We’re less than a week into the second Trump term and it already feels like we’ve been dealing with this for an eternity. In a few short days, Trump has signed a huge raft of executive orders aiming to remake the United States. Notably, one order seeks to end birthright citizenship, a right that was introduced in the 14th Amendment. Unsurprisingly, much of the political news this week resolved around Trump and his actions.
We knew that day one would be a big deal for Trump and executive orders, so this was really a chance to see what exact language might be in the bills. When it comes to the LGBTQ+ community, the roll back on trans rights was a major blow and we’re still seeing how that will play out and the legal challenges it will face. A certain amount of the news cycle has been taken up by Elon Musk’s Nazi salute at the inauguration, but we have the news you need to keep up with on all political queer matters.
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Trans rights and protections roll back
You’ve probably heard that Trump signed an executive order that rolls back trans rights and protections, but what does that actually mean? The order instructs federal agencies to stop using the term “gender,” favoring “sex” instead. According to the order, the government will only recognize two sexes and views those as immutable categories established at the point of conception. As an entertaining aside, as all embryos begin development as female, Trump has technically just defined everyone in the United States as a woman.
The order goes on to target anything that promotes “gender ideology.” The term has been used by the Republican party as a way to make trans people sound like a cult of opinion, but is akin to complaining about people pushing “globe-shaped earth ideology.” This includes phrases such as “Federal funds shall not be used to promote gender ideology,” which will likely be used to compel schools not to teach about gender diversity, and ensures that the Bureau of Prisons cannot allow federal inmates to receive “any medical procedure, treatment, or drug for the purpose of conforming an inmate’s appearance to that of the opposite sex.” You get the idea. The effects of this order will be wide-reaching, but will also be challenged by organizations like the ACLU. We’ll be keeping a keen eye on any legal challenges and keeping you up-to-date.
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We’re all she/her now
What Trump’s order means for gender markers
With the federal government now not recognizing any genders other than male and female and seeing those as being unchangeable, a lot of identification documents might be thrown into limbo. After Florida cancelled a trans woman’s driver’s license earlier this month, there’s definitely cause for concern. Some of those details will become clearer in the coming days, but we do have some information we can be sure of.
The new secretary of state, Marco Rubio, has started to put out instructions around LGBTQ+ issues. One of these bans embassies from displaying rainbow flags, but another freezes all passport applications that list “X” as the gender marker and suspends all applications that seek to change a gender marker. The Biden administration had made passport updates easier for trans and nonbinary people, allowing gender marker changes (including changing to an “X”) a simple process that required no additional paperwork. The Trump administration has also removed any information related to updating gender markers with social security from the website. This is terrible news for anyone who has not yet updated their gender markers and we hope legal challenges prevent this from staying in effect. One silver lining is that, at least for the time being, the White House says that these orders will not affect passports that have already had their gender markers corrected and those documents remain valid.
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Trump’s executive order limiting the definition of gender and stopping gender markers from being updated won’t affect existing documents.
Trump’s war on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI)
Another of Trump’s executive orders focuses on “Ending illegal discrimination and restoring merit-based opportunity.” This, of course, works by enabling the legal discrimination against people Trump and his team don’t like. The order revokes the 1965 Equal Employment Opportunity Act, and its expansion, which banned workplace discrimination based on race, creed, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity.
To highlight how he plans to do away with diversity, Trump has also fired the Coast Guard commandant. Commandant Admiral Linda Fagan was the first uniformed woman leader of a U.S. Armed Forces branch and has been fired with the excuse given that she had “leadership deficiencies, operational failures, and inability to advance the strategic objectives of the U.S. Coast Guard.” It has also been noted that her “excessive” implementation of DEI policies was a part of her firing. Elon Musk seems to have highlighted the last part of this as the true reason for her removal, saying “Undermining the US military and border security to spend money on racist/sexist DEI nonsense is no longer acceptable.”
And when it comes to federal DEI employees, Trump hasn’t forgotten about them. The administration has put all federal DEI employees on paid leave while the process is completed to lay off these employees. All of this comes as one source reports that federal police were going around the offices of one federal agency looking for posters that “might be too inclusive.”
Trump’s impending trans military ban
One expected day 1 executive order failed to materialize. Trump has repeatedly pushed to have trans people kicked out of the military, enforcing a ban during his last administration. It was expected that day 1 would see him reestablish that ban, and he had expressed plans to do so. However, that hasn’t happened yet. While it’s possible that he was just tired from signing away the rights of so many people, or he listened to all the reports that a ban would severely damage the United States’ military readiness, it is more likely that he was simply laying the groundwork to implement the ban later. Trump revoked Biden’s order that lifted his last ban on trans people serving in the military, so the way is now clear for Trump to reestablish his ban. The question remains when, and how legal challenges might fair against such an order.
Trump was forced to listen to compassion
Our nice news this week is that there is a bishop standing up for all of us, and giving Trump the most uncomfortable church sermon he’s ever sat through. As part of Trump’s inauguration, a prayer service was held, at which Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde spoke directly to the president and asked him for compassion.
“In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now. There are gay, lesbian, and transgender children in Democratic, Republican, and independent families, some who fear for their lives.”
“I ask you to have mercy, Mr. President, on those in our community whose children fear that their parents will be taken away and that you help those that are fleeing war zones and persecution in their own lands, to find compassion and welcome here.”
You can find Bishop Budde’s full plea to Trump in this video, beginning at 12:25.
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