Donald Trump’s 10 Worst Attacks on the LGBTQ+ Community

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From 2017 to 2021, the Donald Trump-Mike Pence administration represented one of the greatest threats that LGBTQ+ people have faced in recent history. In his first four years in office, Trump enacted multitudinous decisions, and spewed hatred left and right, in ways that made life materially worse for marginalized communities all over the country, with LGBTQ+ people being no exception — and now, Republicans have chosen Trump to lead the country for another four years.

Between his efforts against life-saving legislation like the Affordable Care Act, to his appointments of homophobic and transphobic judges, Trump was a constant source of danger for queer people around the world even after leaving office. There are few issues impacting LGBTQ+ people that he cannot, and has not, made worse; over the course of the Biden administration, Trump zeroed in on trans rights as a new favorite punching bag, and promises to enact numerous policies that would harm trans youth and adults alike for years to come.

Organizations like the Log Cabin Republicans and the Republican National Committee have long attempted to paint Trump as an LGBTQ+ ally, before and after his first term. But to say that Trump is anything other than an enemy of LGBTQ+ people requires an absurd distortion of the facts and blithe ignorance of his actual record.

What follows is only a small sampling of Trump’s most egregious attacks on LGBTQ+ rights and dignity over the past decade. There are far, far more where these came from — and sadly, only time will tell how many more lie in store for us.

Opposing the Equality Act

One of the most clear-cut ways the first Trump administration expressed hostility toward queer people was through opposition to the Equality Act — still-pending legislation that would ensure that existing civil rights protections cover sexual orientation and gender identity in the way that they already do for race, disability, veteran status, and more.

The Equality Act is supported by a broad coalition of dozens of groups, including civil rights organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights Watch, businesses like Apple, Google, and Netflix, religious groups like The United Church of Christ, and many more. Nevertheless, one senior White House official said at the time that protecting queer Americans would “undermine parental and conscience rights.” Calling it a “poison pill,” spokesperson Judd Deere said that Trump opposed discrimination, but would not sign the bill. If Trump had specific objections to the bill, they were not made apparent.

In 2000, when he made his first attempt to be elected President, Trump said that he supported such an effort, calling it “simple … it’s only fair.” And during his 2016 campaign, he even claimed that he would leave in place Obama-era protections in federal workplaces. But under his leadership, White House officials instead fought to deny basic protections to queer people. Trump frequently flip-flopped on his positions regarding LGBTQ+ equality; he said that he was “fine” with marriage equality, but also said he was opposed to it and would “strongly consider” appointing justices to overturn it. After leaving the administration, former press secretary Sean Spicer wrote in his book The Briefing that Trump never really had any interest in supporting LGBTQ+ people.

The Equality Act has bipartisan support in Congress, and national polling has shown 70% public support. It passed the House in 2019 and 2021, but never made it through the Senate, and stalled in committee during the 118th Congress from 2023 to 2024.

Appointing Anti-LGBTQ+ Judges

Donald Trump appointed an unprecedented number of judges who hold extreme anti-LGBTQ+ views, and not just on the Supreme Court. These judges will hold their positions for life, threatening decades of regressive and bigoted rulings.

A 2019 report by Lambda Legal indicated that 36% of Trump appointees expressed bias and bigotry towards queer people. Those appointees included Steven Menashi, who opposed marriage equality, Lawrence Van Dyke, who said that allowing same-sex couples to marry would harm children, and Chad Readler, who was involved in numerous homophobic initiatives at the Department of Justice under Mike Pence.

The Republican strategy for years has been to block all nominees from Democrats but rubber-stamp any nominees from Trump. As a result, most of the country’s circuit courts are now stacked with Trump nominees, including many unanimously deemed “not qualified” by the American Bar Association. Many of those judges are associated with the homophobic Federalist Society, which compares same-sex marriage to polygamy.

Arguably Trump’s most damaging nominee was Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett, whose ties to right-wing Christian groups predicted her anti-LGBTQ+ votes in cases like 303 Creative v Elenis, in which the court sided with a Colorado website designer who sued for the right to refuse to serve LGBTQ+ people.

