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TRUMP’S LATEST ANTI-TRANS ACTIONS AND HOW WE CAN FIGHT BACK  
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Kelly Hayes
January 30, 2025
Organizing My Thoughts
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_ "When they're going after trans people, with their right hand
they're picking the pocket of American workers, they're fleecing
seniors, they're undermining unions. And this is all part of that
politics of misdirection and distraction and division.” _

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The Trump administration’s chaotic attacks on marginalized people
and the workings of the federal government itself have continued this
week, with executive orders attempting to ban gender-affirming care
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people 18 years or younger and threatening to withhold federal
funding [[link removed]] from
schools that teach “gender ideology.” These actions follow an
executive order banning trans people from the US military
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and an order declaring that a person’s gender is chromosomally
determined at “conception.” (The claim that sex differentiation
– which does not determine gender – occurs at conception is not
only scientifically incorrect
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but also signals a potential strategy
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enshrine the anti-choice concept of “fetal personhood” in federal
law.) The administration also enacted a bathroom ban
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trans people at all federal facilities this week.

A transgender woman in federal prison is suing the administration
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Executive Order 14166 – Trump’s day one attack against trans
people – after the woman was moved to solitary confinement and
informed that she would soon be transferred to a men’s facility. The
suit outlines that such a move would put the plaintiff, who filed her
complaint under the pseudonym Maria Moe, “at an extremely high risk
of harassment, abuse, violence and sexual assault.”

Meanwhile, some trans people have been unable to renew their
passports, as Trump’s State Department took steps to prevent trans
people from obtaining federal identification that aligns with their
gender identities. Some trans people have reported that their pending
passport applications appear to be frozen
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As expected, keeping up with the damage done by this administration
can be dizzying work. Last week, some of my colleagues were referring
to Trump’s first executive order attacking trans people as “the
anti-trans order.” Now, amid multiple executive volleys targeting
trans life and existence, it’s clear that people will have to be
more specific. Targeting trans people is a major priority for this
administration. Trump rode waves of public discontent to the White
House, but he has nothing material to offer people who are
dissatisfied with the state of the world or with their own lives. In
fact, he and the band of billionaire looters who have attached
themselves to this administration are determined to gut life-giving
and life-saving services, in order to further enrich the
ultra-wealthy. To distract from this smash-and-grab agenda, Trump must
follow the fascist tradition of centering scapegoats. His favorite
targets, at present, are immigrants and trans people. By blaming
marginalized people for the supposed degradation of society, and
harming those people, Trump creates a spectacle for his supporters to
applaud. Even as the services they depend on are imperiled, many will
embrace a narrative that they are being protected and defended.

As Rep. Sarah McBride, the first openly trans member of Congress, has
stated
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“When they're going after trans people, with their right hand
they're picking the pocket of American workers, they're fleecing
seniors, they're undermining unions. And this is all part of that
politics of misdirection and distraction and division.”

For those of us who care deeply about trans children and trans
communities, it’s important to stay focused on what the moment
demands of us. This morning, I spoke with Andrea Ritchie
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co-founder of Interrupting Criminalization, about Trump’s order
banning gender-affirming care for people 18 years and younger. Ritchie
is an organizer, author, and researcher who has been documenting,
advocating, litigating, and agitating around the criminalization of
Black women, girls, and gender-expansive people for the past three
decades. She stressed the importance of refusing to comply with
Trump’s edicts around gender-affirming care. "While filled with
vile, criminalizing language designed to deny the existence of trans
kids and trans people, isolate them and their families and
communities, and deter health care providers and educators from
continuing care, these executive orders carry no consequences for
providers who adhere to their commitment to offering affirming,
life-saving, and scientifically sound treatment to their trans
patients beyond threats to federal funding,” Ritchie said. “While
federal funding cuts could carry severe consequences for collective
capacity to offer care, they do not criminalize it.” 

