Alex was 14 when his father kicked him out.
Shortly beforehand, he had asked the teachers and faculty at his high school in Arizona to refer to him as a man.
“I wasn’t out in public as trans, but I wanted to be called ‘Alex’ by the teachers and the faculty and the other students,” Alex said. “One of the faculty members set me aside and said, ‘You should come out to your family soon.’”
Alex explained that his father would not support him, but the faculty member still changed his online profile and records against his will. His father kicked him out shortly after. Luckily, Alex’s mother, Lansing resident Monica Haladyna, took him in. But not all trans youth are so lucky.
Now 22 and residing in Lansing, Alex is contending with the reality that what happened to him at school will soon become the law of the land.
Since taking office, President Donald Trump has signed over 70 executive orders. Five of them target transgender people. One such order removed Title IX protections for transgender people in schools. Another mandates the forced outing of trans students to their parents.
Supportive parents may want to know if their child is trans. Haladyna even said she wishes she had known in time to put Alex on puberty blockers. However, transgender people and advocacy groups argue the risk of parental retaliation is too great.
“I’m extremely scared for the safety of many LGBT youth, many trans youth in particular,” Alex said. “For some people, school is their only haven where they can be themselves. They still face a lot of bullying and discrimination, but they do have some semblance of support through either clubs or friends they meet in school.”
That bullying will likely intensify as Title IX protections are stripped away from trans students — and even weaponized against them.
State Rep. Emily Dievendorf, D-Lansing, who is Michigan’s first openly nonbinary representative, says Title IX protections are more important than ever.
“Trans and nonbinary children already struggle in our educational systems and greater society,” said Dievendorf, who has been speaking with the parents of trans children. “I have witnessed an uptick in the bullying of trans and nonbinary students, not just within the last several weeks, but over the last few years as hateful rhetoric has become more acceptable.”
For now, Michigan civil rights law still protects transgender students. However, many are concerned that state laws are not enough.
Uncertainty and (un)precedent
Heather Johnson, an adjunct law professor at MSU who studies the intersection between law and gender, says these orders “fly in the face of the purpose of Title IX.”
“Title IX is the only mechanism by which sexual orientation and gender identity can be protected in a public education,” Johnson said. “Without that inclusion, students are wholly unprotected in an educational setting.”
However, Title IX protections are far from the only protections these executive orders seek to undo. The Trump administration has also removed legal recognition for transgender people, revoked the ability to change gender markers on federal documentation, banned trans people from the military, banned gender-affirming care for minors from being covered under federal employees’ insurance and far more.
Federal courts have blocked attempts to ban gender-affirming medical care for those under 19 and to remove Prison Rape Elimination Act protections for transgender women. However, with a conservative majority in Congress, many are wondering when, not if, those injunctions will be struck down.
Professor Johnson believes some of these executive orders contradict the judicial precedent set by Bostock v. Clayton County. This landmark U.S. Supreme Court case held that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protected employees from discrimination based on sexuality and gender identity.
Johnson said the military ban is “a violation of Title VII and the legal rule upheld in Bostock.” Additionally, Johnson argued that the order “violates equal protection, the due process of the Fifth Amendment, and arguably the free speech provision of the First Amendment.”
But Johnson was particularly concerned by the executive order “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling,” which includes a provision directing the attorney general to criminally prosecute teachers who “facilitate” a minor’s gender transition, even indirectly. The order dubs such affirmation of a student’s trans identity “sexual exploitation.”
Mason Hanks, a secondary English education student at MSU, fears he could be vulnerable to such accusations.
“It’s a really rough time to be a trans person and a future educator right now,” Hanks said. “I’m worried that I will be accused of indoctrinating or brain washing queer kids who find themselves in my classroom solely because I have the humanity to validate their identities.”
Without Title VII protections, Hanks was worried public schools could fire him for being trans or not hire him at all: “There’s so much that I worry I won’t be able to give my students out of fear of losing my job if I’m able to get one in the first place.”
Johnson echoed these concerns. “We’re going to implement something that violates several constitutional principles, and we see this harken back to the Briggs Initiative,” Johnson said, referencing a failed initiative to ban gay men and lesbians from working in California public schools.
Johnson stressed that executive orders cannot overturn a Supreme Court ruling.
“If a religious school doesn’t want to employ LGBTQ people, that’s well within their rights,” Johnson said. “But public schools have to follow Title VII, and until Bostock is overturned, Title VII includes sexual orientation and gender identity.”
