A week after returning to office, President Trump issued an executive order threatening to withhold all federal funding from any medical provider who offers gender-affirming medical care to transgender people under 19. The order was soon after challenged by families, medical providers, and organizations that serve them in PFLAG v. Trump, a case filed on their behalf by the ACLU, the ACLU of Maryland, and Lambda Legal.

• On Tuesday March 4, a federal district court in Baltimore granted a nationwide preliminary injunction in PFLAG v. Trump preventing the Trump administration from conditioning, withholding, or terminating federal funding based on the fact that a healthcare entity or health professional provides gender-affirming medical care to a patient under 19 under the executive orders or from “tak[ing] any steps to implement, give effect to, or reinstate [the EOs] under a different name.”
• On March 5, the Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) issued a notice to providers stating that it “may begin taking steps to align its policies and regulations” with the Trump administration’s order.
• On March 6, the federal Health Services and Resources Administration (HRSA) and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) issued similar notices to grantees which specifically stated those steps could include terminating or “rescoping” grants.

Today’s motion asks the court to order the agencies to rescind the notices, provide the recipients of the notices with copies of the court order, and submit to the court signed acknowledgments by the agency heads that they have personally received a copy of the order.

The following is a joint statement from the ACLU and Lambda Legal:

“These notices are a transparent attempt to coerce medical providers to ignore their best medical judgment and instead follow politically-charged edicts from the President, injecting his ideology into the medical lives of thousands of transgender people and their families. The Trump administration is not above the law. Like anyone else, it must abide by and respect federal court orders. We are asking the court to enforce the preliminary injunction and make clear that the Trump Administration cannot threaten medical providers or hospitals’ federal funding for providing necessary gender-affirming medical care while the injunction is in place.”

Originally Published by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) — https://www.aclu.org/

There are startling trends emerging in the United States, as well as the rest of the world, in the year 2025. A couple of such dangerous trends are in the realm of racial as well as LGBT+ persecution. Hate crimes against racial, sexual, and gender minorities have been on the rise for years.

As seen in the following charts, hate crimes against the LGBT+ community, especially against transgender people, have been on a rapid rise since 2014.

According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation,

“A hate crime is a traditional offense like murder, arson, or vandalism with an added element of bias. For the purposes of collecting statistics, the FBI has defined a hate crime as a criminal offense against a person or property motivated in whole or in part by an offender’s bias against race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender, or gender identity.”

These statistics are alarming but they are not an anomaly or a random occurrence. As the economy worsens, corporate America seeks to scapegoat, or pin the blame on, other groups. Monopolies have always maintained a ‘divide and conquer’ strategy when it comes to lessening the threat of strikes, protests, and other uprisings by the working and oppressed peoples. Generally the more liberal elements of corporate America will co-opt the struggle of the LGBT+ population. This problem is recognized by a significant portion of the LGBT+ population where they protest the use of Pride Month by corporations, especially the military contractors, to help cleanse their image. On the other side of the ‘divide and conquer’ strategy is the exploitation of backwards biases of conservative and often evangelical reaction.

In its most extreme form, persecution of LGBT+ and racial minorities comes from the far-right and particularly the fascist wing of corporate America.

Today, under the Donald Trump regime, far-right populism is mobilizing for a complete assault on the civil liberties of these oppressed minorities. In President Trump’s last term, he packed the Supreme Court with fellow right-wing conservatives such as Neil Gorsuch who has a poor record on LGBT+ issues as seen here.

In Trump’s current term, there seems to be stronger hostilities against the LGBT+ community with Trump vowing to end ‘gender lunacy’ before entering office and a subsequent signing of an executive order declaring there to be only two genders. Trump’s unelected, but effective, co-President billionaire Elon Musk is also using his wealth to crack down on what they call ‘DEI hires’ which is a very thinly veiled rhetoric against minorities by way of allowing employers to hire based on their socio-political biases.

Though the US cannot be considered to be officially a fascist state, it would seem economic crisis-fueled scapegoating is an indication of the direction we are heading. We must remember that under fascist states such as Nazi Germany, violence against Jewish, Romani, Slavic, and LGBT+ minorities was not an immediate reality. Rather, it started with scapegoating, hateful rhetoric, and little to no accountability against attacks by far-right paramilitaries and terrorists. The anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany started by blaming the Jewish population for Germany’s defeat in WWI and the subsequent Great Depression.

If we are to prevent similar crimes against humanity, we must study and learn from the patterns of Hitler’s Germany.

Ricardo Martinez, Executive Director of GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders (GLAD Law), made the following statement:

Monday’s executive order is a direct attack on transgender Americans, deliberately making it harder for people to live their everyday lives. It is cruel, and it is wrong.

The administration is trying to create fear and sow chaos by its statements and orders, but no executive action can change the fundamental truth that transgender people are vital members of our families and communities. Like all people, transgender people deserve dignity, respect, and the freedom to live without fear of government-sanctioned harm.

A president’s powers are not unlimited—the Constitution, federal courts, and our democratic system serve as bulwarks against government overreach. Implementing today’s order and others that may follow cannot happen overnight.

GLAD Law will use every tool we have to fight for LGBTQ+ people’s rights and for fairness and dignity. We will defend the fundamental principle that equal protection under the law is guaranteed – without exception.

Originally published by GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders (GLAD Law) — https://www.glad.org/

Included below is the PDF for the publication: