Lucian Holness woke as much as a frightening actuality on Nov. 6. Acute stress led the combination of feelings that struck the transgender advertising and marketing supervisor as they realized President-elect Donald Trump — by no means a dependable ally to the LGBTQ group and an more and more hostile determine for transgender Americans — had received a second time period within the White House.
“I went into this election absolutely anticipating Trump to win,” mentioned Holness, who lives in New Jersey and commenced to medically transition throughout the pandemic, an expertise they known as “liberating” and “superb” after a very long time spent “feeling like one thing was improper.”
Assuming Trump would take the presidency once more was a self-preservation tactic, Holness instructed CBS News however it didn’t essentially soften the blow.
“Maybe I assumed it will be a better race than it was. And simply seeing what number of states we have been dropping, the immense method that we misplaced … that actually destroyed me,” Holness mentioned. “And for a number of days after I had no hope in humanity.”
After the election, commentators and analysts recommended Trump’s decisive victory towards Vice President Kamala Harris was broad proof of a thirst for financial change throughout the bright red map of the nation. To win, he had punctured the Democratic “blue wall” and flipped all seven battleground states, with CBS News exit polls indicating he had obtained help from extra of the voters than ever.
LGBTQ voters have been among the many solely demographic teams that didn’t stray towards Trump after they forged ballots within the presidential contest this yr. Black girls additionally overwhelmingly backed Harris on the polls.
“Black voters and queer voters understood the project on this election, and our project was to defeat the good menace to our security and freedom that Trump poses, in order that we will struggle for what all of us have to be protected and free,” mentioned Melanie Willingham-Jaggers, the manager director of GLSEN, an LGBTQ advocacy group centered on supporting and educating younger folks. Willingham-Jaggers identifies as nonbinary and queer.
The LGBTQ group has traditionally voted Democrat however in contrast to most different demographic traits this yr, LGBTQ help for the occasion’s presidential nominee rose substantially from 2020. CBS News’ nationwide exit polls confirmed 86% of people that recognized as lesbian, homosexual, bisexual or transgender voted for Harris, whereas simply 13% voted for Trump. Echoing most Harris voters, a majority of LGBTQ folks mentioned they feared what might occur throughout one other Trump presidency.
People within the LGBTQ group instructed CBS News they see the recurrence of Trumpism as a tangible affront to their fundamental human rights. The implications really feel notably pressing to transgender Americans, whom the president-elect and his associates categorically focused all through the marketing campaign.
“Unfortunately, these people are sadly misinformed,” mentioned Karoline Leavitt, a spokesperson for the Trump-Vance transition crew, in an announcement to CBS News. “President Trump campaigned on being a president for ALL Americans and can unify our nation by means of nice success.”
“I do not really feel welcome right here”
The Trump marketing campaign ran commercials attacking trans folks for months forward of Election Day, in a transfer that probably value at least tens of millions of dollars. Criticized for scapegoating, one TV advert bore a tagline interpreted as an try to sow division: “Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you.”
The advocacy group GLAAD counted 225 defined attacks on the LGBTQ group by Trump throughout his first White House time period and newest presidential marketing campaign, when it comes to coverage choices and rhetoric, which transgender Americans and others who’re LGBTQ instructed CBS News is damaging by itself. The Trevor Project noticed a 700% spike in disaster calls all through the day after the election, and research from the group discovered latest politics negatively impacted the well-being of 90% of LGBTQ younger folks, whereas anti-trans state laws within the final yr drove up suicide makes an attempt amongst transgender and nonbinary youth by as a lot as 72%.
“I do not really feel welcome right here,” mentioned Holness.
Although New Jersey is a sanctuary state for LGBTQ rights, and Gov. Phil Murphy final yr declared it a protected haven for transgender and nonbinary folks looking for gender-affirming care, Holness continues to be involved in regards to the methods during which a second Trump administration and Republican Congress might probably work to interrupt down that refuge.
