or participating in school sports.  
  • Dangerously, it would compel administrators and educators to inform a student’s parents or guardian if the student requests to be referred to with a different name or pronoun—ignoring that student’s wishes, which could put the student at risk of harm.  
  • The order also requires schools to teach so-called “patriotic education,” censoring our nation’s history related to race, gender, sexism, homophobia, and related injustices. 
• On March 20, 2025, Trump issued an executive order purporting to abolish the entire Department of Education, which he does not have the power to do. However, Linda McMahon, the current Secretary of Education, has made it clear that she supports radically shrinking the agency.  
  • As of early 2026, over 90% of the staff of the department’s Office of Civil Rights—previously a crucial resource for transgender students and their families—have now been fired, leaving millions of children without necessary enforcement of their civil rights protections. 

  • As a result of firing most staff and prioritizing politically motivated investigations, the Education Department has essentially ceased investigating actual complaints of discrimination and harassment. They are now dismissing 90% of complaints without review. 

• Since Trump resumed office, the Education Department and the Department of Justice has weaponized their enforcement power against schools and state and local education systems that support their transgender students. They have initiated lawsuits and investigations that are intended to intimidate. These include, but are not limited to:  

  • Investigating Smith College for admitting transgender women.  

  • Investigating a New Hampshire school district for their trans-inclusive restroom policy. 

  • Claiming that a Colorado school system violated Title IX by adopting trans-inclusive restroom and athletics policies.  

  • Alleging that the California Department of Education’s policies and practices protecting the privacy of transgender students violated federal law. 

• On October 30, 2025, the Department of Education issued a final rule narrowing the scope of work that counts toward Public Service Loan Forgiveness, disqualifying organizations that provide gender affirming care to minors. 

• In early 2025, the department sent out a letter threatening to cut federal funding for any educational institutions engaging in efforts to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion.

  • The NEA and ACLU filed a lawsuit to challenge the letter, arguing it imposes unfounded and vague legal restrictions and limits academic freedom. 
• In June 2025, the Supreme Court ruled in Mahmoud v. Taylor. This decision departs from decades of precedent and gives parents in Montgomery County, Maryland with anti-LGBTQI+ beliefs a right to insulate their children from LGBTQI+-inclusive storybooks or instruction. 

  • “[This] decision isn’t just about schoolbooks—it’s about whose stories get silenced,” said Gabriel Arkles, then-Co-Interim Legal Director of A4TE. 

  • The decision requires strict scrutiny for any curricular choice without notice and an opt out for religious reasons, which is nearly unworkable for the school system – and makes it easier for a religious parent to insist their children only be taught things consistent with the parent’s religious views. In her dissent, Justice Sotomayor observes, “The damage to America’s public education system will be profound."   

• In March 2026, in Mirabelli v. Bonta, the Supreme Court allowed a lower court to block California schools from enforcing a policy that would safeguard trans and gender-diverse children at school.  

  • The policy would require a student’s consent for a teacher to inform their parents about changes to their name or pronouns, because trans youth deserve to decide how and when they come out. Litigation over this policy is ongoing.  

FIGHTING BACK

• Students still have rights at school. Title IX still protects transgender students from discriminatory dress codes, discrimination involving participation in gender-separated education programs and activities (including sports and leadership programs), discrimination involving access to school facilities (like restrooms and locker rooms), and harassment.  
• In February 2026, a federal judge vacated the anti-DEI letter, which means that it is “no longer in effect and cannot be enforced against anyone, anywhere, nationwide.”  
• Sharif El-Mekki, CEO at The Center for Black Educator Development, said that the ruling “affirms what educators and communities have long known: celebrating the full existence of every person and sharing the truth about our history is essential. [This] decision protects educators’ livelihoods and their responsibility to teach honestly.” 

• Over 60 national and local organizations have joined Foundational Values for Higher Education, a compact that asks colleges and universities to publicly commit to the essential values of equity, inclusion, and academic freedom. 

  • “We call on every institution of higher learning to fight for their students and faculty, and safeguard their academic independence,” said Shiwali Patel, Senior Director of Education Justice at the National Women’s Law Center.    

  • A4TE has also endorsed this platform.

RESOURCES

• Check out our Know Your Rights resource for more!  

• For a comprehensive look at how the administration is targeting supportive schools, check out the National Women’s Law Center’s resource here.  

In addition to the attacks on school sports participation for young people, Trump has pushed generally false, dangerous, and dehumanizing narratives about trans people in sports. His administration regularly platforms those who have made a career out of demeaning trans people, using the issue of our participation in sports to spread falsehoods. In reality, trans youth just want to participate like any other kid. 

