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In a year marked by escalating attacks on transgender people, the Trump administration has seemed to outdo its own cruelty at every turn. While the administration has led a series of attempts to curtail trans people’s rights, recognition, and safety, neither Congress nor the Supreme Court seem willing to provide a meaningful check on the administration’s brazen targeting of trans people and other demonized communities. Transgender people are rightly concerned about what the coming years will mean for our rights and survival opportunities. But as we close out 2025, I am convinced that this bleak moment offers us critical opportunities to build outside of the law and across movements for more transformative change.

The Anti-Trans Year in Review

On his first day in office, President Donald Trump made clear that he would follow through on his campaign promises to systematically target transgender people across law and government. He announced in his inaugural address that it would be the policy of the United States that there are only two sexes determined at conception and that being transgender is a “false claim.” To effectuate his declaration that transgender people do not exist, Trump has directed his administration to mandate discrimination against us in education, employment, housing, health care, the military, on our identification documents, and in carceral settings.

While attempting to upend legal protections via executive order and coercive funding threats, the administration has also used deliberately dehumanizing rhetoric to situate trans people as inherently fraudulent. The president has declared that being transgender is inconsistent with “an honorable, truthful, and disciplined life”; referred to medical treatment for transgender minors as “child abuse”; and consistently demeaned transgender life by referring to our very existence as “transgender insanity.”

The administration’s attacks on trans life have continued throughout this first year, culminating in the latest set of attacks by both the Justice Department and the Department of Health and Human Services.

Earlier this month, the Justice Department announced a

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