“What folks assume being trans is, versus the precise expertise of being trans, are so vastly totally different. And if folks would simply take heed to us, I feel they’d be shocked how a lot we’re the identical as them,” Holness instructed CBS News. “It took me some time to take Trump significantly, however after seeing the rise in trans hate crimes, and the rise in anti-trans laws, the bounty out on trans folks only for present, you realize, it is change into actually scary.”
Trump’s anti-LGBTQ and particularly anti-trans positions stretch again to his first time period within the White House, when he scrubbed federal agency sites of illustration and proceeded to roll back protections for LGBTQ people, amongst different coverage choices that clamped down on their skills to stay and work freely.
But vitriol towards the group turned integral to Trump’s politics and his general public model throughout the newest presidential bid.
Health care entry beneath siege
As Trump doubled down on anti-trans rhetoric in his speeches, he backed conservative proposals to limit entry to healthcare for transgender folks and punish medical doctors who give minors gender-affirming care.
“The primary challenge, of the numerous that the trans folks I spoke with are apprehensive about, is entry to the well being care that we have to stay. This just isn’t an abstraction. It just isn’t a tradition battle. It just isn’t a political soccer,” mentioned Gillian Brandstetter, a communications strategist on the American Civil Liberties Union. “It could be very a lot an issue of fabric want. Can we entry hormone remedy? Can we keep our relationship with our medical doctors? Can we keep our insurance coverage protection?”
Trump pushed throughout his final administration to federally redefine gender alongside binary traces that might exclude transgender identities, successfully denying trans folks authorized recognition and upholding an outdated characterization of “organic intercourse,” although the medical field has expanded its view of the spectrum of gender identity. Renewed guarantees made by the marketing campaign this yr are fueling panic that he’ll try to implement it nationally once more.
Ryan Lyman, a trans school pupil in New York City who volunteered for the Harris marketing campaign and mentioned he has “passing privilege” after starting hormone remedy at 17 and present process high surgical procedure, instructed CBS News trans folks elsewhere within the nation are making ready for the worst case state of affairs. “Passing privilege” on this occasion means Lyman might keep away from a number of the prejudice different transgender folks face if he’s publicly perceived to be a cisgender man.
“I’ve seen lots of people on the Internet currently who’re going again to their assigned gender presentation,” Lyman mentioned. “There is part of the group that lives within the Deep South, in crimson states, who should go stealth for their very own security. And I don’t decide them in any respect.”
A call that might probably work to guard sure trans rights earlier than Inauguration Day is the end result of United States v. Skrmetti, a landmark case set to go earlier than the Supreme Court in December the place justices will hear a problem to Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming well being take care of transgender folks youthful than 18. The resolution might have wide-ranging impacts at a time the place virtually half of U.S. states have enacted legal guidelines to restrict entry to varied points of gender-affirming care, like hormones, puberty-blocking medication or surgical procedure.
An unsure future
Many LGBTQ persons are anxious about how Trump might alter elementary elements of their lives, out on the earth and at dwelling.
A rising variety of transgender social media customers have now spent the higher a part of a month sharing steerage on how you can replace licenses, passports and different authorized paperwork to mirror their names and pronouns. LGBTQ {couples} instructed CBS News they’re having conversations about whether or not they need to rush to get married earlier than January’s inauguration and what household planning would possibly seem like as soon as Trump is sworn in.
Lee Robinson, a comic transferring from Denver to New York City, mentioned they have been already contemplating a few of these massive questions inside days of the election. They had began to debate their choices with their girlfriend, too.
“It’s not simply marriage, it is parentage and fertility stuff, and queer adoption,” mentioned Robinson. “It simply completely throws off our capability to plan for our futures when this type of factor occurs.”
Everyone who spoke to CBS News for this story shared considerations about dropping discrimination protections beneath a second Trump administration. They additionally marvel what it will imply if the Supreme Court’s 2015 marriage equality ruling got here beneath assessment and marriage rights, like abortion rights, have been returned to the states.
