Trump’s First Term Was Bad for Trans People. His Next Term Promises to Be Worse.

Part of the Series

Communities Beyond Elections

Donald J. Trump’s successful 2024 campaign for president prominently featured ads that declared: “Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you.” The campaign spent an unprecedented amount of money on commercials specifically targeting trans and nonbinary people, particularly trans women, and Trump himself has denigrated trans advocacy and visibility, claiming it will come to an end when he returns to the presidency.

During his first campaign in 2016, Trump appeared relatively unconcerned about issues related to trans people and trans rights. While racism and sexism had been core to his career and image, anti-LGBTQ sentiments had not — he tended toward the northeastern socially liberal sensibilities held even by many conservatives in places like New York City.

Yet, in his first term as president, Trump pursued policies that limited trans people’s access to health care, restricted trans people’s protections from discrimination in jobs and housing, and banned trans people from the military.

The development of Trump’s anti-trans sensibilities from 2016 to the present reflects the growing alliance between Trump and socially conservative activist groups like the Alliance Defending Freedom, the Family Research Council and Moms for Liberty. As Trump has reshaped his political image, he has joined these groups in grabbing onto trans folks as a convenient scapegoat and a focus of some of their most aggressively backwards policies.

Here are six ways in which Trump has promised to target trans and queer people during his second administration:

1. Trump Will Repress Trans Youth in Schools and Punish Teachers Who Support Them

In the name of “Parents’ Rights,” Trump’s website outlines his plans to investigate and defund schools and programs “pushing Critical Race Theory or gender ideology on our children.” Gender ideology has been largely interpreted by right-wing activists to mean any discussion of pronouns, nonbinary and queer identity, and trans-affirming stories, including children’s books featuring trans characters.

Trump also plans to push for a federal “Parental Bill of Rights” similar to those proposed in dozens of states, which require teachers and administrators to notify parents if students want to change their pronouns, and encourage parents to police how gender is taught in schools and whether trans youth are allowed to use the restrooms and locker rooms that align with their identities. These anti-trans education laws, already active in over half of U.S. states, are facing legal challenges which are bound to continue if the U.S. government passes a similar federal law.

2. Trump’s Policies Will Target Trans Women and Girls in Sports

Trump’s platform, which he refers to as “Agenda 47,” names “keep[ing] men out of women’s sports” as one of his 20 priorities for his next administration.

Trans people may be restricted not just from accessing trans-specific care in many cases, but also potentially from accessing any care.

Of course, there is no extant issue with “men” attempting to play on women’s sports teams. In action, this means Trump will continue to malign transgender women as men pretending to be women, calling on junk science to claim that trans women and girls have an unfair advantage in sports. Trump has indicated that he would attempt to use executive action to punish schools that allow trans girls to play on girls’ teams. Congress could also pursue passage of a federal law to this effect — a 2023 bill, HR 734, was stopped by the Democratic-controlled Senate but passed the House.

3. Trump Will Push for a Restrictive Federal Definition of Gender

Taking his anti-trans virulence a step further, Trump plans to redefine gender at the federal level as a binary recognizing only male-assigned men and female-assigned women. This flies in the face of current medical consensus, which defines gender as a category distinct from sex assigned at birth. These definitions are key to interpreting anti-discrimination protection — if sex is narrowly defined as a binary of male and female, federal Title IX protections can no longer be interpreted to protect trans people from discrimination. Trump has also vowed to reinstate rules from his previous administration that allowed federal housing programs to openly discriminate against unhoused trans people who seek services in sex-segregated housing facilities, using similarly narrow and regressive definitions of biological sex to force women into men’s shelters or turn them away entirely.

4. The Trump Administration Will Roll Back Health Care Access for Trans People

The legal definition of sex and gender also has a bearing on trans people’s access to necessary health care, an area in which Trump has been clear about his priorities.

During his first presidency, Trump’s administration set a precedent by rolling back federal protections against health care discrimination for trans people under the Affordable Care Act. If these policies are reinstated, trans people may be restricted not just from accessing trans-specific care in many cases, but also potentially from accessing any care — as open discrimination on the basis of gender identity may become legal (again) under Trump. While individual health insurers and health care providers are free to not discriminate, they will not be prevented from doing so by the federal government; on the contrary, they’ll virtually be cheered on to do just that.

Trump also claims he will criminalize gender-affirming care for minors, punishing physicians who provide such care by restricting Medicaid and Medicare funding and even opening DOJ investigations into these doctors. He has also vowed to stop providing gender-affirming care in federal prisons and to enforce Republicans’ restrictive definitions of gender in prisons and detention centers.

A study in 2017 found that already over a quarter of trans people had postponed necessary medical care out of fear, and that those who delayed care were more likely to be depressed and to attempt suicide. If these rules unfold as Trump has claimed they will, doctors and health care providers will be fearful of providing trans-affirming care, and trans and nonbinary people will be even more afraid to access care at all, causing devastating ripple effects for trans people’s mental health and physical well-being. Trans people in federal prisons, like trans people in many state facilities, will be forced into housing situations that make them even more vulnerable to transphobic violence, and unable to medically transition while incarcerated.

5. The Trump Administration Will Deport and Abuse Trans and Queer Migrants and Refugees

Trump’s campaign rhetoric had included the accusation that a Kamala Harris administration would support “transgender operations on illegal aliens that are in prison” — a statement which referred to Harris’s agreement that the federal government should in fact provide gender-affirming health care to migrants it is holding in cages without charges.

In addition to keeping trans migrants from getting the care they need while incarcerated, the Trump administration’s open plans to carry out mass deportations affect the health and safety of trans and queer communities in myriad other ways. Many refugees and migrants are trans and queer people pushed out of their own home communities, who are then vulnerable to violence and discrimination throughout their path of migration. Indiscriminate deportation will mean trans and queer immigrants are swept up into dangerous and unwelcoming detention facilities, subject to rape and abuse, and turned into easy targets for violence and discrimination.

6. Trump Will Ban Trans People From the Military (Again)

When President Joe Biden took power in 2021, he acted quickly to roll back Trump’s previous policy banning trans people from open military service. A majority of U.S. residents polled in 2021 (66 percent) supported trans military service. While Trump has not made as much noise recently on this particular issue, in all likelihood, a second Trump administration will lead to a second set of attacks on transgender troops, in spite of the unpopularity of this policy and the multiple legal challenges to the ban during Trump’s first term. Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation plan that lays out the right-wing movement’s visions for a Trump presidency in detail, says “gender dysphoria is incompatible with the demands of military service,” and calls for a ban on use of public money for “transgender surgeries” and abortions.

This election will no doubt usher in an era of fear and regression for trans and queer communities, particularly young people and transfeminine people who are the primary targets of the rhetorical attacks. Over just a decade, trans people have gone from being a little-known minority (at less than 1 percent of the adult population) to a hotly debated scapegoat, in the crosshairs of the new culture wars. But cultural debates aside, the changes to safety, health access and economic security will necessitate sustained grassroots resistance including mutual aid, policy advocacy, and likely defiance of unjust rules and laws. Small, community-driven trans advocacy organizations are already doing this work across the country, and in regions where the repression Trump is pursuing is already well underway — they deserve and need our support as their work becomes ever more challenging and urgent.