• In February, Trump signed an executive order purporting to ban trans athletes from school sports.  
  • The following day, the NCAA announced that it would be officially banning trans athletes from college sports. Only about 10 transgender athletes are known to be playing out of over 500,000 NCAA athletes total.  
• The Trump administration is threatening states and institutions that do have pro-trans policies, including the state of Maine. After California asserted that they would follow their state law to allow trans athletes to play in alignment with their gender identity, the Trump administration opened an investigation that determined that this was a violation of Title IX. 

• In March 2026, the administration also sued Minnesota over the state’s trans-inclusive athlete policy, with the goal of denying the state’s department of education billions of dollars in essential funding.  

FIGHTING BACK

• The state of Minnesota sued Trump about the trans sports ban executive order, among others, and two trans high school students added a claim against the Trump administration to their challenge to New Hampshire anti-trans sports policy. 
• In response to the administration’s latest lawsuit, Minnesota AG Keith Ellison said it “is just a sad attempt to get attention over something that’s already been in litigation for months [...] It is astonishing that any president would try to target, shame, and harass children just trying to be themselves, let alone a president with so many actual problems to address.”  
• The state and high school sports authority of Minnesota is standing strong, indicating that they would not accept a proposed resolution agreement or engage in negotiations with the Trump administration. 

For years, thousands of transgender people have been serving honorably in the military. Despite this reality, the Trump administration has targeted and maligned trans service members, leaving tens of thousands of active-duty service members, veterans, and members of military families in fear and uncertainty about their jobs, their health care, and their futures.

• On January 27, 2025, President Trump signed EO 14183, titled “Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness,” which directed the Department of Defense (DoD) to adopt policies that would prohibit transgender, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming people from serving in the military, claiming that they are incapable of meeting the military’s accession requirements, and lack the “selflessness and humility” required for military service.  
  • In response, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth issued a memo on February 7 immediately pausing all gender-affirming medical procedures for service members. 
  • On February 26, DoD issued the new policy, declaring that transgender and nonbinary individuals will no longer be eligible to join the military, and directing that all trans people currently serving be separated from service. 
  • DoD is also attempting to deny benefits to servicemembers who were forced to separate from service.  

FIGHTING BACK

• Two federal courts had previously issued nationwide orders blocking the implementation of this ban, but on May 6 the Supreme Court cleared the way for DoD to begin removing trans people from military service. 
• Trans servicemembers are telling their stories, pushing back against the administration’s lies about their service.  

• 17 trans servicemembers from the Air Force and Space Force have sued the administration because they were forced to separate from active duty without the retirement benefits to which they were entitled—an unprecedented move that shows clear anti-trans animus.  

  • And they’re refusing to back down.  
    • One of the plaintiffs, Air Force Master Sergeant Logan Ireland, said that "I'm not gonna go down without trying to fight at every angle that I can.” 

• On June 1, 2026, the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit held that the Trump administration’s policy barring transgender people from the military was unconstitutional because it was based on anti-trans animus.  

  • Judge Wilkins explained how Hegseth’s policy “contains classifications that are not sufficiently related to a legitimate government interest“; is “grounded, at least in part, on archaic and overbroad generalizations about sex“; and “does not treat, where possible, similarly situated persons in a similar fashion.”  

  • In particular, most people in the military with medical conditions can have their cases reviewed individually and receive a waiver if they are still able to serve – but trans people who have a diagnosis of gender dysphoria are denied this process.  

• Finally, as legal journalist Chris Geidner points out, Judge Wilkins, joined by Judge Rogers, concluded that the policy “contains classifications that are based on invidious discrimination.“ 

RESOURCES

• Check out our explainer for more on the trans military ban.

Trans people have fought for years to be able to be themselves at work without harassment or discrimination. Currently, the Trump administration is trying to dismantle as many protections for transgender people in the workplace as possible.

• Following the executive order purporting to define “sex,” the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the federal agency tasked with protecting workers’ civil rights, is classifying all new gender identity-related discrimination cases as its lowest priority, essentially putting them on indefinite hold.  
  • This leaves trans employees across the country with very little recourse if they are discriminated against at work.  
  • The 2020 ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County should still be the law of the land, but a recent case out of the Fifth Circuit attempts to sidestep those protections and deny the existence of trans people.  
• Federal employees who are trans or nonbinary have also been deeply affected by the administration’s anti-trans actions.  
  • In January 2025, acting EEOC chair Andrea Lucas rescinded internal nondiscrimination policies for gay and trans EEOC employees. 
• In January 2026, the EEOC rescinded the Biden administration’s Enforcement Guidance on Harassment in the Workplace. This nearly 200-page document helped employers and employees navigate harassment in the workplace, and included information on how trans people must be protected from harassment and discrimination in the workplace. Bizarrely, Lucas claims that the 2020 Bostock decision only applies to hiring and firing, not to any other conditions in the workplace.  
  • The former EEOC Chair, Charlotte Burrows, said that the vote, which took place without any input from the public, "is a shocking and very radical statement from this administration." 