An up to date coverage rundown on Trump’s 2024 marketing campaign web site called Agenda 47 provides a blueprint of his “20 Core Promises To Make America Great Again.” Among the objects on that checklist, Trump pledges to “maintain males out of girls’s sports activities” and minimize federal funding for faculties “pushing essential race principle, radical gender ideology, and different inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content material on our kids.”
These objects echo GOP state lawmakers and authorities leaders who’ve sought to bar trans youth from athletic teams that align with their gender identities and ban LGBTQ and racial identity-focused lesson plans and books from faculty curriculum. The First Amendment’s freedom of speech and religion clauses have been utilized in high-profile court docket instances to justify anti-LGBTQ discrimination.
They are usually not simply ideas. Anti-LGBTQ doctrines embraced at Republican rallies have lately been codified throughout the nation, retaining transgender youngsters off of sports activities groups and away from loos aligned with their gender id. In Florida, legal guidelines have been handed to take transgender-focused curriculum out of colleges; a authorized settlement earlier this yr clarified that college students and academics would have the ability to focus on gender id so long as it isn’t a part of the curriculum.
Capitol Hill just isn’t immune, as Rep.-elect Sarah McBride, a Delaware Democrat set to change into the primary overtly transgender individual in Congress, confronted a swift Republican-led try after her trailblazing win to restrict her restroom use within the Capitol Complex.
“It’s dehumanizing folks,” mentioned Sarah Kate Ellis, the president and CEO of the advocacy group GLAAD. “They wish to deal with us as second-class residents, query our dignity and respect.”
Ellis mentioned measurable repercussions within the stability, like medical protection and equality beneath the regulation, are joined by intangible penalties that might trickle down generations.
“I consider my children, as my spouse and I’s marriage is beneath hearth, however our neighbors’ marriage is not beneath hearth. It’s terrible when you consider that,” she shared. “So, my children, of their understanding, see us as lower than the household subsequent door as a result of they’ve two mothers versus a mother and a dad, or a single mother. I simply assume all these are their tradition wars, not ours.”
Project 2025
Experts usually attribute the intensification of Trump’s anti-LGBTQ platform to his ties with right-wing non secular teams just like the Heritage Foundation, a company with a protracted historical past of espousing anti-LGBTQ legal guidelines that helmed the presidential transition proposal Project 2025.
Project 2025 is a 900-page policy handbook developed by a crew linked to greater than 100 conservative teams, to which Trump had denied connections, although he’s hiring a number of of its architects to fill key workers positions within the subsequent administration. The e-book requires an overhaul of the federal authorities to “restore household because the centerpiece of American life.” Its socio-political imaginative and prescient for a way to try this, launched on the primary web page of Project 2025, directs authorities officers to reject transgender folks and LGBTQ identities throughout the board.
“The subsequent conservative President should make the establishments of American civil society laborious targets for woke tradition warriors. This begins with deleting the phrases sexual orientation and gender id (“SOGI”), variety, fairness, and inclusion (“DEI”), gender, gender equality, gender fairness, gender consciousness, gender-sensitive, abortion, reproductive well being, reproductive rights, and another time period used to deprive Americans of their First Amendment rights out of each federal rule, company regulation, contract, grant, regulation, and piece of laws that exists,” the doc states, on the outset of its opening chapter.
Although Trump tried to distance himself from Project 2025 on the marketing campaign path, even going as far as to name a few of its proposals “abysmal,” the blueprint is appropriate with the Republican Party agenda. But on the identical time, Trump additionally plans to appoint Scott Bessent to be treasury secretary. He’s a billionaire and former George Soros hedge fund supervisor and if confirmed, he’d be the primary overtly homosexual individual to serve on this function.
“We ought to completely take Trump at his phrase,” mentioned Willingham-Jaggers, of GLSEN. “We ought to take Project 2025 at its phrase. We ought to count on a full court docket press to get every thing outlined in Project 2025, created into coverage and enacted as the place to begin, not the tip level, as the place to begin. That’s half one. That’s what I’m involved about.”