Further confusing Title IX guidance is the executive order targeting trans women in sports, which asserts that allowing trans women to compete on women’s sports teams violates Title IX. The order argues transgender women’s participation denies cisgender women “equal opportunity” to participate.
However, in Michigan, the Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act protects against gender identity discrimination. The Michigan High School Athletic Association, which allows trans women to compete on a case-by-case basis, has not altered its regulations while officials review how the laws interact.
No trans girls are competing on women’s teams, the MHSAA said. Two did in the fall.
The issue is hotly disputed, with many arguing trans women’s participation violates the principle of fair competition. There is no unifying framework for determining eligibility, and a New York Times/Ipsos poll in January showed widespread opposition: 94% of Republicans and 67% of Democrats opposed allowing trans women to compete on women’s teams.
Eligibility is often restricted to those who did not undergo male puberty or whose testosterone levels and muscle mass have been reduced to the levels of cisgender women. The American Medical Association holds that barring transgender women from school sports aggravates their gender dysphoria.
Legal concerns also filter into the attempts to ban transgender healthcare. On Feb. 7, Michigan’s Corewell Health system announced it would no longer begin new hormone replacement therapy regimens for transgender patients under 19. The same day, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel wrote healthcare providers that “the availability of federal funding has no bearing on Michiganders’ right to seek and receive healthcare services without discrimination.”
Five days later, Corewell Health resumed hormone replacement therapy.
Dievendorf said in an interview that they urge providers not to comply prematurely with the orders.
“Temper your response when you are told that it is a mandate for you to harm another person and one of your neighbors,” they said.
Dievendorf supports Nessel’s assertions: “She knows that our intent and conviction to protect our trans and nonbinary neighbors and youth is rooted in solid law. It’s rooted in case law, it’s rooted in Supreme Court decisions and the very core values of our Constitution.”
However, this lack of clarity has sometimes increased confusion among healthcare and insurance providers. Some employees are unsure where their employers stand on the matter, creating misinformation among trans patients.
One such patient is Rowan, a 29-year-old Lansing resident. After Rowan had his testosterone prescription denied by a pharmacy, his insurance agency mistakenly told him that Medicaid plans no longer covered the prescription.
Michigan Medicaid still covers hormone replacement therapy for patients with gender dysphoria.
“The lady on the phone had no more information than any of us did,” Rowan said. “I presume ignorance rather than malice. Instead of saying, ‘I don’t know, let me find out,’ she just said, ‘Oh, I guess we’re not covering it anymore.’”
It turned out Rowan’s doctor had simply sent his prescription refill late. But the few days of uncertainty were “hectic and stressful,” he said.
“I was left sitting there thinking, ‘Does Michigan suddenly not have money for Medicaid? Do we no longer have access to any of my prescriptions? Is it just the testosterone that I don’t have access to?’”
Rowan said a similar uncertainty has impacted his work with harm reduction agencies.
“None of us know what we’re supposed to be doing at all,” he said. “Nobody knows anything.”
Disappearing documents
Exacerbating confusion in the medical sector is the mandated deletion of cornerstone medical guidance on LGBTQ+ healthcare.
The Trump administration ordered federal agencies to rescind or amend all policies relying on guidance from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, which the order calls “junk science.” Another order mandates all federal agencies remove “all outward facing media (websites, social media accounts, etc.) that inculcate or promote gender ideology.”
Federal agencies have interpreted this liberally. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control deleted AtlasPlus, which provided surveillance data on sexually transmitted infections, from its website. The Youth Risk Behavioral Surveillance System, commonly used by public health professionals, was also deleted.
Pat Arnold, who works in the Women’s and Gender Studies Department at Michigan State and is finishing a master’s degree in public health, watched the websites go down in real time.
“Two weeks ago, I had all the data sets open on tabs on my computer,” Arnold said. “I was refreshing each of them and being taken to a 404 error.”
Arnold said the impact on the transgender population will be severe. “The Youth Risk Behavioral Surveillance System is one of the largest health surveys that asks about people’s gender identity,” they said. “If we don’t know if there are trans people in the datasets, we can’t estimate anything or use it in research.”
Ashlea Phenicie, chief advocacy officer at Planned Parenthood of Michigan, said the deletions impacted providers at Planned Parenthood clinics.
“Many websites our providers relied on for the best courses of care and data were wiped from the internet,” she said. “Our physicians were scrambling to save the information they had.”
Planned Parenthood of Michigan is continuing to provide gender-affirming care for 18-year-olds despite the executive order. It also hosts data on gender-affirming care on its website, which Phenicie said was “built by and for trans people.”
