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      Russell T Davies: gay society in ‘greatest danger I’ve ever seen’ after Trump win

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      Russell T Davies has said gay society is in the “greatest danger I have ever seen”, since the election of Donald Trump as US president in November.Speaking to the Guardian at the Gaydio Pride awards in Manchester on Friday, the Doctor Who screenwriter said the rise in hostility was not limited to the US but “is here [in the UK] now”.“As a gay man, I feel like a wave of anger, and violence, and resentment is heading towards us on a vast scale,” he said.“I’ve literally seen a difference in the way I’m spoken to as a gay man since that November election, and that’s a few months of weaponising hate speech, and the hate speech creeps into the real world.”“I’m not being alarmist,” he added. “I’m 61 years old. I know gay society very, very well, and I think we’re in the greatest danger I have ever seen.”Since his inauguration, Trump has ended policies giving LGBTQ+ Americans protection from discrimination. He has also restricted access to gender-affirming healthcare, said the US would only recognise two sexes, and barred transgender people from enlisting in the military.Davies also used his keynote speech at the awards ceremony, which rewards the efforts made to improve the lives of LGBTQ+ people in the UK, to criticise Trump, and the president’s ally Elon Musk.“I think times are darkening beyond all measure and beyond anything I have seen in my lifetime,” he told the audience, which included the singers Louise Redknapp and Katy B, and the Traitors contestants Leanne Quigley and Minah Shannon.Davies said he had turned 18 and left home in 1981, adding: “And that is exactly the year that rumours and whispers of a strange new virus came along, which came to haunt our community and to test us in so many ways.”“The joyous thing about this is that we fought back,” he said. The community “militarised, campaigned, marched and demanded the medicine”.He added: “We demanded the science. We demanded the access.”When he wrote the TV series Queer As Folk in the late 1990s, he said, it was part of a movement, with writers “fomenting ideas” and putting gay and lesbian characters on screen.Had he been asked to imagine then what life for LGBTQ+ people would be like in 2025, “I want to say it’s going to be all rainbows,” he said, “skipping down the street hand-in-hand, equality, equality, equality.”But the peril the gay community now faced, he said, was even greater than that in the 1980s.“The threat from America, it’s like something at The Lord of the Rings. It’s like an evil rising in the west, and it is evil,” Davies said.“We’ve had bad prime ministers and we’ve had bad presidents before. What we’ve never had is a billionaire tech baron openly hating his trans daughter,” he added.Musk, the de facto head of the “department of government efficiency”, bought the social networking site Twitter, which he renamed X. A study by the University of California, Berkeley found hate speech on the platform rose by 50% in the months after it was bought by the billionaire.“We have never had this in the history of the world,” Davies said. “It is terrifying because he and the people like him are in control of the facts, they’re in control of information, they’re in control of what people think, and that is what we’re now facing.”But Davies said the gay community would do “what we always do in times of peril, we gather at night”, and would once again come together, and fight against this latest wave of hostility and oppression.“What we will do in Elon Musk’s world, that we’re heading towards, is what artists have always done,” he told the Guardian, “which is to meet in cellars, and plot, and sing, and compose, and paint, and make speeches, and march.”“If we have to be those rebels in basements yet again,” he added, “which is when art thrives, then that’s what we’ll become.” More

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      ‘We’re on the edge of chaos’: families with trans kids fight for care as bans take hold

