Trans People Are Scrambling To Prepare For The ‘Waking Nightmare’ Of Trump’s Second Term

On the night of the election, Red Broadwell was home with his cat in Wilmington, North Carolina, working on his master’s thesis about transness and body horror in film. He tried not to doomscroll about the election results.

But when the 23-year-old trans graduate student woke up the next morning to the news that Donald Trump had won the presidency, Broadwell began to panic.

He said the results were “genuinely sickening” and caused him to experience panic attacks and bouts of nausea. He worried about his ability to continue taking testosterone and whether he would have to scramble to sort out top surgery sooner than he expected. Broadwell was finally able to start hormone replacement therapy last summer after moving out of Florida, which has banned care for minors and limited which providers can administer hormones to adults.

“I’ve grown up in the South my whole life. I don’t really want to leave,” Broadwell said. “I love it down here, and I don’t want to abandon that. It sucks that every time there’s an election, I have to ask, ‘What’s going to happen to me and my friends?’”

After Trump’s victory, trans people across the country are grappling with questions about their legal protections and access to gender-affirming care and reproductive health, as well as concerns over their physical safety — in short, what survival will look like. The Trevor Project, an LGBTQ+ youth suicide prevention organization, saw a 700% increase in people reaching out the day after the election compared to the weeks prior.

During his campaign, Trump vowed to sign an executive order barring federal agencies from “the promotion of sex or gender transition at any age,” and has promised to restrict federal funding for hospitals or health care providers that perform gender-affirming care for minors. Republicans spent at least $215 million this campaign cycle on ads portraying trans people as a scourge to society, and the official party platform lists keeping “men out of women’s sports” as a priority.

And over the last two weeks, Trump has been busy stocking his administration with authors of Project 2025 — after claiming he knew “nothing” about the 920-page conservative playbook or who was behind it. Project 2025 outlines dozens of policies that essentially erase federal protections for LGBTQ+ people, including allowing Medicare and Medicaid to deny coverage for gender-affirming care; redefining sex as “biological sex,” a phrase that has been used by the right to discriminate against trans people and particularly trans women; and reinstating the transgender military ban.

“It’s a waking nightmare,” said Ash Orr, a trans organizer from West Virginia who is making plans to leave the red state with his spouse because of Trump’s victory. He is worried about his ability to get testosterone and access reproductive care and Plan B in a state that has a near-total ban on abortion.

Orr’s nonprofit, Morgantown Pride, held a name change clinic and an event for Trans Day of Remembrance this week — and for the first time, Orr said, they had to hire security to ensure the patrons were safe from anti-trans protesters.

“People have been emboldened, but this time, it feels completely unchecked,” Orr said. “The hatred coming toward our community has definitely intensified.”

Even in bluer areas like Philadelphia, trans people are racing to make sure all of their legal documents — including passports, driver’s licenses, birth certificates, social security cards and banking documents — reflect their correct gender marker and name.

Several states, like Florida, Texas, Arkansas and Montana, have made it more difficult for trans people to update their gender marker on state-issued documents — and now many people are attending clinics hosted by community centers and law firms to finalize their paperwork ahead of any action under Trump that could make this process more difficult.

Jordan Schwenderman, a transmasculine lesbian and public relations coordinator in Philadelphia, said they are working to update their name change with their health insurance. “I don’t want to give anyone another reason to justify not providing gender-affirming care to me because my name doesn’t match my documentation,” Schwenderman said.

Kary Santayana, a nonbinary artist and content creator who worked on content for Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign in Philadelphia, said that the outcome of the election has forced them and their partner to reevaluate some of their future plans. Santayana said the couple are in the early stages of talking about fertility and were hoping to get married next fall.

“But at this point, we’re kind of reconsidering everything. We’re afraid if we freeze embryos, there will be legislation that will dictate what can happen to them with some sort of fetal personhood law under a Trump administration,” Santayana said.