The removed data has been temporarily restored per court order, though with a disclaimer alleging the pages do not “reflect biological reality.” Some medical organizations have also begun hosting some data to preserve its availability.
Identity and ideology
These efforts have been successful in part through the orders’ reframing of transgender identities as “gender ideology.” The first order defines this ideology as “permitting the false claim that males can identify as and thus become women and vice versa.”
The term’s immediate roots are in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, which the Trump administration has used as a blueprint for a second term. Professor Johnson calls it a “dog whistle,” referencing radical anti-feminists in South America and Europe who have used the term for years. In 2013, for instance, former Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa alleged that “gender ideology” was being pushed on children and destroying family units.
By banning any material that may “promote or otherwise inculcate gender ideology,” the administration has effectively banned any mention of transgender people from the federal government. The State Department’s travel advisories now only reference “LGB travelers,” and the Social Security Administration’s website states that Social Security benefits include “members of the LGBQ community.”
A memo from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management also ordered U.S. government employees to remove their pronouns from email signatures, citing the “gender ideology” ban.
“Basic recognition of the existence of trans and nonbinary folks is being strategically eliminated,” Deivendorf said. “The word ‘transgender’ is being removed from historic sites, websites and really basic information related to healthcare.”
References to transgender people have also been scrubbed from some National Park Service websites, including the Stonewall monument in New York. The memorial commemorates the 1969 Stonewall riots, which began after police raided the Stonewall Inn to arrest trans women and crossdressers.
“We all know who started Stonewall,” Dievendorf said.
In reframing trans identities as an ideology, anti-trans policies have also become more openly biased. When Trump banned transgender people from the military during his first term, he did so under the justification that the military could not be “burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption” of having trans people in the military, according to a 2017 Trump tweet.
The new military ban, meanwhile, calls transgender people inherently dishonorable, asserting that “adoption of a gender identity inconsistent with an individual’s sex conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle.”
It continues, “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 member.”
Arnold said these biases are evident in the orders targeting gender-affirming care because the treatments banned for trans children remain legal for cis children.
“These practices are not exclusive to the transgender community,” Arnold said. “Cisgender people, adults and children, at times need them as well.”
Puberty blockers, usually the first medical step for transgender children, are also used to treat precocious puberty in cisgender children. Precocious puberty affects about 20 out of every 10,000 female children, according to the Cleveland Clinic, and five out of every 10,000 male children.
A JAMA Pediatrics study of U.S. private insurance claims from 2018 to 2022 found that fewer than 18,000 out of 5 million adolescents were diagnosed with gender dysphoria, and under 1,000 of them were treated with puberty blockers.
An executive order calls puberty blockers “chemical mutilation” to justify the ban.
Delaying the onset of puberty also delays bone development, though subsequent replacement regimens act as puberty and facilitate bone growth. Some studies suggest transgender women may not fully regain bone density. No concerns have been raised about transgender men.
Puberty blockers remain legal to treat precocious puberty in cisgender children.
“When you see that it’s applied to one community but not to another, for no medically sound reason, you really get a sense of what is motivating these bans,” Arnold said. “It’s very clearly a desire to erase transgender people.”
Identification
Federal websites are not the only documentation in turmoil from the new guidelines. An order signed on Inauguration Day rescinded the ability to modify gender markers on federal identification, including passports. The decision created confusion among those who had already changed their gender markers, such as M, F and X for nonbinary, intersex or gender nonconforming.
For weeks after Trump signed the order, confusion abounded regarding the implications. Those who had changed their gender markers already worried their passports might become invalid, while trans people with pending applications feared rejection.
Emme Zanotti, the director of advocacy and civic engagement at the civil rights organization Equality Michigan, has been working with U.S. officials to clarify this information.
Zanotti said passports with a changed gender marker will remain valid until expiration but under current law will have the marker changed back upon renewal. Some have already had their markers changed back, including those who have been transitioned for a long time and whose other identification reflects their gender accurately.
But transgender people whose applications were being processed during the transition of power were hit the hardest. Zanotti said many have been left hanging as their passports and vital supporting documentation are stuck indefinitely in processing. Some have called Equality Michigan for help, and Zanotti said Equality Michigan has been facilitating conversations with U.S. officials to get trans Michiganders their documentation back — though without their preferred gender marker.
In lieu of executive guidance, Equality Michigan has compiled a guide for trans Michiganders seeking a passport.
The Trump administration has discontinued the X gender marker, which was introduced following a lawsuit from intersex activist Dana Zzyym. Per an executive order, the federal government now recognizes only two sexes: male and female. Intersex people, whose bodies cannot be medically categorized as male or female, are not acknowledged.