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      Aryn Kavanaugh was sitting in her living room in South Carolina when her 17-year-old daughter came into the room and said: “I’m really scared. I think people are gonna die.” Katherine, who is using her middle name for her protection, told Kavanaugh that she thought transgender youth may be the target of violence due to the hate generated by Donald Trump’s recent action.On 28 January, Trump issued an executive order to ban access to gender-affirming care for youth under 19 years old. It directed federal agencies to deny funding to institutions that offer gender-affirming medical care including hormones and puberty blockers.“She just felt like the world was crumbling around her. So we talked it out and tried to stay super positive,” said Kavanaugh, a parent of two trans children. “I think she really feels like we’re on the edge of chaos.”In a victory for trans kids and their families, a federal judge in Maryland blocked the ban on 4 March. The preliminary injunction extended a mid-February restraining order that blocked Trump’s directive and will remain in effect until further order from the US district court for the district of Maryland. In the meantime, the order prohibits the government from withholding federal funding to healthcare facilities that provide treatment to trans youth.Still, the executive order sent parents, children and medical providers into a tailspin as they deciphered its impacts. Some hospitals immediately canceled appointments and turned away new patients to adhere to the directive. In early February, Katherine was dropped as a patient at Virginia Commonwealth University, where she received gender-affirming care after South Carolina banned hormone therapy, surgery and puberty blockers for trans youth last year. Some parents say that their children’s mental health severely declined in the weeks following the executive order. And as a result, families have gone to great lengths to ensure that their trans kids continue to receive care, including considering moving abroad or stocking up on puberty suppressants.“We have seen dozens of families affected across the United States, in many, many states that have been left and abandoned without care that they need,” said Omar Gonzalez-Pagan, senior counsel and healthcare strategist at the LGBTQ+ civil rights organization Lambda Legal. “This is an unlawful executive order because it seeks to override the congressional mandate to condition federal financial assistance on non-discrimination, and this order seeks to require discrimination as a condition of federal funding.”The pause follows a lawsuit filed on 4 February by civil rights organizations including Lambda Legal and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on behalf of transgender youth. ACLU staff told the Guardian that they anticipated that the preliminary injunction would remain through the court proceedings.Some hospitals that stopped providing care to trans youth after the January directive, such as Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and Children’s Hospital of Richmond, lifted limits on surgeries or hormonal therapy in late February. Kavanaugh said she was “relieved and hopeful” about the preliminary injunction, though it does not roll back South Carolina’s ban on trans youth healthcare, which was signed into law last year.Her 18-year-old trans son Parker and Katherine received treatment at Medical University of South Carolina and then a private clinic in the state for several years until Henry McMaster, the governor of South Carolina, signed into law a ban on gender-affirming care for trans minors in May 2024. Parker is now old enough to receive his care in South Carolina, but the state ban means that the family has had to drive more than five hours each way to Virginia Commonwealth University for Katherine’s doctors’ appointments and medicine every few months.Being dropped as a patient due to the federal ban “puts us in a really tough spot because we’re already having to find care outside of South Carolina. And so that just limits our options,” Kavanaugh said. Katherine’s doctors connected her to a private medical practice in Fairfax, Virginia, that does not receive federal funding, so they were able to avoid a lapse in her care. While the change in providers did not cost more money, it stretched their commute to more than seven hours.In late February, Katherine’s puberty-blocker treatment at Virginia Commonwealth University resumed. In a statement, the hospital said that patients would continue medications, but that surgeries would remain suspended. Trans kids’ treatment remains in limbo as federal challenges wind through the court.