These appointments were particularly dangerous because many civil rights victories for the LGBTQ+ community have been won through litigation, dating all the way back to the One, Inc. case in 1958, which overturned laws preventing gay people from using the mail. Nondiscrimination, sexual freedom, marriage, and access to public accommodations have all been considered by federal courts; today, anti-LGBTQ+ judges are frequently hearing challenges to those precedents and ruling on the wave of anti-trans laws that have since swept state legislatures across the country. Packing courts with even more anti-queer extremists could further jeopardize the future of LGBTQ+ rights in the U.S.

Overturning Roe v Wade

The centerpiece of Trump’s judicial legacy is undoubtedly the fall of Roe v. Wade, and with it, most of the U.S.’s legal framework for abortion rights. Justices Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh, and Neil Gorsuch — all nominated by Trump during his first term — joined Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito in the 5-4 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health decision that nullified Roe in 2022.

The loss of abortion protections immediately sent shockwaves through marginalized communities across the country, with many advocates emphasizing that abortion is a queer issue, and that the fights for abortion are inextricable from the fights for trans healthcare. Two years later, abortion is illegal in 13 states, and heavily restricted in others, leading to tragic and preventable deaths.

Opposing Job Protections for Queer People

The first Trump administration poured considerable resources into blocking basic job protections for queer people, insisting that employers should be free to fire workers for even suspecting that they might be LGBTQ+. Under Trump, the administration filed briefs in the landmark Bostock case before the Supreme Court, arguing that existing civil rights laws should not be interpreted to cover sexual orientation and gender identity. This put them in opposition to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, creating an unusual situation in which the federal government had to argue against itself in court.

Trump also pushed a policy change that would allow federal contractors to discriminate against LGBTQ+ employees. The Department of Labor proposal would have ended a nondiscrimination policy dating back to 1965, and would have granted contractors wide latitude to claim religious freedom as justification for mistreating employees, essentially ending nondiscrimination protections for queer workers since they’re not explicitly protected by nondiscrimination laws.

In 2020, the Supreme Court ruled that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act protects workers from discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Considering three cases — Altitude Express Inc. v. Zarda; Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia; and R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes Inc. v. Equal Employment and Opportunity Commission — the court found that “it is impossible to discriminate against a person for being homosexual or transgender without discriminating against that individual based on sex.”

Following that ruling, Trump tweeted: “the Supreme Court doesn’t like me.”

Denying Healthcare

Under Donald Trump, the Department of Health and Human Services wiped out medical protections for queer people established under Obama’s Affordable Care Act. The rule change ended a policy that protected queer people from discrimination in healthcare settings, gutting a portion of the ACA known as “Section 1557.” Implemented in the summer of 2020, the change came amidst the still-ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, which has since been shown to have disproportionate health risks for LGBTQ+ people.

The administration also worked to dismantle the ACA overall, which would be devastating to queer people. Not only did the ACA extend nondiscrimination protections to queer people until the Trump administration made its changes, but it also dramatically expanded access to healthcare for sexual minorities. Queer people are more than twice as likely to be uninsured than cis, straight Americans, and studies showed that the ACA led to a significant increase in coverage for low-income LGBTQ+ people.

In his 2024 “Agenda47” platform, Trump vowed to outlaw gender-affirming care for trans youth, falsely labeling such medical care “mutilation” and “mutation” and promising to terminate trans-affirming doctors from Medicare and Medicaid. He also baselessly accused pharmaceutical companies of pushing gender-affirming treatment on children as a profit-making conspiracy.

Making Schools Less Safe for Queer Kids

Queer students had more difficulty accessing education under Donald Trump due to a rollback of protections and a failure to investigate cases of violence in schools. During his term, Trump’s Secretary of Education was Amway billionaire Betsy DeVos who began dismantling regulations that protected trans students immediately upon taking office. DeVos also suspended investigations into complaints from trans students that they were denied educational access. A 2019 report by the Center for American Progress showed that the Trump administration was far more likely to dismiss discrimination complaints than previous administrations.

This failure to provide safe access to education is of particular concern in light of the difficulties that LGBTQ+ students already face. A survey of trans youth in 2023 reported disturbingly high rates of anti-trans bullying, and another survey found that almost half of LGBTQ+ youth felt unsafe at school. Meanwhile, Trump has promised to double down in his second term by banning federal funding for any school that “push[es] radical gender ideology.”