Hope for tomorrow
The federal government’s attack on transgender rights has been swift and sweeping, but so has resistance. Many provisions have already been blocked, and some officials have vowed not to enforce others.
On Feb. 21, Maine Gov. Janet Mills publicly clashed with Trump at the White House over the executive order targeting trans women in sports.
“See you in court,” she said after Trump threatened to revoke Maine’s federal funding. Mills has refused to comply with the ban, arguing it contradicts “state and federal laws.”
In Michigan, trans healthcare currently remains legal for all ages, and transgender women meeting certain requirements are still allowed to compete in women’s sports. Laws protecting queer and trans people in Michigan have not been altered, including prohibitions on conversion therapy, the gay panic defense, and discrimination based on gender identity or sexual preference.
Lansing has seen a distinct uptick in community organization. A Jan. 30 protest at the Michigan Capitol by the Michigan-based Transgender Unity Coalition inspired coordinated protests in other states. Grassroots activists have organized to lead broader anti-Trump protests, creating the newly formed organizations 50501 Michigan and MI Resist.
Dievendorf finds the surge of grassroots activism both inspiring and effective.
“I’ve been in social justice and organizing for 25, 30 years, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a moment quite like this,” Dievendorf said. “This is a pivotal moment in history; it is having an impact and will continue to have an impact and perhaps be what saves this democracy.”
Dievendorf also described an increase in community support programs: “All over the state and all over the country, we are coming together and setting up community mutual aid programs, setting up systems of sharing information to make sure we know what is true and what action steps we can take next.”
Haladyna was a first-time organizer when she helped assemble the Lansing iteration of the Jan. 18 People’s March. Over 700 people showed up.
“I realized that we’re going to need each other to survive, that we’re going to stick to each other and form little clusters of people,” Haladyna said. “I think transgender people and immigrants are the most vulnerable in the country — and I’m an immigrant, too.”
Will Verchereau, a board member of Lansing LGBTQ+ organization the Salus Center, has seen similar adversity bring people together before. In 2024, a DeWitt elementary school teacher planned an optional, age-appropriate lesson on pronouns to support a nonbinary student who had been bullied. Controversy ensued, leading anti-trans advocates both in DeWitt and elsewhere to call school officials and decry the lesson. The superintendent eventually canceled it.
However, the controversy brought pro-trans advocates together. “There actually were far more people showing up to DeWitt schools in support of the lesson and in support of the child,” Verchereau said. “They didn’t even know this kid, but they showed up to support queer people across the district.”
The same year, that child’s mother co-founded the first-ever DeWitt Pride, which will return in 2025 with support from Salus.
Verchereau also stressed that the Salus Center is diversifying its funding resources so that it can stay open without federal funding and continue serving Lansing’s queer community. The center offers resource groups, clothing drives and care packages that were recently expanded to include needles for hormone injections.
On the medical side, Phenicie stressed Planned Parenthood’s commitment to trans healthcare: “We will continue to fight for transgender people’s right to access healthcare, whether that’s by keeping our doors open, by fighting in the courts or by going out into the streets and being loud in support of trans rights.”
Planned Parenthood of Michigan does not have the clinical expertise to provide hormone replacement therapy for minors, Phenicie said, but it advocates for the practice.
Shock and awe
Even as politicians, advocates and community organizers stand up to the federal government, transgender people on the ground are feeling scared.
Zanotti and Dievendorf believe that is intentional.
“The administration’s goals appear to be chaos, confusion and to make Americans distrust one another,” Zanotti said.
“The cruelty is the point,” Dievendorf said. “The purpose of all these executive orders is to create chaos, to unravel our government and democracy, and to attack our most vulnerable community members. And perhaps the long-term goal is not to deny these things permanently but to push us to a place of instability and fear.”
But even temporary instability could cost lives, some argue. A 2024 peer-reviewed study from The Trevor Project found that anti-transgender laws lead to a 72% increase in past-year suicide attempts among trans and nonbinary minors.
Lixy, a transgender woman and Lansing resident, called the slew of executive orders a “shock and awe” tactic — a military strategy that uses overwhelming displays of power to destroy enemy morale.
“It’s just horrifying,” she said. “Just the uncertainty. I actually called the national suicide hotline for the first time in over a decade.
“So often people say, ‘It doesn’t matter who gets elected because nothing ever changes for me,’” she continued. “What I don’t think those people realize is they maybe think that because they’re cis, or because they’re white. They never learn the empathy to think, ‘What if this happened to me?’”
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