By Eli­jah Polance 
UConn Jour­nal­ism

 In the year since Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump took office, he has signed five exec­u­tive orders direct­ed toward the trans­gen­der com­mu­ni­ty.  

Framed as pro­tec­tions for women and chil­dren, the orders tar­get recog­ni­tion and inclu­sion of trans­gen­der indi­vid­u­als in fed­er­al­ly fund­ed pro­grams and schools. The first order said the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment will only rec­og­nize “male” and “female” as accept­able gen­ders, based on one’s sex assigned at birth – affect­ing a vari­ety of things from prison and immi­gra­tion deten­tion to U.S. pass­ports. A pair of orders tar­get­ed what the Trump admin­is­tra­tion called “gen­der ide­ol­o­gy” in pub­lic schools and oth­er orga­ni­za­tions. Anoth­er threat­ened to with­hold fund­ing from med­ical providers who offer gen­der-affirm­ing care for trans­gen­der youth.  Two oth­er orders pro­hib­it­ed trans­gen­der peo­ple from serv­ing in the mil­i­tary and trans­gen­der women from com­pet­ing in women’s sports. 

Dan Bar­rett, legal direc­tor of the Amer­i­can Civ­il Lib­er­ties Union of Con­necti­cut, described the Trump administration’s actions as an attempt to erase trans­gen­der peo­ple. 

“As a mat­ter of law, the nation­al gov­ern­ment right now seems to want to make it so that there’s no such thing as being trans­gen­der, and that is play­ing out in a vari­ety of ways,” Bar­rett said. 

Along with the exec­u­tive orders specif­i­cal­ly direct­ed at the trans­gen­der com­mu­ni­ty, oth­er orders repeal diver­si­ty, equi­ty and inclu­sion ini­tia­tives and anti-dis­crim­i­na­tion pro­tec­tions for LGBTQ+ indi­vid­u­als.  Many of Trump’s orders are fac­ing law­suits from states and advo­ca­cy groups, and some have been blocked by fed­er­al courts. Still, trans­gen­der peo­ple and allies in Con­necti­cut say the orders have made the lives of trans­gen­der peo­ple more dif­fi­cult and makes it feel as if their own gov­ern­ment is against their exis­tence. 

Excluding transgender people from the military 

The government’s polic­ing of LGBTQ+ indi­vid­u­als is not new. Mic­ki McElya, a his­to­ry pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Con­necti­cut, said that stricter fed­er­al reg­u­la­tion bar­ring LGBTQ+ peo­ple from the mil­i­tary has coin­cid­ed with the increas­ing recog­ni­tion of LGBTQ+ iden­ti­ties. 

Dur­ing World War I, the U.S. Navy inves­ti­gat­ed and purged sailors hav­ing gay sex, she said. By World War II, homo­sex­u­al­i­ty was con­sid­ered a men­tal ill­ness that could bar cit­i­zens from serv­ing in the mil­i­tary. This coin­cid­ed with the “Laven­der Scare,” a peri­od from the late 1940s to 1960s when fed­er­al employ­ees out­ed as gay were fired from the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment. 

While the offi­ci­at­ed dis­crim­i­na­tion end­ed in the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment in 1975, it con­tin­ued in the mil­i­tary. Con­tin­ued scruti­ny from activists, led to the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” pol­i­cy in the 1990s under Pres­i­dent Bill Clin­ton. The pol­i­cy pro­hib­it­ed open­ly gay, les­bian and bisex­u­al peo­ple from serv­ing in the mil­i­tary. How­ev­er, if mil­i­tary per­son­nel did not dis­close this infor­ma­tion, they could con­tin­ue to serve. 

McElya described this as an oppres­sive frame­work that barred rep­re­sen­ta­tion of LGBTQ+ iden­ti­ties. 

