Today, Explained - The Americans with their bags packed

Episode Date: October 20, 2025

The Trump administration is making an effort to systematically exclude trans people from public life. For many trans Americans, it feels like an existential threat. This episode was produced by Avishay Artsy, edited by Miranda Kennedy, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by Patrick Boyd and Adriene Lilly, and hosted by Noel King. Photo courtesy of Carma Bell Marshall, a Louisville-based transgender activist. Listen to Today, Explained ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members. New Vox members get $20 off their membership right now. Transcript at ⁠vox.com/today-explained-podcast.⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's today explained from Vox. In the second Trump administration, transgender Americans have been subjected to a lot of scrutiny and some new laws and restrictions that President Trump made clear we're coming on his first day in office. It will henceforth be the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders, male and female. On today's show, we're going to look at how life has changed for trans people since Trump was elected and how they're trying to to understand the people who've aligned against them. It is being, but to his base, that's what they want to see. They want to see a fighter.

They want to see a hero. They want to see the quote-unquote Christian warrior. And me, a black trans woman, I am an enemy. I am that monster that you see in those commercials. Support for today explained comes from Sacks Fifth Avenue. Fancy, Sacks Fifth Avenue makes it easy to holiday your way. Whether it's finding the right gift or the right outfit, Sacks, is where you can find everything like a Chloe bag. What does that look like? Maybe you could buy something for Noel, because she likes fancy stuff. If you don't know where to start, sacks.com is customized to your personal style so you could save time shopping and spend more time just enjoying the holidays, make shopping fun and easy this season, and find gifts and inspiration to suit your holiday style at Sacks. This week on version history, the Verge's new chat show about old technology. We're going back to the early 1980s when the idea of bringing technology with you out into the world was brand new. And we're talking about the Sony Watchman, which took TV out of that giant furniture piece in your living room and into the world.

You could watch sports while you were in church. You could watch the news while you were supposed to be at a wedding. It changed everything. In good and bad ways. All that on version history on YouTube and in your podcast app. This is Today Explained. My name is Kate Sossin. I am an LGBTQ plus reporter at the 19th.

I cover LGBTQ plus political issues, and I'm one of many transgender people in the country doing this work right now. All right. So this is President Trump's second term. And a lot has changed between 2016 and today. How would you describe Trump's attitude towards trans people this time around? When he first got into office in 2017, there were still some questions about how he was going to approach LGBTQ plus issues. And he made a number of anti-trans moves in his first term. President Trump announcing via social media today his plans on banning transgender individuals from being a part of the U.S. military.

The Trump administration plans to overturn a regulation that protects transgender patients from health care discrimination. But this time he really campaigned on anti-trans issues. And we will get critical race theory and transgender insanity the hell out of our schools. And he's made them kind of a staple of his administration as part of the broader far-right agenda. I think it's pretty clear that what we're seeing is, a backlash to increase visibility and rights for transgender people and also the result of marriage equality. So Republicans lost on marriage equality. It's now been 10 years. It's the law of the land and it's overwhelmingly accepted by the American public. So then the focus turned to transgender issues, both for advocates who wanted to see transgender issues and transgender rights take center stage.

and also for people who are against trans issues. And so what we've seen is right after marriage equality took center stage, we saw a lot of bathroom bills in different states and cities, and those failed. I have a judge temporarily halts a Montana law that restricts transgender people from using bathrooms and public buildings. Tonight, an attempt by Tennessee lawmakers

to dictate signs in businesses and single out the transgender community failed in the face of a federal judge. And then we saw attention turned to sports bands and health care bands. And that's where we saw some traction start to form right around 2020. And that debate in 2020 brings us up to the present day where, as you said, President Trump campaigned in many cases explicitly on anti-trans rhetoric. Every transgender inmate would have access. Kamala's for they-them. President

Trump is for you. I'm Donald J. Trump and I approve this message. Does President Trump done specifically this term? You know, I would say that there's four different buckets or categories that we can sort things into. We have the general erasure of trans people from government and public life. We have him limiting health care access specifically for trans youth and revoking federal funding for medical providers that offer it. We have the reinstatement of the transgender military ban and then denying transgender. people passports. Let's talk through some of them, erasure. What do you mean by erasure of trans people? Yeah, so on day one, Trump signed this executive order stating that his administration

will recognize only two genders, male and female. And that proclamation pretty much governs everything that comes next because he's trying to scrub trans people from public life. So we see it in school censorship. He directs the federal government to eliminate funding for schools that promote the quote-unquote indoctrination based on radical gender ideology. Maybe you heard something about that. And he signs an executive order asking the Department of Justice to help ban trans girls from sports. I also signed an executive order to ban men from playing in women's sports. You see the NCAA falling in line with that. Mentions of trans people are purged from government websites.

