Former President Donald Trump said on Friday that, if he were to be reelected, he would immediately reverse a recent policy from the Biden administration which aims to provide protections for LGBTQ students under the Title IX federal civil rights law.
The Biden administration’s regulation codifies a directive from the Education Department in 2021, guiding schools to interpret federal law in protecting LGBTQ students against discrimination rooted in sexual orientation or gender identity. The rule reverses a Trump administration rollback of Obama-era LGBTQ protections, including a guidance that directed schools to permit transgender students to use facilities corresponding to their gender identity.
Advocates warn that a potential second Trump presidency could not only signal a resurgence of these anti-LGBTQ policies but also lead to a more hostile environment for LGBTQ individuals. “If Trump wins the presidency all LGBTQ+ people are in immediate and imminent danger, especially trans kids,” LGBTQ legislative researcher Allison Chapman told Truthout. “I do not believe any trans person in the USA will be safe.”
During his presidential tenure, Trump removed all LGBTQ references from federal websites, implemented a series of measures aimed at diminishing protections for transgender people within anti-discrimination laws spanning education, housing, employment, and health care sectors, and actively opposed LGBTQ rights in various court cases through legal briefs. The Trump administration also imposed a ban on transgender people from military service, a policy later reversed by Biden.
Trump is currently campaigning on anti-LGBTQ policies. He has recently stated that he would sign an executive order to “cut federal funding” for schools promoting “critical race theory, transgender insanity, and other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content on our children.” He has also said that he would urge Congress to pass a federal ban on gender-affirming care for transgender minors and bar doctors providing gender-affirming care from Medicare and Medicaid. Additionally, Trump has asserted that he would prevent federal agencies from taking any actions that “promote the concept of sex and gender transition at any age,” and assign the Department of Justice (DOJ) to investigate the medical sector to see if they have “deliberately covered up horrific long-term side effects of sex transitions in order to get rich.”
NPR journalists have said that his statements are “not just campaign rhetoric,” pointing to Project 2025, a 900-page playbook published by the right-wing think tank the Heritage Foundation which delineates policy priorities for the initial 180 days of the next Republican presidency. These include obstructing gender-affirming health care, discontinuing the Centers for Disease Control’s (CDC) data collection on gender identity, impeding National Institute of Health (NIH) research on gender identity and transgender health care, redirecting funding toward studies on the “short-term and long-term negative effects of cross-sex interventions,” and reversing the Biden administration’s redefinition of “sex” to encompass gender identity, sexual orientation, and pregnancy status.
The blueprint also equates “transgender ideology” with pornography and states that it should be outlawed, with those involved in its production and distribution facing imprisonment. Additionally, the blueprint calls for registering educators and public librarians who support such ideology as sex offenders.
“We will see immediate horrific actions putting most if not all trans people in danger, including the possibility of being forcibly detransitioned,” Chapman said. “Trump is currently the greatest threat to LGBTQ people.”
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