“There’s a sug­ges­tion that were one not to be vis­i­ble, were one to stay in hid­ing, they could con­tin­ue to serve in the mil­i­tary,” McElya said. “This is some­thing that activists across time, both in and out­side of the mil­i­tary, have real­ly called the con­tra­dic­tion. If you don’t know I’m queer and I’m a good sol­dier, or I’m a good sailor, that does­n’t change when you know my iden­ti­ty, right?” 

Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma repealed “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” in 2011, and start­ing in 2016, trans­gen­der peo­ple were allowed in the mil­i­tary.  

After Trump took office the next year for his first term, he tried to pro­hib­it this with an exec­u­tive order. Fed­er­al courts blocked it, forc­ing the admin­is­tra­tion to enact a more spe­cif­ic pol­i­cy that still allowed some trans­gen­der peo­ple to serve.  

Sev­en days after tak­ing office for his sec­ond term, Trump signed the exec­u­tive order “Pri­or­i­tiz­ing Mil­i­tary Excel­lence and Readi­ness,” again ban­ning all trans­gen­der peo­ple from serv­ing in the mil­i­tary. While the order was ini­tial­ly blocked by an injunc­tion from a fed­er­al dis­trict court, the U.S. Supreme Court in ear­ly May allowed the ban to go into effect as legal chal­lenges against it advanced through the courts, accord­ing to the Asso­ci­at­ed Press.  

“We’re see­ing what we saw his­tor­i­cal­ly again, right now with trans­gen­der ser­vice per­son­nel,” McElya said. 

The exec­u­tive order said that being trans­gen­der goes against the lifestyle required of a ser­vice mem­ber. Part of the order said: “A man’s asser­tion that he is a woman, and his require­ment that oth­ers hon­or this false­hood, is not con­sis­tent with the humil­i­ty and self­less­ness required of a ser­vice mem­ber.”  

In mid-Novem­ber 2025, 17 trans­gen­der vet­er­ans of the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Space Force, all of whom had served for at least 15 years and were forced to stop serv­ing because of Trump’s exec­u­tive order, sued the mil­i­tary for deny­ing them promised retire­ment ben­e­fits. Accord­ing to the legal com­plaint, each mem­ber applied and got approved for Tem­po­rary Ear­ly Retire­ment Author­i­ty, but in August 2025, the U.S. Air Force rescind­ed their ben­e­fits. 

“It feels like a betray­al,” Mas­ter Sgt. Logan Ire­land, one of the impact­ed vet­er­ans, said in an inter­view with NBC news. “I’m just anoth­er ser­vice mem­ber serv­ing his coun­try, and for me, I want my lead­er­ship to see that, to see my ser­vice as hon­or­able.” 

Restricting passport genders and self-identification 

The Trump admin­is­tra­tion has also tar­get­ed trans­gen­der cit­i­zens more broad­ly in ways that com­pli­cate self-iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and trav­el. One of the first exec­u­tive orders Trump signed man­dat­ed that pass­ports, visas and glob­al entry cards would reflect the gen­der of one’s assigned sex at birth and only rec­og­nize peo­ple as “male” or “female.” An ACLU law­suit in a fed­er­al court in Mass­a­chu­setts led to a tem­po­rary injunc­tion on the order in June 2025. But in Novem­ber, the Supreme Court allowed the pass­port restric­tion to go into effect as the law­suit con­tin­ues. 

These new reg­u­la­tions may be incon­gru­ous with state poli­cies about iden­ti­fi­ca­tion doc­u­ments. In Con­necti­cut, res­i­dents are allowed to change their gen­der mark­ers on state iden­ti­fi­ca­tion doc­u­ments, includ­ing dri­vers licens­es and birth cer­tifi­cates. Con­necti­cut also allows “X” as a gen­der mark­er for those who do not iden­ti­fy as male or female. Bar­rett of the ACLU said this could set up a con­fus­ing con­flict between state and fed­er­al records.  

“For pur­pos­es of your Con­necti­cut driver’s license, you’re a man, you’re a male gen­der, but for pur­pos­es of a pass­port, the nation­al gov­ern­ment con­sid­ers you to be a woman,” Bar­rett said. “So you may have this com­plete divorce of how the two gov­ern­ments view you.” 