Ritchie emphasized that this order “heralds a full frontal attack on
all expressions of sexual, gender, and reproductive autonomy.” That
assault must be met with resistance now, rather than being allowed to
gain unobstructed momentum. “Bending to these threats will only
embolden the administration to go further; courageous collective
resistance is the only thing that will stop it,” Ritchie said. “We
owe it to trans youth and communities to push back with all our might,
to refuse to deny care, to challenge administrators who try to shut it
down, to support providers under attack, and to contribute to mutual
aid efforts that will ensure continuity of care.” 

Interrupting Criminalization is offering to help doctors and
clinicians grappling with these issues think through what resisting
Trump’s edicts might look like in practice. “If you are a health
care provider looking for support around how to resist, reach out
to Interrupting Criminalization's Health Care Strategy Consult Desk
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join our Beyond Do No Harm Network
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Ritchie said. “If you are an organizer, check out We Must Fight in
Solidarity for Trans Youth
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ideas about how you can show up for trans youth and communities in
this moment, along with a list of groups you can support and
contribute to."

I also spoke with author and organizer Dean Spade
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the threats trans people are facing and what solidarity and community
defense should look like right now. Spade has been working to build
queer and trans liberation based in racial and economic justice for
the past two decades. He is also a professor at the Seattle University
School of Law. “It is terrifying to watch the right become so
mobilized around trying to erase and destroy trans people,” Spade
said. While acknowledging that “it makes sense that people are
scared for themselves and for loved ones,” Dean emphasized that
“we aren't powerless in the face of these outrageous edicts.” As
community members, we have the power to organize and the power to
refuse. “We can still do what we've always done – take care of
each other, break rules, and help people get what they need to
survive,” Spade said. “All of us can help people get a place to
sleep, get away from abusive parents and partners, find a meal or warm
clothes. All of us can write to trans people who are locked up and
form a support system from the outside,” he said. “Many of us can
share medicines, or break rules at our jobs – as nurses, teachers,
social workers, doctors – to help people get essentials. This is a
time for sustained care for one another, careful rule-breaking, and
disobedience in the face of illegitimate authority.”

It’s important to keep in mind that organized opposition to
Trump’s agenda is already getting results. During the last week, ICE
and other federal agencies descended upon Chicago, loudly proclaiming
that our city would be ground zero for Trump’s mass deportation
agenda. While ICE did seize an unspecified number of people in
Chicago, and its surrounding suburbs, the effort fell far short of the
agency’s expectations. Donald Trump’s “border czar” Tom Homan
whined to the press, “Sanctuary cities are making it very difficult
to arrest the criminals. For instance Chicago, very well educated,
they’ve been educated how to defy ICE, how to hide from ICE.”
Homan continued, “They call it ‘Know Your Rights.’ I call it how
to escape arrest.”

As a Chicagoan, I took great pride in those complaints and
characterizations. While it is heartbreaking that some Chicago area
residents were snatched from their homes and separated from their
families, this administration failed in its efforts to break our city.
They sought to make an example of us and to establish that our
city’s politics would offer no protection from their stormtroopers.
However, the organized efforts of community members who educated each
other about their rights, patrolled at-risk areas, and followed up on
ICE sightings around the city made the opposite clear: resistance is
not futile. We cannot prevent all of this administration’s harms,
but we can greatly diminish their impacts if we are willing to
organize vigorously and get in their way.

We must bring this same energy to the defense of trans people and
trans lives. The message should be clear among all people of
conscience: We will not cooperate with the fascist, anti-trans agenda.
We will protect trans children. We will not live inside a fascist
fantasy or impose it upon others. We will defy, resist and refuse. We
will defend each other.

_Kelly Hayes is a Menominee author, educator, organizer, and
photographer. Kelly is the host of Truthout’s podcast “Movement
Memos” and co-author of Let This Radicalize You, with Mariame Kaba._

_Organizing My Thoughts is a reader-supported newsletter. If you
appreciate my work, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber
today. There are no paywalls for the essays, reports, interviews, and
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* trans rights
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* gender affirming care
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* Donald Trump
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