The Trump administration has quietly released a 400-page proposed federal rule that would require every hospital, university, school district, state government, nonprofit, and homeless shelter that receives federal funding to deny that transgender people exist — or lose their money.
This is not an executive order. It is a binding federal regulation, jointly proposed by 42 agencies, designed to be significantly harder for a future administration to reverse. It covers every federal grant across every agency in the United States government.
Under this rule, an institution that acknowledges a transgender employee's name, allows a transgender student to use a bathroom that matches their gender identity, or provides hormone therapy to a transgender adult could be deemed to promote "gender ideology" and have all federal funding terminated. Political appointees — not career experts or peer reviewers — would screen every federal grant recipient for compliance before money is released.
The consequences are already visible in what funding threats alone have done. Over 40 hospitals suspended gender-affirming care programs before any legal determination was made. RAINN removed all support for LGBTQ+ survivors of sexual violence from its website. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children was told to deadname transgender children in missing persons reports — making missing trans girls actively harder to find.
This rule is designed to make all of that permanent and unchallengeable. The Human Rights Campaign called it fascism. They are right.
The public comment period closes July 13. We're calling on the Trump administration to withdraw this rule immediately — and on Congress to block it before it takes effect.