‘A psychological toll’Studies have shown that gender-affirming medical care greatly improves trans people’s mental health and quality of life. A 2022 report published in the journal JAMA Network Open analyzed data from a study of 104 transgender and non-binary youth from ages 13 to 20 who received hormonal therapy or puberty blockers at the Seattle Children’s Gender Clinic for a year. Researchers found that 60% of participants reported lower rates of depression and 73% had less odds of suicidal ideation and self harm after receiving gender-affirming hormones and puberty blockers.Black transgender people, who experience the intersecting stigma of being gender diverse and racial minorities, are at even greater risk of poor mental health. A 2022 national survey of 33,993 LGBTQ+ young people by the Trevor Project, a non-profit, found that one in four Black transgender and nonbinary youth attempted suicide in the past year, more than double the rate of their cisgender counterparts.“It’s already difficult to access healthcare and treatment. It’s additionally difficult for folks who belong to other marginalized communities, especially families and children of color, as well as folks who are on various forms of state-funded insurance and may have difficulty selecting their providers to begin with,” Harper Seldin, a senior staff attorney at the ACLU, told the Guardian.“There is already a subset of gender clinics in this country who provide this care. When you lay over on top of that insurance and access based on family means, it’s particularly devastating for families who can’t just pick up and go somewhere else – to another city, state or other country – to get care.”While her trans daughter’s care hasn’t been directly affected by the executive order, Sarah, a Texas mother who asked that her last name not be used to protect her daughter’s privacy, said that her daughter Raven was devastated by the president’s directive. Raven, a 16-year-old Black trans girl in Texas who is using a pseudonym, dropped out of school last month due to her declining mental health, exacerbated by the federal ban. Sarah said that Raven had rarely got out of bed, and when she did, she would show her mom news reports of murdered Black trans girls and women.“She has told me that she’s afraid of being killed if she leaves the house,” Sarah said. “She really only will leave the house with me. But that’s very few and far between, because she’s just incredibly depressed.”Since dropping out of school, Sarah said that Raven’s depression and anxiety significantly decreased, and she plans to start GED test preparation classes over the summer.In November 2024, the LGBTQ+ non-profit Human Rights Campaign Foundation released a report that showed that half of the 36 transgender people killed in the last 12 months were Black trans women. That reality has made it terrifying for Raven to live as a Black trans girl, Sarah said.Raven’s medical providers have increased her antidepressants dosage, and she now checks in with her psychiatrist every three weeks. Since last year, Raven has had to fly to Colorado every six months to receive gender-affirming care due to a Texas ban on treatment for minors. She has received grants from the non-profit Campaign on Southern Equality to fund the travel for medical treatment, which has helped defer some of the exorbitant costs of seeking out-of-state care.Sarah said that she has researched living in other nations and would be willing to order medicine from Canada if Raven could no longer get medical treatment in Colorado. Gender-affirming care has drastically improved Raven’s life. “She feels more herself,” Sarah said. “If she didn’t have it, I don’t think she would choose to stay alive.”Navigating medical care restrictions has caused anxiety for parents who are shouldering the burden of the policies’ twists and turns for their children. A Georgia-based parent, Peter Isbister, said that he had chosen not to share the news of the executive order with his 11-year-old trans son Lev, who is using a pseudonym out of fear of harassment: “It’s taken a psychological toll on his parents, not on him.”An endocrinologist is currently monitoring Lev’s hormone levels to determine when he will be put on puberty blockers. Isbister, an attorney and founder of the peer support network Metro Atlanta TransParent, has to contend with the federal executive order and a looming ban on puberty blockers for minors in Georgia.“If the bill passes in Georgia, then we as a family are going to really have to study up more seriously on how it works to be an out-of-state person to get care in California, New Mexico, Massachusetts or wherever,” Isbister said. “And the more states that restrict access to care, the harder that’s going to be.”As a result of the federal and state policies, Isbister said that he has talked with an immigration attorney about acquiring Canadian citizenship for his son. But at least for now, Lev’s clinic continues to provide him care.While Isbister was “heartened” by the judge’s injunction on the executive order, he said that it is “wrenching and in my view unjust that my ability to provide my kid healthcare should be an issue for our federal courts”. More