• On June 4, 2026, the EEOC approved a new National Enforcement Plan, which prioritizes the dismantling of long-established diversity, equity, and inclusion practices and narrowing the application of Bostock v. Clayton County to apply only to hiring and firing decisions. This plan also showed that the agency intends to  target trans people’s access to restrooms at work and provide new protections for anti-trans speech and behavior. 

FIGHTING BACK

• A trans woman federal worker in Illinois has sued to stop the Trump administration’s federal bathroom ban.  
• Many other federal workers have now sued the administration, including agencies like the FBI, the TSA, the National Guard, and more, saying that these anti-trans executive orders are making it impossible to do their jobs.  
• A4TE continues litigating its cases against public employers and insurance companies who deny coverage of trans health care to workers. 

Trans people have long fought for access to safe and stable housing—and, for those without access to housing, at least a safe place to take shelter.  

In 2016, trans and nonbinary people finally got a federal rule in place requiring single-sex shelters to allow trans and nonbinary people to access shelters services based on gender identity. But on his first day in office, Trump announced that he wanted that rule replaced with one that would instead deny shelter access, especially for trans women and nonbinary people.

• In February 2025, the new HUD secretary announced he would no longer enforce the rule protecting unhoused trans people from discrimination. And recipients of HUD funding have been asked to agree that they will not promote “gender ideology.”  
• The Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity at HUD has instructed staff to pause investigations of all gender identity discrimination cases, leaving trans people with pending cases without a way to enforce their rights.  

• In April 2026, the Trump administration proposed harmful changes to the Equal Access Rule, which would strip essential protections from trans and intersex people who need access to government-funded shelters and housing programs. Fighting back 

• Some local governments sued the Trump administration about placing anti-immigrant and anti-trans strings on funding for shelters. 
• On April 1, 2026, a federal court in Maryland ruled that the administration cannot alter funding conditions for homeless shelters, with particular reference to the Continuum of Care program.

FIGHTING BACK 

• Have you seen or experienced anti-trans discrimination in accessing shelters? Let us know!  

• Help us protect the Equal Access Rule and leave a comment by June 29, 2026! 

Trump’s administration has repeatedly denied the existence and the long history of transgender people, which includes actively censoring our stories.

• In the wake of Trump’s executive orders, the National Park Service removed references to transgender people from multiple webpages, including the Stonewall Monument site.  
• Dozens of trans and nonbinary people have been removed from government websites in an attempt to deny their contributions to this country.  

• As of March 2026, the administration has deleted questions about sexual orientation and gender identity from over 360 government surveys, forms, research projects, and other data collections. This will lead to the loss of crucial information about trans and queer people, making it much harder to track the needs of our community.  

• In April 2026, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) requested public comments about whether the TV Oversight Management Board should create new TV ratings to warn viewers about any content that includes transgender characters or discusses gender identity.  

FIGHTING BACK

• In March 2025, a volunteer group banded together to save these pages, which include dozens of stories about transgender people in American history. 
• In February 2026, LGBTQ+ groups and advocates announced a lawsuit against the Trump administration to reinstate the rainbow Pride flag at Stonewall and other monuments.  
  • “The Park Service’s policies permit flying flags that provide historical context at monuments,” said Alexander Kristofcak, a lawyer with the Washington Litigation Group who is lead counsel for plaintiffs. “That is precisely what the Pride flag does. It provides important context for a monument that honors a watershed moment in LGBTQ+ history. At best, the government misread its regulations. At worst, the government singled out the LGBTQ+ community. Either way, its actions are unlawful.”   
• On April 13, 2026, the plaintiffs won a settlement ensuring that the Pride flag would be flown once again! Critically, the agreement confirms that the Pride flag falls both within the law and the policy of the National Park Service, which vindicates the plaintiff’s main argument. the central argument plaintiffs made in the suit. The court will also continue to have jurisdiction and enforce the settlement as necessary.  
  • “Gilbert Baker created the Rainbow Pride flag as a symbol of hope and liberation,” said Charles Beal, President of The Gilbert Baker Foundation. “Today, that symbol is restored to the place where it belongs, standing watch over the birthplace of the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement.”