And the National Park Service is under fire for erasing all mentions of transgender and queer people from its Stonewall Monument website. The website now only uses the abbreviation, LGBT, for lesbian, gay, and bisexual. We're not going to tolerate this. Progress and civil rights and LGBT rights have never been made by being silent, and we're not going to be silent. You mentioned also limiting access to gender affirming care. This is something that in some cases, as I understand it, the states have control over. How is the Trump administration limiting this care? Yeah, you're absolutely right.

So before Trump took office, 27 states had moved to blocked gender affirming care for youth. And all those laws have happened in the last five years. It's important to note that this has been just like really quick. Some families have to travel really great distances because it is specialized care. there are these bans. Trump's order takes away funding from hospitals and clinics that provide it. 21 hospitals and clinics have stopped providing that care nationwide. So we've seen a great decrease. Some states have fought back. In California, for example, the Attorney General sent a letter reminding hospitals that they were required by state law to continue those services.

Blocking gender affirming care for young people is just one prong of Trump's campaign to erase the existence of transgender individuals, scare them into the shadows of society and deny their rights. Children became a flashpoint. I think it's fair to say because of increased attention and because they are children and everybody sort of thinks they have a right to an opinion on what kids do. But adults, transgender adults, for a long time, have been able to receive gender affirming care in the United States. And I think the attitude is adults are adults. Has the Trump administration been able to change how adults are able to receive care? As of now, no, but there is a fear around this.

And one of the points about this comes down to a case that we heard from the Supreme Court last year, which was the Scrimetti case. We'll hear argument this morning in case 23477, United States v. Scrimetti. The Supreme Court basically ruled in Scrimetti that transgender care is special, basically. It is not like other protected care. If we say that trans kids can't get the kind of care that their doctors recommend, it doesn't bode well for transgender adults. And then you mentioned a difficulty getting passports for trans people.

What's been going on there? Yeah. So when you apply for your passport, you mark male, female, or recently you have the option to mark a gender marker X, which is either unspecified or non-binary. the Trump administration was rejecting all gender marker changes. So you couldn't update your gender marker, which meant a lot of people were unsafe. And this caused a lot of panic and confusion because a lot of trans people wanted to flee the country. There was a lawsuit from the ACLU. They won an injunction. And as of July, trans people have been able to update their passports. There is a fear, however, that this is temporary. So the advice has been, if you need, are trans and you need a passport, you should apply for one right away because this is changing so quickly and it's uncertain how this will play out. When they present a passport that is consistent with the way they're presenting themselves, they risk being accused of passport fraud. They risk

being detained, searched. It's a name on a document, but it also can be a very uncomfortable search and interview at the airport. After Charlie Kirk was murdered, it became very clear that some people in the Trump administration were blaming trans people, wanted to create a narrative where trans people were either involved or responsible. Look at the way they're celebrating Charlie Kirk's murder. Look at the way that this assassin was radicalized by left wing and probably trans-related stuff.

Do you have a sense of what is coming from the administration next? This is a really difficult question. So the Heritage Foundation, which is a Project 2025 architect, came out with a petition that encouraged the FBI to label transgender people as transgender ideology-inspired violent extremists or tithe, which is its own terrorist designation. And this is important because the Heritage Foundation is so close with the Trump administration because they are authors of Projects. 2025. So we are waiting to see what transpires. Advocates are taking this very seriously. They are very concerned about it. How much harder have the last 10 months in the second Trump administration made life for trans people? What are you hearing? I have heard a number of parents of trans kids who have just left the country or are preparing to. They can't access the health care that their

kids need. They are afraid of violence directed at their kids. And they feel like even if their state is safe at the moment, it won't be much longer. And the fear that I hear from my trans sources and friends is just really profound that this country is becoming unlivable for trans people. And that seems like it's by design. For me as a trans person, who's a very well-resourced, my family has go-bags, and we keep them updated. They're in our garage. And there's been a sense of that, I think, this entire administration of not if but when, and just absolute terror about what do you do, how do you relocate a family? and at what point will it be unsafe to leave?