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      in Elections

      Republican Refers to Sarah McBride, Transgender Congress Member, as a Man

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      A Republican lawmaker abruptly adjourned a congressional hearing on Tuesday after being challenged for referring to Representative Sarah McBride, Democrat of Delaware and the first openly transgender lawmaker in Congress, as a man.The Europe Subcommittee of the House Foreign Affairs panel was in the middle of a hearing on arms control and U.S. assistance to Europe when its chairman, Representative Keith Self of Texas, introduced his colleague by calling her “Mr. McBride.”Ms. McBride, who entered Congress knowing she would present a unique target for Republicans who have politicized and attacked transgender people, has generally chosen to let such moments slide. On Tuesday, she briefly registered her displeasure by returning Mr. Self’s slight, responding, “Thank you, Madam Chair,” before proceeding with her remarks.But Representative William Keating of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the subcommittee, was not willing to move on. He interrupted to request that Mr. Self repeat his introduction, which he did, again referring to the Delaware Democrat as “Mr. McBride.”“Mr. Chairman, you are out of order,” Mr. Keating fired back. “Mr. Chairman, have you no decency? I mean, I’ve come to know you a little bit. But this is not decent.”Mr. Self said it was time to continue the hearing. But Mr. Keating refused to let go.“You will not continue it with me unless you introduce a duly elected representative the right way,” he said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in US Politics

      I’m a transgender veteran. Trump’s military order is reckless and dangerous | Alleria Stanley

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      Late last month, the Trump administration moved to fire transgender people serving in the armed forces.This includes those who have honorably served for for 19 years (one year short of retirement) those who have served honorably in combat situations, and those in whom the military has already invested millions of dollars in training.I’m a transgender woman who medically transitioned while on active duty service. I wish more people knew that transgender service members are not a threat. Instead, we’re the ones who volunteer when others won’t. We bring unique perspectives and skills to the armed forces. Transgender individuals are twice as likely as all adults in the US to have served in the armed forces, a testament to our commitment and dedication.We are also seven times more likely than US civilians to attempt suicide during our lifetimes. This is no surprise when we are constantly told – through actions like this drastic transgender military ban – that our careers and our lives are not worth saving.I served for 20 years in the army and endured my share of hardships. In 2005, I was deployed to Afghanistan, working as a repairer on Apache helicopters, when I found out that my wife had been diagnosed with cancer. She died 12 months after I got home, and I became a single parent to our young children.As their only provider, I was fortunate to be able to keep my job when I came out publicly in 2016 under President Obama. But while I was stationed in Missouri, I faced a frightening amount of transphobia. I was verbally harassed, physically threatened, and once, someone stood in my driveway and shot into my car. My kids saw all of it. This is the reality of the discrimination that transgender service members face.If I were still actively serving in the military today, I would lose my career, health insurance, and other benefits, and so would my family.The Trump administration is wrong about transgender service members. The Pentagon memo declares that being transgender is “incompatible with the high mental and physical standards necessary for military service”. This couldn’t be further from the truth.There are at least 15,000 transgender individuals in the military, and they serve everywhere. They are pilots, submariners and infantry; they are in command positions; they are trusted in the highest-skilled military jobs and the riskiest; they hold top secret clearances (as I did). The cumulative loss of institutional and career knowledge across the spectrum that will come from this decision is devastating, as is the personal loss to these service members and their families.This new order is reckless and counter-productive to military preparedness. When we face threats worldwide, we need a strong and resilient military. We don’t need to leave 15,000 skilled positions vacant.Furthermore, what precedent does this set? We already know that Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, does not believe women should serve in combat. Many people don’t realize that equal African American military service is not codified by law – only by President Truman’s Executive Order #9981. This means it can be reversed at any time. I use this as an example because when policies are allowed to ping-pong between executive orders instead of law, it puts people’s lives at risk.I was fortunate to have found an online arts organization during my lowest moment in Missouri. Community Building Art offers creative writing and art workshops for female and non-binary veterans. Participating in a community like this saved my life and has proven to reduce suicidality among participants.But I worry now for all those suddenly forced out of the careers and communities they’ve known. We should support their service to our nation, and should they be dismissed, we must offer them safe spaces. Yet, instead of focusing on crises like veteran suicide, the administration is endangering veterans’ care. We will need the private sector to support service members and veterans in this dangerous time.Having retired from the military, I recently discovered a disheartening change in my Veterans Affairs (VA) profile. My medical records now mark me as “male”, a stark reminder of the personal impact of policies like the transgender military ban. While I have weathered storms like these, I worry about those with much more to lose.