Rae Hors­es­tre­ingth and Agatha Larch, a cou­ple from Litch­field Coun­ty who are both trans­gen­der, said they imme­di­ate­ly took steps to change their names and gen­der mark­ers on their pass­ports upon Trump’s re-elec­tion in Novem­ber 2024. Their pass­ports did not get processed, though, until after Trump’s inau­gu­ra­tion and the exec­u­tive order, so their gen­der mark­ers did not get changed in time. 

When the exec­u­tive order was put on hold by the courts in June 2025, Hors­es­tre­ingth was able to get the gen­der mark­er on his pass­port changed to male. But Larch, who was also apply­ing for dual cit­i­zen­ship with the Unit­ed King­dom, had a more involved process and longer wait times. A trans­gen­der woman, she was unable to change her gen­der mark­er on her pass­port to female before the new rules went into effect. 

“Try­ing to have my license and my U.S. pass­port and my U.S. birth cer­tifi­cate match the doc­u­ments that I’m try­ing to work out with my Eng­lish stuff is weird,” Larch said. “I have no idea how that’s going to work because both of these coun­tries have total­ly dif­fer­ent approach­es to peo­ple like me. The rules are dif­fer­ent on each side, but they’re kind of sup­posed to match. And the prob­lems that can arise… I don’t even know what I’m going to run into, which is weird. That doesn’t feel like how that should be.” 

Pre­vent­ing pre­ferred self-iden­ti­fi­ca­tion on pass­ports can lead to dif­fi­cul­ty for trans­gen­der peo­ple try­ing to work in the U.S. or trav­el abroad. 

“It’s about social smooth­ness, being able to nav­i­gate things truth­ful­ly and not hav­ing paper­work mix ups that are annoy­ing for employ­ers and the employ­ee,” Hors­es­tre­ingth said. 

Suppression of gender-affirming care 

The Trump admin­is­tra­tion has also attempt­ed to for­bid gen­der-affirm­ing care for peo­ple under 19 years old through the exec­u­tive order, “Pro­tect­ing Chil­dren from Chem­i­cal and Sur­gi­cal Muti­la­tion.” The order threat­ens to with­hold fed­er­al funds to med­ical facil­i­ties and pro­fes­sion­als who pro­vide hor­mone ther­a­py or sur­gi­cal treat­ment for minors expe­ri­enc­ing gen­der dys­pho­ria to tran­si­tion to the gen­der that fits their gen­der iden­ti­ty. Trump, in a 2023 video post­ed to his Truth Social page, described gen­der-affirm­ing care for minors as “child abuse” and “child sex­u­al muti­la­tion.” The order also calls for the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment to stop rec­og­niz­ing what it calls “junk sci­ence,” specif­i­cal­ly research from the World Pro­fes­sion­al Asso­ci­a­tion for Trans­gen­der Health on gen­der-affirm­ing care.  

A fed­er­al judge issued an injunc­tion in ear­ly March 2025 that put the exec­u­tive order on hold after a law­suit by PFLAG, an LGBTQ+ advo­ca­cy group. Still, hos­pi­tals across the coun­try and in Con­necti­cut have changed their poli­cies to com­ply. In July, Yale New Haven Hos­pi­tal  announced that it would cease pro­vid­ing gen­der-affirm­ing care to peo­ple under 19, and Con­necti­cut Children’s Med­ical Cen­ter said it would “wind down” the access to gen­der-affirm­ing care for the same age group.   

In a pan­el on gen­der-affirm­ing care host­ed by Mid­dle­town Pride in Sep­tem­ber 2025, Con­necti­cut State rep­re­sen­ta­tives explained the immense pres­sure placed on med­ical providers by the White House. If the order were allowed to go into effect, hos­pi­tals that pro­vid­ed gen­der-affirm­ing care for youth, such as Yale Hos­pi­tal, could be blocked from tak­ing any pay­ments from Med­ic­aid, which is often the largest pay­er in the sys­tem.   

