Trump is defunding and dismantling freedom, starting with LGBTIQ people's rights

Within a few days after his inauguration, not only did President Donald Trump roll back a decade and a half of U.S. leadership in advancing the inclusion of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and queer people around the world, he began a campaign that can only be described as the attempted eradication of LGBTIQ civil society and enforced invisibilization of trans, intersex, and gender-diverse people.

On his first day, Trump issued an executive order stating that the United States would only recognize two sexes, male and female, applying erroneous definitions of biological characteristics at conception. The executive order aims to obliterate decades of advancement in the U.S. and globally toward non-discrimination and rights-based legal gender recognition. The immediate impact is being felt by transgender, gender-diverse, and intersex people crossing a U.S. border and those seeking to renew their documents, who suddenly face the threat of being told that their gender identity is fraudulent.

Then things got worse. By the end of his first week in office, Trump issued a 90-day freeze on almost all foreign aid expenditures. LGBTIQ people were simultaneously a pretext to justify much broader efforts to dismantle government as we know it and one of the most immediate casualties of the administration's chainsaw-wielding approach to governance, as Trump and his cronies claimed they were seeking to root out foreign assistance spending that was not aligned with their anti-gender, anti-inclusion priorities. Soon after, programs focused on LGBTIQ people began receiving notices that their funding from the U.S. government was permanently terminated. Organizations that provided health care, job training, or emergency shelter for LGBTIQ people, along with those that provided legal aid and advocated to end arbitrary arrests and torture, had to halt these programs immediately – sometimes literally turning vulnerable, displaced people out onto the streets or away from HIV treatment services with no warning.

Since 2011, both the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) have invested in the premise that equal opportunity for all, regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity, or sex characteristics, is a public good. The Global Equality Fund, a public-private partnership of roughly 30 resource partners, distributed over $100 million in its first 10 years to civil society movements working to achieve LGBTIQ equality in more than 100 countries. USAID issued an LGBTQI+ Inclusive Development Policy and supported organizations like Outright International to build partnerships with private foundations, country-level civil society organizations, and community-based organizations to strengthen the resilience of LGBTIQ movements and ensure LGBTIQ inclusion in market economies. These programs supported the basic needs, human rights, and human development of LGBTIQ people in lower-income countries, breathing life into the fundamental American principle that everyone should have a fair chance to thrive. They were brutally cut short by a government that has turned its back on fairness.

In the weeks immediately following the January 24 stop-work orders issued to U.S. government funding recipients, Outright surveyed organizations that carried out work to protect the rights and ensure the inclusion of LGBTIQ people around the world. On February 13, we issued the report "Defunding Freedom: Impacts of U.S. Foreign Aid Cuts on LGBTIQ People Worldwide." Among 125 survey respondents, 72 said that their organizations would have to shut down programs completely or will fire staff. Meanwhile, programs to address anti-LGBTIQ violence programs were defunded in at least 28 countries, medical and mental health programs in 14 countries, legal aid programs in 17 countries, jobs and livelihood programs in 16 countries, emergency shelters in nine countries – and the list goes on.

On February 18, adding insult to injury, the White House issued a memorandum calling for all federal agencies, including those that were providing support to LGBTIQ groups, to make public, to the maximum extent possible, complete details of every terminated grant. Many LGBTIQ organizations operate in countries where they risk violence and persecution, and the U.S. issued some of its grants, including through implementing partners like Outright, with a promise to avoid harmful visibility. This memorandum breaks that promise and forces endangered service providers and rights defenders to shut down and hide, at great personal and communal cost.

The first rule of any international development program is to do no harm, a rule that the U.S. and other wealthy nations have adhered to. Doing no harm means at least providing warning and tapering off funding, as had happened during the first Trump administration. This administration's decisions are purposefully destructive. Their cumulative impact is to cut off the ability of LGBTIQ groups' abilities to provide medical care, housing, job skills, or emergency support in much more hostile contexts. One respondent to Outright's survey on the funding freeze who works with vulnerable women in a South American country stated that, "It's a grim scenario. We are devastated, trying to keep calm. This aid is being cut, but the needs of the population are still latent and will continue to grow. We are pushing extremely vulnerable people towards violence – drug trafficking, human trafficking, crime. This won't just affect individuals; it will shape this community's future."

In a country experiencing armed conflict in Africa, an activist shared that U.S. funds saved lives in this manner. "One of the most urgent services we provided was emergency legal and medical support, both inside [our country] and for those who had fled to neighboring countries," the person stated. "[We] facilitate the safe relocation of at-risk LGBTIQ+ individuals and refugees, ensuring they could escape immediate threats to their safety. ... This freeze does not just impact funding – it actively endangers lives, leaving one of the most at-risk communities without any support or protection in an already bad situation."

U.S.-funded programs also helped advance goals of trade, democracy, and growth. For instance, an organization in Central Africa worked to conduct labor market analysis to identify employment options for transgender people, while organizations in Colombia, Nigeria, and the Philippines provided seed capital for entrepreneurship programs. An organization in Latin America losing U.S. funding means that "6,000 people won't have access to services," including livelihood tools.

Advocacy by LGBTIQ groups made it safer for corporations to employ LGBTIQ workers in emerging market countries. Their work responded to the dynamic that where there is a high level of stigma against LGBTIQ people, LGBTIQ workers are less productive, the firms that employ them are less profitable, and the economy suffers. LGBTIQ groups with U.S. funding also worked in coalition with other pro-democracy groups to monitor elections and open up the democratic process to all.

These policy changes and funding cuts have put the rights and safety of LGBTIQ communities worldwide at risk. The erasure of transgender and intersex people's rights and the termination of crucial foreign aid programs have immediate and long-term implications for the safety, livelihoods, and human rights of LGBTIQ individuals worldwide. It is urgent for Congress, development partners, and private funders – not just in the U.S., but in countries that have long championed equality – to step in, fill the gaps, and find solutions. Recovery will depend on coordinated and sustained action to reverse the damage. The stakes are clear: either we act now, or we let progress unravel before our eyes.