      Alleria Stanley is a retired United States army service member, advocate, and member of the LGBTQ+ community. She is a board member of Transgender American Veterans Association

      In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counselor. In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org More

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      in US Politics

      As Wyoming slides further to the right, legislators double down on trans bills

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      When Wyoming legislators in 2022 passed a law banning trans girls from competing in middle and high school girls’ sports, the Cowboy State, by its governor’s own estimate, had a grand total of four transgender student athletes competing within its boundaries.Still, in this year’s legislative session, which wrapped up on Friday, trans athletes were again a focus of lawmakers. They introduced bills to extend the ban on trans women in athletics to intercollegiate sports and ban universities from competing against teams with trans women.Lawmakers also proposed legislation requiring public facilities from restrooms to sleeping quarters to correspond with assigned sex at birth, restrooms in public schools to have exclusive use designations by assigned sex at birth, prohibiting the state from requiring the use of preferred pronouns, and establishing legal definitions for “biological sex”, “man” and “woman”.Five of the seven bills made it through the legislature. The volume of proposals spotlights the new conservative vision of the role of government emerging in the state, as well as the Republican divisions on the issue.Debate on trans-focused bills isn’t new to this legislative session. In 2022, Mark Gordon, Wyoming’s governor, described the state’s trans sports bill as “draconian” but still let it pass into law. Last year, 10 bills were introduced on the topic, and the legislature enacted a ban on gender affirming care for minors.Wyoming politicians pushed controversy over the inclusion of a trans woman in a Wyoming sorority in 2022, and in 2024 over the University of Wyoming’s scheduled volleyball game against San Jose State University, whose team has a trans woman. Wyoming ultimately forfeited the game.But the intense focus on the issue comes as Wyoming, never exactly a liberal state, has slid further to the right in recent years, a trend evidenced by an escalation of social issue bills that wouldn’t be out of place in Washington DC or other red-state legislatures.For Santi Murillo, the first trans athlete at the University of Wyoming, the influx of bills has been dehumanizing.“I consider myself to be a good person who contributes back to my community. But because I’m trans, I’m being attacked,” Murillo, who is also the communications director for LGBTQ+ non-profit Wyoming Equality, said. “That’s what a lot of that fear comes from, is being labeled as Santi the trans person, not Santi the cheer coach, not Santi my neighbor.”Several Republican lawmakers who’ve introduced or sponsored trans bills this year said their proposals were aimed at protecting women and girls. “To protect safe spaces and to create level playing fields for women, biological women, that’s the sole intent of these types of bills,” said Republican representative Rachel Rodriguez-Williams, the chair of the state’s newly empowered Freedom caucus and the primary sponsor of “Biological Males in Women’s Sports”.It’s a topic legislators say they have found high on the minds of their constituents. “I have a very conservative rural district, and they just want to see these things addressed and some policies put out,” said Martha Lawley, a Republican representative who sponsored two related bills this session. She said that she heard more about the topic than any other from her constituents in the past year.That concern is new, said Murillo, now 27. Murillo said she didn’t see this level of fear in the Wyoming she grew up in. She transitioned while a cheerleader at the University of Wyoming, which put her squarely in the public eye.“I had a really positive transition experience for the most part. Especially doing so very publicly,” Murillo said. “UW games are huge, especially football games. There’s no hiding there.”Murillo views the current debate as driven by politicians, not people.So does Sara Burlingame, the director at Wyoming Equality. She believes that some see the spotlight on trans issues as an effective wedge issue to both motivate hardline voters to the polls, and split conservatives, much like efforts to ban gay marriage used to.