By Elyse Shaw

Since January 2025, the Trump Administration has embarked on a wholesale attack on transgender individuals. Under the guise of “protecting women,” the administration has been simultaneously marginalizing transgender people and rolling back women’s rights. I saw both of these actions firsthand during my time in the U.S. Department of Labor’s (DOL) Women’s Bureau (WB). On the first day of his second term, Trump launched his attacks on DEIA and transgender and gender-nonbinary people, forcing the WB to strip any mention of the word “gender” from its website. Denying services to transgender and gender-nonconforming people was also the rationale used by the administration for cancelling 25 of the WB’s active grants, cutting vital funding for all women. These actions have only intensified and gained momentum.

On February 18, 2026, the Kansas state legislature overrode Governor Kelly’s veto of SB 244, a sweeping anti-transgender measure that restricts access to bathrooms and locker rooms in public buildings based on sex assigned at birth, with criminal and civil penalties for using the “wrong” facility. The bill also allows for bounty-style lawsuits that individuals can file against those they believe are breaking the bathroom laws, and invalidates all Kansas driver’s licenses and birth certificates with updated gender markers. 

Overnight, Kansas sent letters to all trans individuals stating that their licenses are invalid and must be surrendered. This has effectively blocked transgender Kansans from being able to drive to work, pick up kids, get groceries, or even to go to the DMV to surrender their ID in compliance with the new law. In order to get a corrected ID, trans Kansans are also required to pay the fee associated with replacing their license. Invalidating a driver’s license not only leaves transgender individuals unable to drive to and from work and maintain employment, it also means they cannot open a new bank account, apply for a loan, rent an apartment, start a new job, fly on commercial airlines, or vote. Invalidating IDs and stripping access to public restrooms denies trans people the right to exist in public space and have their voices heard in elections.

One week later, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission continued this anti-trans agenda by reversing its long-standing position that trans federal employees have the right to access bathrooms and other sex-segregated facilities consistent with their gender identity, denying them the ability to safely access bathrooms while at work. This is especially concerning given the removal of all gender-neutral bathrooms at the DOL under the Trump Administration, a policy I can only assume was implemented across the federal government. 

These inhumane measures will only further push transgender people out of public spaces and limit already constrained job prospects. Research has found that transgender individuals experience either harassment or violence when attempting to access public restrooms, or are outright denied access. These situations are worse when trans people are required to use bathrooms according to their sex assigned at birth. Such policies leave transgender people few options: trying to avoid using the bathroom at school, work, or in public; limiting their food and water intake (at the detriment to their physical health); or meticulously planning their days around access to safe bathrooms. As a result, 58 percent of trans survey respondents reported avoiding going out in public due to a lack of access to safe bathrooms, with 38 percent saying they actively avoid places without such access. If a place of employment is not one of those safe spaces, transgender individuals will have even more limited employment opportunities, negatively impacting their economic security. 

These attacks on transgender rights will have long-standing detrimental economic impacts on transgender individuals. In 2021, transgender people were almost twice as likely to live in poverty compared with straight cisgender people (21 percent versus 11 percent). Every single transgender person interviewed for a 2020 study said they’d had a hard time finding and holding stable employment due to bias and discrimination. Economic insecurity also leads to increased experiences of food and housing insecurity: half of transgender men and two-thirds of transgender women reported not having stable housing or experiencing homelessness. The attacks and threats coming from the administration will only create more hardship. 

All of these policies have been enacted under the guise of “protecting women,” but this administration, which has long been plagued by accusations of sexual assault and misconduct, does not truly care about women’s health or safety. While the impacts of these measures are felt most acutely by transgender and gender-nonconforming individuals, they also increase violence against cisgender women. Cisgender female athletes, especially women of color, have dealt with numerous accusations that they are transgender in an effort to invalidate and undermine their progress. Women are increasingly being accosted in bathrooms, with the demand that they “prove” they are women: one teen had to go so far as to unzip her hoodie and show she had breasts before being allowed to leave a restroom. Another cisgender female Walmart employee was fired after a man followed her into the bathroom and shouted anti-trans threats at her. 

The fight for transgender rights is the fight for all of our rights. The administration and Republican state leaders are setting a dangerous precedent and assuming that cisgender individuals will not step in to defend trans rights. This precedent can then be used against other marginalized groups, slowly chipping away at our collective power and rights, including our rights to exist safely and freely in public spaces and to vote. 

In these moments, I return to these wise words from Audre Lorde: “I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.” Our rights are inextricably linked, and cannot be separated.