How long do you wait? That's Kate Sossin. You can find their work at 19th News.org. Coming up in Kentucky, she's the person that young people come to when they're thinking about coming out. how a trans organizer is changing some of the advice she gives. probably was when you started it, when all your customer data just lived in your head. But now that your business has grown considerably, Vanta says they can help. Vanta knows that your security and compliance needs can change with your company.

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Aren't we used to bubbles where people lose their minds financially and menadol straightens itself out eventually? What if this one is different? The point is, all of these other booms nowhere near as unprofitable. This would be like if every Uber cost $10,000 and ran on giraffe blood. That's Ed Zittran, a writer and podcaster, and a critic of big tech in general, and AI specifically.

And I'm Peter Kafka, the host of channels, the podcast about tech and media. You can hear my conversation with Ed Zitron right now on channels wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. It's Today Explained. I'm Noelle King. Karma Bell Marshall is with me. Karma is a community organizer

and an activist in Louisville. Kentucky. She recently ran for office there. For those who don't know me, I am Karma Bell Marshall, the first black trans woman to run for the House of Representatives in the state of Kentucky. Karma's the founder of The Village, a mentorship program for gender diverse kids. She's 35 now, and she came out as transgender seven years ago. There were these things that I did when I was a child and things that I could remember back to, and I never could really understand. to put my thumb on it. I always just knew, I was just a really feminine child. Like, I didn't want to do anything the boys did, but if it was something the girls were doing,

cheerleading, playing with Barbie dolls, braining hair, petting fingernails, I was there. So I guess I was given language to then be able to voice what was inside of myself. So it was kind of like this light switch went off inside of me. And the first person I called was my father to tell him what was going through my head. And my father embraced me with loving arms, and he's been by my side ever since. My dad, I would say, is your average father of color. He has a loud, booming voice.

He's a little bit of other authoritarian. He was very big on, say, yes, sir, no, sir, yes, ma'am, no, ma'am. So I'm very big on, like, you know, just being respectful. being kind of he taught me to speak up and ask questions if I have questions and don't be afraid. So I speak up and I ask questions and, you know, some people like it. Some people don't, but that's okay. My daddy told me to do it. So I'm going to keep doing it.

So, yeah, my dad is my world. What has changed for you in the last 10 or so months? I was one of the people who went for a passport. My passport ended up getting with. held for further review. After further review, they then issued me a passport with a male jimder signifier by hormone medication. There was legislation passed that makes it to where Medicaid or Medicare can't pay for my hormone replacement therapy. So they'd be paying like $40 to $50 for my medicine. That's $250 now. I'm seeing it hit me in my wallet and I'm seeing it

hit me on the policy side, I've never once been questioned using a restroom. Here in Kentucky, no one has ever stopped me. However, this past March, I was at the Capitol, and a Republican representative gathered six Capitol officers to come and, I guess, confront me as I exited the women's restroom. They basically said that I was. a little loud in there. They quoted a Senate bill saying that it had basically

made it to where it was illegal for somebody who was biologically mailed to be in a female's restroom. The bill that he was referencing did not reference anything about people using the restroom. It's about public employees and their benefits. And then him and

the capital officers escorted me back to where the event was at, that I was actually there to speak for. So then I take to the mic and explain what had just happened. I have been to this Capitol on countless times spoken with many representatives. And today, today was the first day I was accosted in the female bathroom by the state of the Capitol police officers. I spoke with the head of the Capitol Police officers and he apologized for what had happened.