“Far-right Republicans recognized that they used to be able to fundraise and campaign off of gay panic,” Burlingame said. “They’re looking at what hits that sweet spot of lighting up people’s amygdala and getting them all fired up. And they feel like, hey, if someone you know was carrying this message, I would go and vote for them. I would drive myself to the polls.”The focus on trans issues detracts from conversations about other major challenges ahead in the state, Burlingame said, like declining revenues in the gas and oil market that are leaving a gap in public funding. “I think they don’t have a solution for that,” Burlingame said of some Republican legislators. “So their solution is to attack trans kids.”Burlingame sees the hyper-focus on gender as a departure from decades of Wyoming politics that erred toward libertarianism and small government, a departure that sped up this year as Wyoming’s Freedom Caucus became the first chapter of the nationally-based Freedom Caucus to take control of a state house.“In the past, we had old, white, rancher Republican men who had no fondness for different gender identities or sexual orientation,” she said. “But they had a very specific belief in the role of government, and they wouldn’t vote to take anybody’s rights away because they just didn’t believe that was the role of government.”Senator Cale Case is one of those Republicans outspoken in his opposition to the trans bills. Case, in the legislature since 1993, questions what problem they aim to solve, and said their sponsors are driven by fear.“They don’t like to hear the word tolerance. They talk about freedom, and they have lots of bills with freedom in the title, but their bills restrict freedoms,” Case said.Within supporters of the bills, there are divisions, too.Jayme Lien, the representative who brought the What is a Woman Act, said she has not spoken with LGBTQ+ Wyomingites about the bill. Lien pointed towards testimony from the national group Gays Against Groomers, designated by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a far-right extremist group of self-identified LGBTQ+ people engaged in anti-trans organizing, in support of her legislation and argued that the safety concerns of LGBTQ residents were misplaced.“I just want them to know that this is to protect them as well. And I think in the long run, once it’s implemented into law, they will see that this also protects them and their culture and community,” Lien argued.Republican senator Wendy Schuler brought the state’s 2022 bill limiting trans girls’ access to certain sports team, and she introduced “Fairness in Sports – Intercollegiate Athletics” in this year’s legislative session.Schuler, who competed in five varsity athletics at the University of Wyoming said that she “doesn’t know what the answer is” for transgender athletes in Wyoming, but that her priority is “making sure our biological girls were all taken care of in terms of their access to athletics”.“I understand the trans athletes here, she said. “I totally get where they’re coming from, because I had to sit on the sidelines while I was playing baseball with my brothers.”Schuler said that she consulted with teenagers and some transgender Wyomingites in writing her bills, which lead to exemptions for non-contact sports.While standing firm behind sports bills, Schuler derided the bills focused on bathroom usage and the legal definitions as an ineffective use of legislative time, and indicative of national theatrics meeting Wyoming politics.“In terms of the bathroom stuff, and you know what is a woman and some of these other bills that have come through the pipe this year, I just think we had lots more important things we should have been focusing on,” Schuler said. “But that’s what the social issues of the day seem to be.”In what she owned as a “contradiction”, Schuler voted yes on all three bills that came before her.Schuler said she “thinks the world” of Murillo, and Murillo and Burlingame also spoke kindly of Schuler.For Murillo, having friendships with people she views as infringing on her rights is complicated, but is a sort of necessity when advocating for LGBTQ+ rights in deep-red states.“It’s a totally different kind of ball game,” Murillo said. “Doing this work in a red state, you have to be willing to have those conversations. You have to be willing to set aside those things, find that common ground.”If current political trends continue, Burlingame and Murillo fear that there will be less legislators willing to work out compromises. Wyoming’s 2024 summer primary saw complete Republican upheaval and a glut of mailers, often accusing politicians of a “radical gender agenda”. Case said that there is pressure on elected officials in Wyoming to toe the line, or else.“Some of my colleagues who still have a longer career ahead of them, and also have aspirations, are in agony on every one of these votes. These are good people, friends of mine,” Case said. “I’m not doing that. I’m gonna get pounded for this. It might cost an election. But honestly, I don’t think it’s right and I feel so much better inside.”Murillo said in light of rhetoric surrounding the flood of legislation, she no longer considers Wyoming a safe place to be transgender.“I definitely used to feel safe here, but no, not any more. I feel like the air has just shifted here,” Murillo said. More

