Easy A: meaningful actions in five minutes or less

Read This: Supporting the Transgender Community

Jun 12, 2025 | Easy A, LGBTQ+ Rights

“Even as we face unprecedented political assaults designed to silence us, strip away our healthcare, deny our presence in schools, workplaces and military service – we fight forward.” Tori Cooper, HRC

June is Pride Month, a time to celebrate the LGBTQ+ community and advocate for their rights.*

This year, supporting the transgender community and advocating for their rights is especially urgent. That’s because the Trump administration has launched a series of executive orders and other actions that take away trans people’s rights and try to erase their very existence.

Here’s how:

  • One of the very first executive orders Trump announced — on his inauguration day! — orders the federal government to only recognize two sexes, “biological males” and “biological females.” It also removes all previous federal guidance that recognized and supported non-binary and transgender people. This means that government-issued IDs like U.S. passports and records like tax and social security forms won’t recognize all genders. And federal prisons will have to house prisoners based on only two sexes, putting non-binary and transgender prisoners at risk of physical harassment and assault.
  • A similar executive order restricts what schools can teach about the LGBTQ+ community and requires public schools to only recognize two sexes. It bans schools from recognizing transgender students by their preferred names or pronouns and actually threatens to withhold public funding from schools that support students in this way. It also threatens the prosecution of teachers and school administrators who don’t comply.
  • Also impacting schools, a separate executive order bans transgender athletes from playing on girls’ and women’s sports teams, rather than leaving this decision up to state and local organizations. This order goes beyond schools, seeking to pressure independent national and international athletic organizations — including the Olympics — into adopting the same policy. Not only does this take away opportunities for trans girls, but it subjects all girls and women to the possibility of unnecessary and invasive physical examinations.
  • Another executive order bans transgender people from serving in the U.S. military. After it was announced, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth directed the military to stop providing healthcare for transgender service members. Both actions are being challenged in federal courts, but for now, the military can ban the enlistment of transgender people and discharge thousands of active service members.
  • A separate executive order restricts access to healthcare for transgender children and teens, even in states where it is specifically protected by state law. It misrepresents the guidelines and standards of gender-affirming care recognized by the medical community and takes away the freedom of kids and families to make their own healthcare decisions. The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule soon on a case, U.S. v. Skrmetti, which will decide if the U.S. Constitution protects healthcare for transgender kids.
  • The U.S. Supreme Court has also agreed to hear Chiles v. Salazar, which could overturn a ban on “conversion therapy” in Colorado. This discredited practice tries to force LGBTQ+ people into being straight. All major medical and psychological associations have proven that it does nothing but cause serious harm. If the court overturns the ban and allows “conversion therapy” in Colorado, it would set the precedent to overturn similar bans that exist in 20 other states.

The bottom line is that these policies are trying to push trans people out of our communities and deny their existence.

To make matters worse, these political attacks have led to an increase in suicide risk among LGBTQ+ kids and teens, and Trump has proposed to cut federal funding for the life-saving 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. This hotline helps thousands of kids a month — more than 1.2 million since it started in 2022.

It’s up to all of us to stand up in support of the transgender community. As less than 1% of the U.S. population, they cannot fight this fight alone, but they are 1.6 million people whose health, safety, and happiness matters. Pride Month is a great time to take action, and in the coming weeks, we’ll show you how!

*If you have more time this week, you can read last year’s Easy A posts that dig deeper into the history of Pride Month.

Subscribe to Easy A

Recent Posts

Read This: Book banners are coming for librarians

A federal judge just ruled that librarians can now be arrested and criminally charged in Arkansas for providing access to certain books. This is the latest phase in the nationwide book banning movement that our friends at PEN America have been tracking since 2021....

Do This: Look up data centers where you live

Data centers are popping up all over the country, but the majority of Americans don’t want them in our community. That’s because we know that data centers pollute our air, use up our water supply, and increase our electricity bills — all without adding anything to the...

Watch This: Living Next to a Data Center

There are more than 4,000 data centers in the U.S. That’s a lot, and the more we use the internet and AI, the more that number will grow. Still, many of us don’t know much about the impact of data centers if we haven’t personally experienced them in our own community....

Read This: What Everyone Should Know about Data Centers

Whenever we do a quick Google search or snap a picture on our phones and it saves to the “cloud,” many of us don’t think about what that means. The internet feels like an imaginary, infinite space for holding all our digital stuff. But it’s actually all powered by...

Do This: Share Healthy Shouldn’t Be This Hard with your friends

It’s a struggle for women to live healthy in America, so concerns about our health are at the top of our minds as we head toward November’s elections. We want to support candidates who will help us be healthy, not make it harder, and politicians know it. We’re...