SEATTLE — When Gabriel Foster saw the election night results lurch toward former President Donald Trump, he broke down in tears.
“My big-picture reaction is horror and heartbreak,” said Foster, a Black queer trans activist based in the Seattle area who is the executive director of the national philanthropic organization Trans Justice Funding Project.
“There’s a lot of numbness, and a feeling of not knowing how to survive under this reign again,” he said.
In Washington state and across the United States, transgender and gender-diverse people are wrestling with the reality that millions of Americans voted for a presidential candidate who has vowed to strip them of their rights.
Trump has promised to end access to gender-affirming care for youth, defund hospitals that provide such care, punish teachers for acknowledging transgender children and ask Congress to pass a bill stating there are “only two genders.”
While Washington offers a number of protections for trans people, advocates note that some parts of the state remain hostile toward gender-diverse people. And those state rights could prove vulnerable against a Trump administration armed with a conservative-leaning U.S. Supreme Court and a Republican-controlled Congress.
Trump’s victory was “not surprising, though it is jolting,” said Jaelynn Scott, executive director of the Lavender Rights Project, a Seattle-based Black trans advocacy organization.
“Because of the very clear and direct attacks on transgender Americans by the Trump administration, it’s hard not to take it as an indictment on our existence from the majority of this country,” she said.
The villainization of transgender people was a cornerstone of Trump’s reelection efforts, with Republicans spending roughly $215 million on anti-trans TV ads this campaign cycle. Trump’s win comes as Republicans nationwide have pursued hundreds of anti-trans bills at the state level in recent years.
It’s grim that trans children specifically have borne the brunt of some of the most vicious attacks from conservatives, said Foster, who is also a longtime advocate for LGBTQ+ youth programs.
“Can you imagine young people growing up somewhere that has nearly 600 anti-you policies?” Foster said.
While Americans are divided on some trans issues, such as transgender athletes in sports, advocates emphasized that Americans generally support protections for trans people. A 2022 Pew Research Center survey found that 64% of Americans favor policies that prevent discrimination against transgender people in jobs, housing and public spaces such as restaurants and stores.
Recent polling has also indicated that anti-trans policies and rhetoric was not particularly persuasive to voters: A Gallup poll conducted in September found voters ranked transgender issues as the least important issue influencing their decision for president.
But trans leaders in Washington say they felt abandoned by Vice President Kamala Harris and her campaign, arguing that the Democratic nominee failed to meaningfully defend the rights of transgender Americans. In that political vacuum, Republicans were able to craft a damaging narrative reviling and ridiculing transgender people, said Bryanna Jenkins, policy director at Lavender Rights Project.
“While everybody’s pointing fingers, we really have to take a hard look at ourselves on our own side,” Jenkins said.
In the days since the election, LGBTQ+ advocacy organizations are receiving a wave of crisis hotline calls. Nonprofits servicing trans and gender diverse youth are preparing for federal funding cuts. Health centers that provide gender-affirming care are steeling themselves against acts of violence. Transgender Americans are scrambling to update their legal documents so they match their name and gender identities, and to secure last-minute appointments for gender-affirming care in a health system that already sees long wait times.
Katie Carter, CEO of Pride Foundation, which supports LGBTQ+ people and families in the Northwest, said she expects to see an increase in trans people and their families leaving their home states and moving to Seattle and Portland in search of health care and legal protections.
Creating a soft landing for people who relocate through job assistance, rent relief or help updating identification documents will be vital, Carter said. Her organization is exploring the creation of another rapid response fund similar to one it launched after Trump’s first election to help LGBTQ+ organizations and residents in more conservative areas.
“We believe people should not have to move from their home community to feel safe and have the resources they need, and it’s heartbreaking that we’re thinking about creating programs (supporting) that because that is the environment we’re in,” Carter said.
But even in progressive Seattle, some trans people are considering leaving the country entirely as an act of self-preservation.
“I worry about what the future looks like for trans people,” said Mattie Mooney, co-founder of the Washington-based Trans Women of Color Solidarity Network. “My goal is to do as much as I can to support organizing and mobilization right now while here, but the ultimate goal — whether it’s next year, in two years or whatever — is to just not be here.”
The Washington Law Against Discrimination broadly prohibits discriminating against any LGBTQ+ person based on their gender expression or identity. In recent years, Washington has passed laws shielding trans youth in crisis, allowing residents to update their birth certificate or ID card with the “X” nonbinary gender marker, requiring that state prisons provide incarcerated people access to gender-affirming care, and ensuring gender-affirming surgeries are covered by private health insurance.
The “heartbeat” for trans protections is the state’s expansion of its Medicaid program in 2015 to cover medically necessary transgender health care services, said Scott of the Lavender Rights Project.
But all those protections could easily be dismantled, advocates said. Trans organizers are already bracing for the outcome of United States v. Skrmetti in June, in which the U.S. Supreme Court will consider whether gender-affirming care bans for trans youth are unconstitutional.
“All it takes is a well-timed, well-backed lawsuit to really deconstruct this kind of bubble we live in in our state, and I don’t think enough people are aware of that reality,” Mooney said.
If Trump follows through on his promise to defund hospitals that provide gender-affirming care for young people, the state will have to prepare for how health care centers will continue to provide service, if they do at all, Mooney said.
Already, lawmakers gave up ground when the Legislature this year passed Initiative 2081, the “Parents’ Bill of Rights” backed by conservative hedge fund multimillionaire Brian Heywood, Scott said. The law, which requires schools to make classroom materials and a child’s medical records accessible to parents, has been criticized by LGBTQ+ advocates as being overly vague and harmful to children.
“The Washington state Legislature needs to evaluate itself and think through how bold they are planning on being in the face of what’s going on in the country,” Scott said. “I’m only interested in moving forward with people who … boldly state full-throated support for trans people.”
Transgender people are often boiled down to their gender identity, but Scott noted they also experience the same struggles other Americans face in their day-to-day lives. Trans people are more likely to be low-income or living in poverty, more likely to be disabled, more likely to be homeless, more likely to experience mental health issues or bullying, and more likely to experience police violence and workplace discrimination than cisgender people.
Protecting transgender people in Washington will also mean addressing the rising cost of living, building more affordable housing, improving health care access, shoring up worker rights, reforming the criminal justice system and more, Scott said.
“We can look at the trans community as really a bellwether for how our society is doing because we’re so impacted intersectionally by all our society’s social ills,” Scott said.
Much uncertainty remains about what the next four years will bring. Trump and his allies played on the fears and anxieties of people who are overworked, underpaid and struggling to make ends meet, Mooney said.
The transgender community has a long tradition of forging systems of mutual aid and kinship, they said. But those living on the economic margins of society who voted for Trump may not be prepared for what his new administration will bring, they added.
“What I do worry about is the millions of other Americans not familiar with survival, working together as a community to ensure survival, people who can’t build community and don’t know how to lean on their neighbors,” Mooney said. “Those are the people I’m worried about.”
Foster, of the Trans Justice Funding Project, said that since his philanthropic organization was founded in 2012, demand for funding from trans justice groups has skyrocketed. His organization has helped organizations run HIV clinics, built homeless shelters for trans women and established creative spaces for art and healing.
“We have a long history of creating our own magic and extending it to others,” Foster said. “We can’t depend on the government to do that, so we have to make what we need. … We have to build our own table. We can’t wait to be invited to the table.”
