Trans people won’t be safe under a second Trump presidency

The last few years have already seen an all-out attack on trans rights at the state and local level, and in all likelihood this election will only make it worse. Since Nov. 5, multiple trans community members and parents of trans kids have reached out to me in a panic, worried for the ways their families will be targeted, rushing to update ID documents, and even looking into how to flee the country.

It’s not hard to see why. Donald Trump has threatened to send the Department of Justice after companies for providing transition-related care to trans people, despite this treatment having a long history of safety established by national and international health experts.

Trump also threatens to legally define gender as only male and female at birth, endangering trans folks’ ability to access accurate legal documents, as well as erase any mention of our communities from all federal agency programs and communications.

That’s on top of the threat of violence, which trans people face at four times the national average, and which could be inflamed even more by Trump’s extreme rhetoric toward our community, including his repeated false claims that schools are secretly giving kids gender transition surgeries.

It’s clear that the trans community won’t be safe under a second Trump presidency. The thing is, neither will anyone else.

Too many of us have forgotten that my well-being is linked to yours, and yours to your neighbors’. We really are all in this together, and weakening the civil rights of one group paves the way for the rights of others to be infringed.

How can you be sure of your own access to health care if Trump’s government can so easily strip my family of ours?

How can you keep your kids healthy if Trump appoints an extreme anti-vaccine activist like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be his new “health czar” and preventable illnesses run rampant through our schools?

If Trump uses the military against his political opponents and anyone who speaks out against him — something he’s frequently mused about doing — then the freedom of speech is under threat for all of us.

If Trump’s immigration program places millions of people in detention camps, even revoking citizenship for some people born to immigrant parents, and keeps threatening to deport U.S. citizens for taking part in protests — are any of us safe from the long arm of ICE?

If Trump follows through on his plan to weaken the regulations that keep our water clean to drink and our air clean to breathe, it won’t matter which identities or demographics we fall in. Because we all need water to drink and air to breathe.

If Trump enacts the tariffs he’s been promising, then those of us who have already been struggling with high prices will have to figure out how to find an extra $2,600 in our budgets, that’s the estimated additional cost of the president-elect’s proposal for a typical American family each year.

None of us live one-issue lives, and as the saying goes, “a rising tide lifts all boats.” That’s why, in our community’s recent efforts to pass Safe & Equal Schools legislation, we’ve stressed the studies that prove all kids have better mental health and feel safer in schools where the marginalized students among them are protected.

The same is true for our country.

President-elect Trump thrives on telling us that we’re in a massive struggle between “us” and “them” — and he’ll make the other side pay.

The truth is, eroding the rights and protections of some of us ultimately ends up hurting everyone.

Daye Pope is a gender justice advocate. She has been organizing LGBTQ communities across the country for more than a decade to change narratives, oppose discriminatory laws, and fight for equality.