“That’s tens of bil­lions of dol­lars,” said Con­necti­cut Rep. Sarah Keitt. “Mon­ey that there’s no way the state could make up, mon­ey that there’s no way pri­vate insur­ers could make up, which would mean that Yale Hos­pi­tal would fold. It would mean that all the Yale clin­ics would fold across the state.” 

William Tong, attor­ney gen­er­al for Con­necti­cut, joined a law­suit with oth­er states to stop the exec­u­tive order from going into effect. He said it was among the many poli­cies the Trump admin­is­tra­tion has used that are “all about intim­i­da­tion and antic­i­pa­to­ry com­pli­ance.” 

“If you mar­gin­al­ize peo­ple, if you deny them health­care, if you call them names, if you say that they’re ille­git­i­mate, if you say that their con­cerns are not real, if you say it’s a lifestyle choice and not a med­ical fac­tor con­di­tion, if you say that the health care that are pro­vid­ed is not actu­al­ly health care, if you do all of those things, not only do you mar­gin­al­ize peo­ple — which in and of itself caus­es fear and anx­i­ety — but you empow­er oth­er peo­ple to go after them,” Tong said in an inter­view.  

Jolene Boruc­ki, a trans­gen­der woman from Fair­field Coun­ty, said she was grate­ful for the gen­der-affirm­ing care she received right before she turned 21 and wished she had access to it ear­li­er.   

“If I had the abil­i­ty to receive that care when I was younger, I would be in a much bet­ter posi­tion in my life right now,” Boruc­ki said. “And the fact that we’re at a time where peo­ple are more aware of trans issues, of queer issues, and yet active efforts are being made to effec­tive­ly ruin trans chil­drens’ lives and teenagers’ lives, it’s awful and it’s dis­gust­ing.” 

Mic­ah Heumann, the direc­tor of the Office of Under­grad­u­ate Research at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Con­necti­cut, has a trans­gen­der son who began receiv­ing gen­der-affirm­ing care as a child. Heumann said the process involved a lot of dis­cus­sions with his fam­i­ly and med­ical pro­fes­sion­als.  

“Now he’s 20 years old, and he’s thriv­ing,” Heumann said. “I know it’s just one sit­u­a­tion, but it also shows when you give them what they deserve, and the health sys­tem works the way it’s sup­posed to, that all the kids should be thriv­ing.” 

Ban on trans athletes 

On Feb. 5, 2025, Trump signed the exec­u­tive order “Keep­ing Men Out of Women’s Sports,” which for­bids trans­gen­der women ath­letes from par­tic­i­pat­ing in sports com­pe­ti­tions held by schools, uni­ver­si­ties and gov­ern­ing bod­ies that receive fed­er­al fund­ing. The exec­u­tive order argues that allow­ing trans­gen­der women to par­tic­i­pate infringes on Title IX pro­tec­tions for women. After the order was signed, Trump declared that “with this exec­u­tive order, the war on wom­en’s sports is over.” 

This fed­er­al inter­pre­ta­tion of Title IX pro­tec­tions and who it pro­tects can con­flict or over­ride state poli­cies, includ­ing those in Con­necti­cut. Connecticut’s Title IX inter­pre­ta­tion requires pub­lic schools to allow stu­dents to access sin­gle-sex restrooms, lock­er rooms and ath­let­ic teams that cor­re­spond to their gen­der iden­ti­ty. The Con­necti­cut Inter­scholas­tic Ath­let­ic Con­fer­ence, a pri­vate orga­ni­za­tion that over­sees inter­scholas­tic com­pe­ti­tion in the state, also has a pol­i­cy that allows stu­dents to par­tic­i­pate in sports with the team that fits their gen­der iden­ti­ty. 

