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Transgender and gender nonconforming (TGNC) people comprise only 0.6% of the U.S. population, but Project 2025 would have you believe that ‘transgender ideology’ is an existential threat to the very fabric of American life. Fear-mongering about a vulnerable minority group can admittedly prove to be a viable, albeit cruel, political strategy. But if history is any indication, when one scapegoat falls, the hunt for the next begins.

Project 2025 is a series of policy initiatives spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation, a highly influential conservative think tank, in collaboration with 100 coalition partners. Nonpartisan and liberal organizations, such as Democracy Forward, have slammed the project as authoritarian, ultra-nationalist, Christo-fascist, and a threat to civil rights everywhere.

Although the authors of Project 2025 aptly describe it as a “presidential transition project”, President Donald Trump had previously disavowed the initiative in a post he made on his social media site, Truth Social, on July 5, 2024: “I have no idea who is behind [Project 2025]. I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal.” Despite these claims, Trump has clear ties to Project 2025: the President is connected to several of its major contributors. For example, Peter Navarro, former White House trade advisor to Trump, co-authored the project’s chapter on foreign trade. Vice President J.D. Vance wrote the foreword to Dawn’s Early Light, a book authored by the president of the Heritage Foundation.

Further, Trump’s own “Agenda 47” closely mirrors Project 2025’s plans for the eradication of “transgender ideology” from public policy. Agenda 47 calls for an end to “left-wing gender insanity” and promises to “stop Taxpayer-funded Schools from promoting gender transition.” Meanwhile, Project 2025 argues that the “noxious [tenet] of… ‘gender ideology’ should be excised from curricula in every public school in the country.” Both platforms aim to hide the existence of TGNC people from children, a move that harms them more than it helps.

A study conducted by researchers at the University of Toronto reports that 56% of TGNC children attempt suicide before the age of 18. This statistic is likely to be elevated once access to gender-affirming care becomes next to impossible under the second Trump administration. The Heritage Foundation argues that the National Institutes of Health “should fund studies into the… negative effects of cross-sex interventions.” Despite overwhelming support for gender-affirming care by several major health organizations, including the American Medical Association and the World Health Organization, such studies would dissuade or outright prevent TGNC people from pursuing medical transition. Moreover, Agenda 47 would “ban Taxpayer funding for sex change surgeries,” meaning that Medicare or Medicaid would no longer be a viable route for low-income TGNC people to access gender-affirming care.

Project 2025’s most controversial proposal aims to remove all mentions of gender from “every federal rule, agency regulation, contract, grant… and piece of legislation that exists.” Mentions of gender include phrases such as “‘gender equality,’ ‘gender equity,’ ‘gender diverse individuals,’ ‘gender aware,’ and ‘gender sensitive.’” The project further calls for the outright abolition of the Biden-era Gender Policy Council, a White House department tasked with “[advancing] gender equity and equality in both domestic and foreign policy development and implementation.” Similarly, Agenda 47 seeks to “reverse Biden’s radical rewrite of Title IX Education Regulations,” a maneuver that would undermine protections against gender-based discrimination and contradict recent legal precedent. In Bostock vs. Clayton County (2020), the U.S. Supreme Court unequivocally ruled that discrimination on the basis of gender identity is a violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The Human Rights Campaign, the largest LGBTQ+ advocacy group in America, denounces these anti-trans proposals for what they are: flagrant violations of TGNC people’s Fourteenth Amendment right to equal protection of the laws. While TGNC people may be the first targets of the second Trump administration, other marginalized groups will inevitably face the same fate. People with disabilities, people of color, LGB people, immigrants, and refugees risk forgoing representation in public policy if the treatment of TGNC people is any indication.

American voters failed to reject a fascist administration in the 2024 presidential election. If America is determined to remain a country for all people, regardless of their race, gender, sexual orientation, and/or bodily ability, American voters must definitively reject Project 2025 and Agenda 47 in the 2026 midterm elections by returning the House and Senate to Democratic majorities. The lives of millions depend upon it.