Santayana has an “X” gender marker on their license to denote their nonbinary identity, and now wonders if having that letter on their state identification could disclose them as trans and put them in possible danger while traveling.

“I think in the safest way possible, I’m going to keep showing up and keep being queer online,” said Santayana, who makes queer fashion and lifestyle content. “What these MAGA conservatives want is for us to disappear.”

While trans people have been preparing for life under Trump 2.0, the weeks after the election have also offered people an opportunity to gather in community, share resources and strategize.

Jasmine Beach-Ferrara, who heads the Campaign for Southern Equality, said the organization has fielded many questions from people trying to plan for various worst-case scenarios. Some families of trans youth asked if they should prepare to travel internationally for gender-affirming care; others who already travel out-of-state for care wonder what might happen to their future clinic appointments if Trump imposes a federal ban on care for minors.

Twenty-five states already have bans on gender-affirming care for minors. And several states have considered bills that would restrict access to care for adults, especially those who are on state insurance plans.

As more and more states restricted trans health care, the Campaign for Southern Equality noticed a pattern of providers and pharmacies denying care to trans patients even in states where they were still legally allowed to provide it. The landscape for providers in red states has become very hostile as hospitals, clinics and individual physicians have become the subjects of lengthy investigations by conservative attorneys general.

Beach-Ferrara’s organization created the Trans Youth Emergency Project in 2023 to help families of trans youth travel to out-of-state providers for gender-affirming care. The hope at the time was that one day, it would no longer be necessary, and that access to medical care, which has been proven to significantly reduce depression and other adverse health outcomes, would be protected at the federal level.

Next month, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments for U.S. v. Skrmetti, a high-profile case that will determine whether bans on gender-affirming care for minors violate the Constitution. The decision could come down from the 6-3 conservative-leaning court by next summer and throw a whole host of LGBTQ+ legal protections in jeopardy.

While waiting on that decision, Beach-Ferrara said it’s helpful to think about the most immediate concerns.

“We have the time in front of us to focus on helping as many people as possible get the care that they need,” she said. “At CSE, we are thinking about what can we do today? What can we do tomorrow? How can we be prepared if a ruling like that does come down next summer and bans go into effect?”

She’s also thinking about what can be done at the local level. She lives in Asheville, North Carolina, a mountainous town that was destroyed by Hurricane Helene. In the aftermath of the hurricane, she said her community set up a supply station for queer and trans residents to receive hot lunch, free haircuts, massage therapy, and extra clothing and supplies for those who lost their homes.

“Some people are coming just to be with queer community,” she said. “Some end up staying for hours during the day because it’s a safe space. As much as anything, people want to be connected and are trying to find their footing.”

Community care and mutual aid have long been a tenet of queer and trans political organizing, as well as organizing with leftist, feminist, abolitionist and Black radical political movements. Trans people have a deep history of helping one another survive, whether that be friends sharing hormones, crowdfunding payments for surgeries and rent, or even simply sharing information and guides for how to navigate the legal maze of changing one’s documents.

Jan, a 57-year-old transwoman living in New York City, has been focused on building community, not just among other trans people but with people in the city who have been made vulnerable and marginalized. Jan asked to be identified only by her first name out of concern for her safety.

Jan said she woke up sobbing the morning after Election Day. But by that evening, she had organized a large group of trans people to have dinner together.

She said she feels “threatened” and wonders if she can count on the current protections she and her family have in New York. This week, she watched with disgust as Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) barred Rep.-elect Sarah McBride (D-Del.), who is trans, from using the women’s restroom.

Jan, who has two kids and has been given the affectionate nickname “antifa mom” by some of her co-organizers, said that the community dinners and her participation in a local food distribution group have helped her feel less trapped by the ever-encroaching conservative and transphobic bent in national politics.

“The government is going to abandon us, but we’re not going to abandon each other,” Jan said. “We don’t have to choose to abandon each other.”