Video in Which Trump Lays Out Plan to Harm Trans Community Resurfaces
A video released by President elect Donald Trump in which he cribs plans from the Heritage Foundation evil manifesto, Project 2025, to explain how he’d like to destroy the trans community has been shared again by conservatives on social media.
by Alyssa Steinsiek
This story has been corrected.
A 2023 video posted to Donald Trump’s website is gaining traction again among conservatives on Twitter. Given his win against Kamala Harris for the presidency, and his vocal support of Project 2025, conservatives are expecting Trump to soon enact these promises. In the video, Trump outlined his plan to stop “the chemical, physical and emotional mutilation of our youth.” First, he says on day one of his presidency he will “revoke Joe Biden’s cruel policies on so-called gender-affirming care.”
It’s important to know that Biden’s most significant overture in support of trans people and GAC was a 2022 executive order that called upon “the U.S. Department of Education and the Department of Health and Human Services to increase access to GAC and develop ways to counter state efforts aimed at limiting such treatments for transgender minors,” as well as an attempted amendment to the Affordable Care Act earlier this year intended to guarantee trans Americans’ right to access GAC. Sad to say, that hasn’t gone over as smoothly as we might have hoped. Overall, Biden and his administration have been vocally supportive of the trans community without making substantial material improvements upon trans Americans’ lives. An unqualified hero to trans Americans, he is not.
Trump also claims that GAC includes “giving kids puberty blockers, mutating their physical appearance, and ultimately performing surgery on minor children.” He follows up with a classic Jay Leno style, “Can you believe this?”
It’s a fair question because no, I can’t, actually. Yes, puberty blockers are a typical component of GAC for trans youth, and for cisgender children experiencing precocious puberty. They are perfectly safe. And while transitional surgery for trans youth is an accepted part of GAC, per WPATH standards, it is exceedingly rare. There are no documented cases of transitional surgery being performed on trans youth aged 12 and under, and an incidence rate of 2.1 per 100,000 teens between ages 15 and 17.
That means gender-affirming surgery for trans youth is dramatically less common than teens who undergo cosmetic surgeries like rhinoplasty.
Next, Trump says he will issue an executive order to every federal agency under his power “to cease all programs that promote the concept of sex and gender transition at any age,” and then “ask congress to permanently stop federal taxpayer dollars from being used to promote or pay for these procedures, and pass a law prohibiting child sexual mutilation in all fifty states.”
He says, too, that any medical providers who promote GAC “will no longer meet federal health and safety standards for Medicaid and Medicare,” and that he will grant detransitioners the right to litigate against doctors and hospitals that treated them according to existing standards for GAC in the past.
He suggests that, via the Department of Education, teachers and other school officials could be charged with violating the civil rights of children for affirming their gender identity, and that academic institutions could have their federal funding withheld as well.
Perhaps most egregiously, Trump says he will “ask congress to pass a bill establishing that the only genders recognized by the United States government are male and female, and that they are assigned at birth.”
I won’t lie to you… this is deeply scary stuff. It’s unclear how much of this Trump can actually expect to enforce, and much of it will be tied up in countless lawsuits from organizations like the ACLU that fight tirelessly to protect the victims of wrongfully empowered bigots. The fact that he suggested any of it to begin with, however, is terrifying. It’s likely that Trump intends to follow the Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for dragging America back into the dark ages, Project 2025, which he has publicly endorsed more than once.
There’s no positive spin I can put on this sort of evil planning that will assuage your fears. What I can tell you is that I am scared, too. You are not alone in being afraid of the ways in which Trump’s second term will inevitably harm us. You are not wrong for feeling paralyzed, or furious, or sad. What you’re feeling right now is exactly what more than one million trans Americans are feeling, and there is undeniable unity in that shared experience.
Practice good OPSEC. Keep yourself safe however you have to, and look out for the people around you as best you can. Contribute to this fight however you are able, and support the members of our communities who are combatting this fascism openly, publicly, in the streets every single day.
That’s how we get through this.
An earlier version of this story made an error, incorrectly identifying the video as recently released. The video was originally published in February of 2023 on Donald Trump’s website.
Alyssa Steinsiek is a professional writer who spends too much time playing video games!