Bar­rett said stu­dents should be treat­ed as the gen­der they iden­ti­fy as in schools, includ­ing inter­scholas­tic sports. Accord­ing to Bar­rett, this exec­u­tive order will over­ride Con­necti­cut laws. 

“If they suc­ceed in get­ting a rul­ing that Title IX man­dates dis­crim­i­na­tion against trans­gen­der stu­dents, that will stomp on Connecticut’s equal par­tic­i­pa­tion law,” Bar­rett said. “It will change our law with­out we, the peo­ple, hav­ing any­thing to do with it.” 

Accord­ing to the CT Mir­ror, the U.S. Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion announced inves­ti­ga­tions into Bloom­field, Can­ton and Cromwell pub­lic schools in May and June 2025 for Title IX vio­la­tions for hav­ing allowed trans­gen­der ath­letes to com­pete on women’s sports teams. 

Andraya Year­wood, a trans­gen­der woman, com­pet­ed on Cromwell High School’s women track team until she grad­u­at­ed in 2020. She was one of the defen­dants in a 2020 law­suit ini­ti­at­ed by high school ath­letes who thought she and oth­er trans­gen­der ath­letes should not be able to par­tic­i­pate on women’s teams. The law­suit was dis­missed in 2022, but Year­wood said the fed­er­al inves­ti­ga­tion into her for­mer high school feels like it is open­ing up old wounds.  

“When I found the news over the sum­mer, I heard about it, and I was kind of like, ‘ugh, again?’” Year­wood said. “The whole rea­son why they dis­missed the case to begin with was because we grad­u­at­ed. And now it’s been like five years since, and you’re still talk­ing about it? It’s annoy­ing.” 

Chilling Effects 

The Trump administration’s anti-trans stance has cre­at­ed an atmos­phere of fear for mem­bers of the trans­gen­der com­mu­ni­ty and made peo­ple less com­fort­able express­ing their iden­ti­ty and find­ing com­mu­ni­ty, trans­gen­der indi­vid­u­als and advo­cates said.  

Lind­sey Pasquale, the north­east region­al direc­tor of PFLAG and co-pres­i­dent of PFLAG Hart­ford, said each exec­u­tive order “has a rip­ple effect through every queer per­son out there, that their gov­ern­ment is in direct con­flict with their exis­tence.” 

Pasquale said that in recent years there was enough gov­ern­ment accep­tance that let trans­gen­der peo­ple have some amount of legal com­fort.  

“Now, bring­ing that back­wards is hav­ing neg­a­tive men­tal health con­se­quences, and it’s telling peo­ple that aren’t out yet that it’s not safe to be,” Pasquale said. “It does­n’t make any of them less gay, or less trans, or less non-bina­ry, or less les­bian or less bi. It makes them have to keep that as an intro­spec­tive thing.” 

Ian Shick, the assis­tant direc­tor of UConn’s Rain­bow Cen­ter, an LGBTQ+ cul­tur­al cen­ter, said they fear the government’s impact on youth the most. Because of Connecticut’s legal pro­tec­tions sur­round­ing LGBTQ+ peo­ple and iden­ti­ties, Shick said orga­ni­za­tions in the state have more pro­tec­tion from fed­er­al attacks than those else­where in the coun­try. Since UConn’s Rain­bow Cen­ter is fund­ed by the state, Shick has no con­cerns about the center’s con­tin­ued oper­a­tion and open­ness for LGBTQ+ sup­port. 

Shick also said the government’s stance has changed the way some LGBTQ+ orga­ni­za­tions oper­ate. 

“I know that ten­sion of ‘get the work done’ ver­sus ‘do it in the most up front, extrav­a­gant, lib­er­a­to­ry way,’ those some­times come into con­flict with each oth­er,” Shick said. “You’re nev­er going to make a good choice. If you do it out in the open you might risk your­self get­ting shut down. And if you do it in pri­vate peo­ple will see it as a removal of rep­re­sen­ta­tion or hid­ing away— bend­ing the knee if you will.” 

Christi Throw­er con­tributed report­ing to this arti­cle.