Less Access to Housing

The first Trump administration made it more difficult for LGBTQ+ people to find and keep stable housing. Under Trump and Ben Carson, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) proposed new rules that would allow homeless shelters to turn away trans people. Civil liberty groups pointed out that the rule change, which was scrapped in 2021, could have resulted in trans women being forced into shelters alongside cis men, increasing their risk of violence and assault. In addition, HUD canceled a survey that was planned under the Obama administration to evaluate the efficacy of programs to reduce LGBTQ+ homelessness.

Queer people, particularly youth, are at particular risk when it comes to homelessness, with one in five homeless youth identifying as LGBT, according to the Williams Institute.

Undermining LGBTQ+ Military Service

One of Trump’s most high-profile announcements in the first year of his administration was his plan to block trans people from serving openly in the military. Announced in 2017, the policy went into effect in 2019, but was later reversed in 2021.

In the years since, conservative politicians have ramped up their transphobic rhetoric, creating “gender change” controversies to use as a wedge issue in this year’s election. Republican strategists have described how they exploit the trans community to drive conservative voters to the polls, following the template made popular by Trump.

The Trump administration also implemented a “deploy or get out” policy that sought to discharge service members who are ineligible to deploy — including people living with HIV, who are considered non-deployable and would lose their jobs under the policy. However, a district court judge ruled in 2024 that people with HIV cannot be barred from enlisting as long as their viral loads are undetectable.

Harming LGBTQ+ Communities Overseas

Donald Trump’s immigration policies have put people at risk around the globe, particularly those fleeing persecution abroad. Unveiled on Holocaust Remembrance Day in 2017, Trump’s draft order suspended programs that help refugees find safe housing in the U.S. and also reduced the number of people America will admit. It banned all refugees from Syria, and prioritized members of religious minorities over LGBTQ+ refugees.

Those restrictions only tightened in the years that followed. This June, the Biden-Harris administration released an updated version that would essentially end all asylum programs. Trump’s proposal would end gender-based protections in a way that judges could use to deny people fleeing discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. It would also no longer consider LGBTQ+ activism as a form of political speech, so refugees who were targeted for activism could no longer seek protection on that basis.

The Trump administration also pulled the U.S. out of the U.N. Human Rights Council, calling it a “cesspool of political bias.” That alone would bode poorly for Palestinians and Muslims around the world, even if Trump had not declared in 2023 that he would block refugees from Gaza and expand his “Muslim travel ban” in a second term. As if that is not chilling enough, in his June debate with Biden, then the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, Trump famously said that Biden should “let Israel finish the job” in Gaza.

What’s more, the U.S. has so far failed to take any substantive action on LGBTQ+ human rights abuses in countries like Chechnya, where violently homophobic leaders are connected to key Trump ally Vladimir Putin. When Brunei announced plans to impose the death penalty for queer people in 2019, the most that the administration managed was to say that they were “concerned.” In the past, Mike Pence defended countries that execute queer people.

And to top it all off, as if that wasn’t enough, the Trump administration even blocked embassies from flying rainbow flags for Pride.

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Stoking Violent Transphobia

Much of Trump’s rhetoric on the 2024 campaign trail was focused on a manufactured “crisis” of “migrant crime,” but he was also propelled by anti-trans propaganda. Amid months of campaign stops where he declared war on “gender insanity,” Trump and his affiliated PACs spent tens of millions of dollars on primetime TV ads proclaiming “Kamala Is for They/Them. President Trump Is for You.” Trump even released another such ad shortly before Election Day using the image of Olympic boxer Imane Khelif.

While polling has shown that trans issues are a low priority for most voters, the GOP’s all-out blitz of disinformation and scaremongering seemingly resonated with enough voters — or didn’t dissuade enough — to usher Trump into a second term. Trump’s rise to dominance in the GOP has emboldened numerous far-right militias and extremist groups, dramatically escalating safety concerns for LGBTQ+ communities across the country. During Trump’s first term, recorded murders of trans people across the U.S. nearly doubled, according to data from Everytown for Gun Safety. Recent federal data has shown a concerning rise in hate crimes against trans and gender-nonconforming people, a trend that shows no signs of slowing or reversing in the next four years.

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