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The persecution of transgender people under the second Donald Trump administration refers to government measures beginning in January 2025 that removed federal recognition of transgender people, eliminated or restricted many of their legal rights in the United States, and were accompanied by dehumanizing and eliminationist rhetoric seeking to eradicate transgender identities from public life.
On the January 20, 2025, shortly after being inaugurated, President Donald Trump signed an Executive Order,[5][6] which defined sex in the eyes of the federal government as a male-female binary, with "female" and "male" defined as "a person belonging, at conception to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell" and a "person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the small reproductive cell", respectively.[5] The order also mandated that:
Federal agencies should use "sex" instead of "gender", remove materials that "promote gender ideology", and halt "funding of gender ideology"[5]:§ 3(a), 3(e)
Official government documents such as passports and visas stop allowing self-selection of gender[5]:§ 3(d)
Transgender people be barred from government-funded single-sex facilities congruent with their gender identity[5]:§ 4
The Bureau of Prisons halt any federal funding for gender-affirming care.[5]:§ 4(c)
The attorney general provide guidance "to correct the misapplication of the Supreme Court's decision in Bostock v. Clayton County (2020) to sex-based distinctions" in federal agency activities.[5]:§ 3(f)
Prior policies and federal government documents that are inconsistent with this order be rescinded, including policies that require the use of names and pronouns consistent with a person's gender identity in federal workplaces.
In July 2025, The Lancet published an investigation which alleged that around half of all US health datasets were secretly and substantially altered in the two months after the executive order was signed, with the alterations being done to remove messages that "promote or otherwise inculcate gender ideology".[11][12]
On January 27, 2025, Trump signed an executive order declaring that a soldier being trans “conflicts with a soldier's commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one's personal life” and that trans people “cannot satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for military service”.[13]
On March 18, 2025, Judge Ana C. Reyes blocked the executive order, ruling that banning trans people from the military likely violated their constitutional rights.[14]
A May 15 memo later detailed how trans service members would be discharged, saying that they would be given the discharge code of “JDK”, which is typically used to indicate that a soldier is considered a threat to national security, and which can prevent them from getting future jobs or security clearances.[15] An August 4 United States Air Force memo announced that long-serving transgender members normally eligible for retirement benefits would be denied them.[16]
On January 28, 2025, Trump signed an executive order to "Protect Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation". The order described gender-affirming care for minors as "chemical and surgical mutilation of children" as well as "maiming" and "sterilizing".[17] It stated "countless children" who received such care would regret a "horrifying tragedy that they will never be able to conceive children of their own or nurture their children through breastfeeding."[18] The order also described the World Professional Association for Transgender Health's (WPATH) guidance as "junk science".[18][17]
The order states that the US Federal Government will not "fund, sponsor, promote, assist, or support the so-called 'transition' of a child from one sex to another."[19] The provisions include:
Told federal agencies providing federal grants to medical institutions to make sure those institutions were not carrying out any gender-related procedures;[19]
Protects whistleblowers who report on institutions that provide gender affirming care in violation of the executive order.[20]
In response, some hospitals paused providing gender-affirming care for minors, while others continued. Attorneys general from 15 states said their states are committed to continuing to provide gender-affirming care to minors. Multiple groups filed lawsuits challenging the legality of the executive order. In response to one of the lawsuits, several federal judges issued injunctions blocking the government from withholding federal funds from hospitals that provide gender affirming care to minors.[21][10] Following the injunction, some hospitals that initially paused gender-affirming care for minors resumed the care.[22][23]
Federal funding freeze
On January 28, 2025, Trump ordered a freeze on all federal funding grants, loans, and aid while those receiving them were assessed to make sure they were not promoting "advance Marxist equity, transgenderism, and green new deal social engineering policies".[24]
On February 5, 2025, Trump signed an executive order titled "Keeping Men Out of Women's Sports", which directs federal agencies and state attorneys general to immediately enforce a prohibition of transgender girls and women from participating in women's sports.[26][27] The order does not ban transgender men athletes from playing on male sports teams.[28] As part of this order's implementation, the Department of Education urged high school and college athletics organizations NCAA and NFHS to revoke female transgender athletes' records and restore cisgender athletes' ones.[28] The State Department also announced a ban on transgender athletes from entering the United States if they attempt to compete in women's sports, and that visa applicants suspected of such would have their file marked with the letters 'SWS25' for the purposes of tracking. Visa applicants for any purpose who list a gender other than their assigned sex on their visa application will be permanently banned from entering the United States on grounds of “fraud”.[29]
Foreign policy
At the United Nations, the United States under Trump routinely uses their influence action against transgender rights globally, even when unrelated to the topic of discussion. For example, in a June 2025 meeting on chemical pollution, the American delegate made a point of repeatedly disputing any gender-related language that did not explicitly “recognize women are biologically female and men are biologically male”; while in another case, the United States disapproved of a declaration supporting the rights of women and girls because it included no language to exclude trans women from its purview. Both advocates and the Trump Administration have suggested that the United States might use compliance at the UN as a metric for determining which countries receive foreign aid.[30]
Scholars, human rights organizations, and commentators have debated whether actions under the second Trump administration targeting transgender people amount to genocide, while its description as a form of discrimination and persecution is less controversial.
A number of advocacy and genocide-prevention groups have warned that the cumulative effect of federal and state measures targeting transgender people exhibits genocidal dynamics or “red flags,” particularly when coupled with eliminationist rhetoric in public life. These analyses point to policies and statements seeking to remove legal recognition of transgender identity, restrict access to health care, and exclude transgender people from public institutions, and argue that such measures can inflict serious bodily or mental harm on an identifiable group.[31] Commentary has also highlighted public calls to “eradicate transgenderism from public life,” which critics characterize as eliminationist or genocidal rhetoric, even where speakers distinguish between “transgenderism” and transgender people.
Many legal scholars argue that the Genocide Convention's protected-group limitation and the requirement of intent to physically or biologically destroy a protected group are not satisfied by policies that target transgender people as such, even if the measures cause serious harm. Recent legal scholarship assessing anti-trans legislation in the United States concludes that these actions likely do not meet the legal definition of genocide, while emphasizing the severity of harms imposed.[32]
Comparison to persecution of homosexuals in Nazi Germany
Commentators and scholars have drawn parallels between the Trump administration's targeting of transgender people and the persecution of homosexuals and gender-nonconforming people in Nazi Germany. The erasure of research, censorship of language, and targeting of transgender people as a social threat have been repeatedly cited as bearing striking resemblance to the early stages of queer persecution in 1930s Germany.[1]
In 1933, Nazi students destroyed the Institute for Sexual Research in Berlin, founded by Jewish sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld, which had pioneered studies of gender identity and medical transition. Its library of research on transgender and queer lives was burned, an act widely seen as the beginning of the Nazi regime's systematic erasure of queer culture and knowledge. LGBTQ people were later targeted under the Nazi regime through imprisonment, medical experimentation, and, in the case of homosexual men, internment marked by the pink triangle symbol. Several observers have compared this destruction of knowledge with the Trump administration's removal of federal webpages and health datasets referencing transgender populations in early 2025, following executive orders banning “gender ideology.” Entire sections of research on HIV, contraceptive use, health equity, and workplace discrimination disappeared from government sites. Critics have described these actions as a form of internet-age book burning.[1]
Parallels have also been drawn between Nazi use of broad ideological categories such as “un-German” and the Trump administration's emphasis on opposing “DEI” or “gender ideology.” According to scholars, both function as umbrella terms that designate targeted groups as enemies of the nation and justify their exclusion from public life.[1]
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