What are the feelings associated with something like what happened to you on that day? Well, at first, it's fear because as a black trans woman, to all of a sudden be surrounded by six capital police officers, and all I was doing was putting all my lashes and lipstick. It escalated to a tent out of nowhere. Let's talk about the politics of all of this. Right before the election last year, a couple weeks before the election, Candidate Trump ran ads against candidate Harris saying she's for they, them, not you. Then after Trump won the election, you will remember that one of the big talking points among Democrats was that the quote-unquote trans issue cost them undecided voters. That would allow trans athletes in women's sports.

But the issue of fairness is completely legit. So I completely align with you. And we've got to own that. We've got to acknowledge it. If you just keep preaching and talking down to people, if you just ignore the majority of voters, then that's fine. You can have that position, but we're going to keep losing elections. Do you feel like you are seeing Democrats distance themselves from trans people now? Yes, I do, because we are the unknown variable.

The fact that even in that moment, he tried to take the pronouns and use it divisively, he is doing the subtraction game. and Democrats need to wake up and start doing the addition game. And the addition game isn't selling out one of your groups because you don't understand us. Because we are also there with you in the fights when it comes to racial justice issues. We're out there on the fight with you when it comes to women's right and reproductive justice issues. So instead of getting rid of a block, Democrats need to wise up and pull us close and get better selling exactly who we are or put us in front to let us sell us. You are a very forward-facing advocate in the trans community. I imagine you talk to young people who are deciding about whether or not to transition.

What kinds of conversations are you having in the last 10 months? A lot of conversations about building resilience. This right now is a game of can we withstand the onslaught, the obstacles, everything that they're throwing at us. especially our youth, when I'm speaking with them, I'm hearing a lot of hopelessness, pressure, anger, and frustration, which then leads itself to exhibit itself in unhealthy ways with the children's life, because they start not doing well in school, their grades start slipping, their behavior might start becoming more erratic, and our kids have been flailing. Because you've got some people who want to transition now, but they don't.

because they're afraid. They're afraid that the world has become so violent and so detrimental that they can't even take the first steps at becoming who they truly are. But I try my hardest every single time to let them know that whatever decision they choose, I'm still going to be right here supporting them.

One thing that we heard in the first half of the show today was that some trans people are making plans to leave the United States. Where do you stand on this? What are you thinking? This makes me sad. And this is something I cry about a lot. Because Kentucky has always been my home.

It's always been Kentucky. So now to say, you know what, I'm going to run. I'm going to go. That is really hard for me to fathom. It may come to that. I have my passport just in case. I have my documents ready because you just have to be prepared for anything. But if I leave, who's going to be left to fight for my community?

If we concede this ground, if we all just say, you know what, let's leave, we could lose our hope forever. And is that what we want? Like, I thought we wanted our home to get better. And if our home, it has to get better, that means we have to stay and fight the hard fight sometimes. What would you miss about Kentucky? You've told me a lot of stories about how hard it is. What would you hate to leave? The first thing that really made me sad.

Would be losing my father. My father's older now. He had a stroke not too long ago. So I don't know how it would be moving him. So that would be the hardest thing for me because I'm so close with my dad. And I care about him so much. Have you had any conversations with your father where you've told him these are your fears and you fear at some point you might have to go?

Yeah. My dad tries to be the optimist. He tries to tell me it's going to be okay. Like, that's not going to happen. Like, and I try to be optimistic, too. I really do. But I can't be so stuck in my optimism but that I don't see the danger

that is right in front of me. Our community has been through hardship before. And I try to remain hopeful and positive about it. And what makes me hopeful and positive is getting people engaged with the process. Open people's eyes. to the reality of what's really happening here. It's scary, and I get that.

Like, I'd be scared, but there's so much joy and happiness to find when you realize that you, the average American, has the power to make this better. Like all of us do. We have to recognize that the bad isn't going to change. It's always going to be bad. So we've got to be the best good that we can be. because I'm really good at being good.

Thank you so much for taking the time to do this today. It was my pleasure. I really enjoyed this. Thank you so very much, Ms. Noah. Karma Bell Marshall there in Kentucky. Avishai Artsy produced today's show. Miranda Kennedy edited. Laura Bullerchecked the facts. Our engineers are Patrick Boyden, Adrian Lilly.

I'm Noel King. Don't forget Vox.com slash members if you want to get $20 off a member. membership now. It's today explained.