In 2023 alone, over 520 anti-LGBTQ+ bills have been introduced in state legislatures. While not all will become law, the dehumanizing and extremist anti-LGBTQ rhetoric that these bills stoke is dangerous and harmful to LGBTQ+ people.

State legislatures across the country are advancing a range of anti-trans policies, from erasing basic rights and protections for LGBTQ+ folks, to legalizing discrimination under the guise of religion, to restricting the areas of public life where trans folks can be their true selves. Legislators are introducing and passing  gender-affirming care bans, for example in Florida and Texas. They are imposing sweeping anti-trans bathroom laws, sports bans, and attacking drag performances. Additionally, several LGBTQ+ erasure bills (which would strip legal protections and rights for LGBTQ+ people) have been advanced in Tennessee and Montana. These bills send a hateful and untrue message that queer and trans people are unwelcome and undeserving of basic human rights.

Anti-trans discrimination and exclusion happens in the context of a country that still fails to provide people with economic stability, affordable healthcare (including mental health care), universal education, or safe and stable housing.  What’s more, not all LGBTQ+ people are equally impacted by systemic security failures. Black trans women have historically been, and continue to be, more likely to face fatal violence: from individuals, from organized far-right extremists and from the state (including through long-term government neglect). 

Anti-Black racism, transphobia, queerphobia and misogyny are connected. Our liberation is tied to one another. It is no coincidence, for example, that states that threaten the health, rights and dignity of trans people are some of the most hostile to abortion rights. Just this month, the Nebraska governor signed a bill into law that both bans abortion at 12 weeks of pregnancy and restricts gender-affirming medical care for people younger than 19. Attacks on abortion care and attacks on LGBTQ+ people both, at their core, chip away at our collective bodily autonomy. 

LGBTQ+ communities are fighting back and advocates, including trans youth and their loved ones, have filed lawsuits challenging the harmful laws, advancing protections, and codifying rights. For example, advocates in Texas filed a lawsuit against the new law banning healthcare for trans youth. Additionally, municipalities are proactively becoming safe havens for people of trans experience.  

Attacks on LGBTQ+ people are a political reality. So is trans joy, love, family, and community connections. On May 24, for example, Trans Youth Prom took place in Washington D.C., an event dreamt up and organized by trans youth to celebrate trans lives and futures. Trans community care and chosen family connection has been, and continues to be, a part of what makes up the hope, power and beauty of the trans community.  

Our collective liberation is bound together. So, what can we do right now?  

• If you’re cisgender, educate yourself and your community: understand pronouns, use trans-inclusive language, learn the terminology, research the issues and more!
• Show up and speak out. When LGBTQ+ folks are the targets of hate, violence or discrimination, act! If your local community, city, county, or state is advancing a measure that will impact trans folks, mobilize around it. You can also join the Count Me In campaign,  which is organized by the Human Rights Campaign, for people to pledge support for the trans and non-binary community and contact your state legislators. 
• Consult, pay, and take the lead from trans-led organizations, trans organizers, and LGBTQ+ people demanding justice, survival, and that their humanity be recognized. Support and resource local, grassroots LGBTQ+ organizations. 

• The Biden Administration has proposed a new rule on school sports that would allow schools to limit the participation of transgender women and girls on female teams, but only in certain circumstances. It would also make it illegal for schools to broadly ban trans students from sports teams that align with their gender identity. 
• The Federal Drugs Administration (FDA) recently published new rules that would result in more gay and bi men being able to donate blood. 

• A jury cleared Gilead Sciences in a lawsuit brought by the U.S. government arguing that Gilead violated patents held by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on an HIV prevention drug related to pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP). Meanwhile, PrEP4All, urges the U.S. Government to appeal the court’s ruling.   
• Legislators in the U.S. House and Senate reintroduced legislation to expand the Medicare system throughout the country through the Medicare for All bill.  
• The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) announced that controlled substances, including testosterone, may be prescribed via telemedicine through late 2024, which is life-saving for many who are dependent on it for testosterone. 

• Conservative lawmakers overrode North Carolina’s governor’s veto which means abortion after 12 weeks is banned in the state. 
• South Carolina’s governor signed a bill into law that will limit most abortion as early as six weeks into a pregnancy. 
• North Dakota’s governor signed a law banning nearly all abortion with slim exceptions. 
• Despite abortion in New Mexico remaining legal, municipalities and counties have passed more anti-abortion ordinances than other states that are considered “pro-abortion.”  

• The Montana Supreme Court decided that registered nurses and midwives can continue providing abortion care, clashing with the state legislature which passed restrictive laws saying only physicians can perform abortions. 
• Thanks, again, to the work of PWN-CO and partner organizations, Colorado became the first state to ban controversial abortion pill reversals, a dangerous practice denounced by respected medical associations. 

• Virginia’s Democratic primary is underway and the outcome will impact the future of abortion access through lawmaking within the state. 
• Florida advocates are set to launch a campaign to get abortion rights on the ballot in 2024. 
• Missouri lawmakers failed to raise the bar to amend the state’s constitution which eases the path for restoring abortion rights through a public vote in 2024.  

• President Biden and Congressional leaders are closing in on a deal that would raise the government’s debt ceiling, but this still might have detrimental impacts to crucial support services program funding. As of May 30, indicators suggest the deal will increase funding for military spending while capping non-defense spending (the way we pay for essential programs like healthcare, housing, education and social services, and transportation) at current year levels. 

• Hollywood’s writers are on strike after six weeks of negotiation where studios and productions companies refused to support sustained income for writers in an evolving entertainment landscape. 

• Title 42, an anti-immigrant policy implemented under the Trump administration, is over, but there are increased restrictions under the Biden administration’s new immigration policies and state governors are taking dangerous and harmful action to keep migrants from settling in their constituencies. Recently, the Supreme Court dismissed a dispute over Title 42 and whether states’ attorney generals can step in to defend the policy. 
• Some truck drivers are vowing to boycott Florida in protest against the state’s new immigration laws criminalizing employers who might employ undocumented people as well as restrict travel of undocumented folks at the risk of criminalization. These new immigration laws are dangerous and hostile toward immigrant workers.  
• Five Philadelphia City Council members moved to ban supervised injection sites in about half the city which, if successful, would negatively impact harm reduction efforts within the city. 

• The Supreme Court agreed to take up a South Carolina racial gerrymandering case.  
• Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, signed a new voter suppression bill that would make it harder to register Black and Latinx voters. Three organizations immediately sued DeSantis arguing that the new restrictions violate the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution, including the right to free speech and association, and fundamental protections of the right to vote.
• The North Carolina supreme court allowed the state’s lawmakers to redraw congressional and state legislative districts giving state legislatures virtually dangerous and unlimited power to resolve election disputes. 
• Harris County will sue the state of Texas over two election bills that would, among other things, remove the elections administrator position in the county and transfer duties to other county leaders. Voting rights advocates argue that the bills would open the door for political leaders to manipulate elections in the county.