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      in Elections

      Trump Seeks to Bar Student Loan Relief to Workers Aiding Migrants and Trans Kids

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      President Trump signed an executive order instructing administration officials to alter a student loan forgiveness program for public servants to exclude nonprofit organizations that engage in activities that have what he called a “substantial illegal purpose.”His order to restrict the program appears to target groups supporting undocumented immigrants, diversity initiatives or gender-affirming care for children, among others, as the Trump administration has sought to eliminate federal support for efforts that have drawn right-wing ire.The order, made public on Friday, is the latest of many attempts to overhaul the loan forgiveness program, which has often whipsawed borrowers with rule changes and bureaucratic obstacles.The program, known as Public Service Loan Forgiveness, was created by Congress in 2007 and cannot be eliminated without congressional action, but the Education Department has some leeway to determine how it operates. Mr. Trump’s executive order directed the secretaries of education and the Treasury to amend the program to exclude workers for organizations supporting illegal actions, listing several categories of examples, including “aiding or abetting” violations of federal immigration law.The Trump administration has taken a broad view of what it considers to be support of illegal activities. The order cited as examples organizations that support “illegal discrimination,” which the administration has previously said includes diversity and inclusion initiatives.The order appeared to target groups supporting gender-affirming care. It said it would exclude from the loan forgiveness program any organization supporting “child abuse, including the chemical and surgical castration or mutilation of children.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in US Politics

      Trans women transferred to men’s prisons despite rulings against Trump’s order

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      Transgender women incarcerated in the US prison system have been transferred to men’s facilities under Donald Trump’s executive order, despite multiple court rulings blocking the president’s policy, according to civil rights lawyers and accounts from behind bars.Trump’s day-one “gender ideology” order, one of several sweeping attacks on trans rights, said the attorney general “shall ensure that males are not detained in women’s prisons or housed in women’s detention centers” and that no federal funds go to gender-affirming treatment or procedures for people in custody.The executive order was quickly challenged in court. In three lawsuits filed on behalf of trans women housed in women’s prisons, federal judges have ruled that the US Bureau of Prisons (BOP) cannot withhold their medical treatment and was barred from moving them to men’s facilities. One judge said the plaintiffs had “straightforwardly demonstrated that irreparable harm will follow”.Lawyers fighting Trump’s directive say the court rulings prevented the transfers of 17 trans women who are plaintiffs in the cases, but others not included in the litigation are now facing placements in men’s facilities.“I’m just continuing to be punished for existing,” said Whitney, a 31-year-old trans woman who was transferred from a women’s facility to a men’s prison this week. The BOP changed her records from “female” to “male”, records show. In messages before her transfer, she said she felt like a “pawn in others’ political games”. The Guardian is not using her full name due to concerns about retaliation.Kara Janssen, an attorney representing trans women in litigation, said she learned of another trans woman not included in the lawsuits who was recently transferred to a facility that houses men, and also had the gender marker in her records changed. Janssen also learned of a trans woman newly entering the BOP system who had gender-affirming surgeries before her incarceration, but was placed in a men’s facility.Prisons are required under the Prison Rape Elimination Act (Prea), a longstanding federal law, to screen incarcerated people for sexual assault risk and consider LGBTQ+ status when making housing decisions. Legal experts say Trump’s blanket policy of housing trans women in men’s facilities clearly violates Prea.“This is incredibly unnecessary and cruel,” said Janssen. “Our clients are desperate and scared.”The BOP did not respond to requests for comment.Trans people have long faced high levels of sexual violence and discrimination behind bars, and the implementation of Trump’s order has unleashed chaos, panic and significant violations of their rights beyond the threats of housing transfers, attorneys said.Internal BOP memos seen by the Guardian show that officials are now requiring staff to refer to trans residents by their legal names and incorrect pronouns, as well as deny requests for gender-appropriate clothing accommodations. The BOP has also rescinded policies that allowed trans women to have their pat-down searches conducted by female guards.Susan Beaty, a senior attorney for the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice, who represents roughly 20 trans people in federal prisons, said they have received reports that some trans people were forced under threat of discipline to hand over their underwear, including bras and boxers, as if they were contraband. They said they’ve also heard accounts of male guards searching trans women in encounters several of the women described as “groping”. Some staff have been emboldened to harass and taunt trans people, Beaty said.“It is already so difficult to be a trans person in prison in this country, and now this administration’s measures are intentionally terrorizing and traumatizing incarcerated trans people even further,” Beaty said.“It is essentially sanctioning sexual assault in some instances,” added Janssen, of the male pat-downs of trans women. Some trans people had told her they were suffering suicidal thoughts and daily nightmares.Whitney, who was recently transferred, said in interviews prior to her move that staff for weeks gave her conflicting information. In mid-February, she and another trans woman were placed into a form of isolation called a “special housing unit” and told they could be there for months, she said. The other woman attempted suicide out of fear of being transferred, she said.Days later, the women were moved back to the general population. Whitney’s doctor, however, then told her that her hormone therapy medications would start to be tapered down. Whitney said going off those medications would wreak havoc on her body and mind, describing it “like a slow death”. The doctor also said staff would start using male pronouns for her, though she said that had not happened yet. She said she was also told she would be allowed to keep women’s underwear she already owns, but would not be issued new garments.Last week, medical staff told Whitney her medications would not be changed after all, she said, but then days later, she was told to pack because she was being transferred to a men’s facility.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I’m nervous. Worried. Apprehensive. Anxious. Scared. You name it,” Whitney said before her transfer. “One moment I am feeling relief, and the next I am growing gray hairs. That’s probably one of the most stressful things about all this. Are you safe or are you not?”The litigation is ongoing and is most immediately focused on maintaining trans people’s housing and medical care, attorneys said. But Janssen said lawyers would also be fighting for trans women who have long been housed in male facilities and were in the pipeline to be transferred, and advocating against the rollback of basic accommodations across the system. “It’s cruel and unusual punishment because you’re punishing this group for no reason other than you don’t think they should exist.”One judge criticized the US government for failing to address plaintiffs’ concerns that their gender dysphoria would be exacerbated in men’s prisons “whether because they will be subject to searches by male correctional officers, made to shower in the company of men, referred to as men, forced to dress as men, or simply because the mere homogenous presence of men will cause uncomfortable dissonance”.Alix McLearen, who was the acting director of the National Institute of Corrections (NIC) in 2022 before she retired in 2024, said Trump’s order endangers trans people and staff. The NIC is part of the BOP and does training and policy development for corrections officials. McLearen led the drafting and implementation of the “transgender offender manual” when she oversaw women and special populations at BOP. That manual has recently been rescinded.“If you yank this away, no one knows what to do,” McLearen said. “If you are going to change a policy, you [should] do it slowly and thoughtfully.”Confusion in a prison setting increases stress levels and the potential for conflict among staff and incarcerated people, McLearen said.Trump’s order also increases the already high risk of sexual and physical assault of trans people in prison, said Julie Abbate, the national advocacy director of Just Detention International, a human rights group focused on sexual abuse in prisons and jails.Putting a target on trans people in prison only increases their risk of assault, which in turn also puts staff in the dangerous position of intervening in violent situations, said Abbate, who spent 15 years at the civil rights division of the US justice department and helped draft national Prea standards.Trump’s policy has no benefit, McLearen said. The order purports to “defend women” in prisons, but McLearen said it addresses a problem that does not exist.“This is fake – this whole executive order is false on its face,” McLearen said. “It’s scapegoating. Trans people are easy to scapegoat.” More