This blog originally appeared at THEM.

The following weekly digest is authored and curated by the Trans Formations Project, a grassroots nonprofit committed to monitoring and raising awareness about the ongoing crisis of anti-trans legislative efforts across the United States.

Editorial Focus: Project 2025

What does Project 2025, an ultraconservative initiative under a Trump presidency, reveal about its stance on trans individuals? The project’s blueprint, known as Mandate for Leadership, provides the rationale behind many of the anti-trans legislative measures tracked by TFP. This extensive manifesto advocates for goals such as eliminating comprehensive sex education (62, 477), limiting rights for trans employees (584-585), curtailing or banning gender-affirming care for minors (345), and imposing further restrictions on speech and expression (5).

This week, we have categorized and analyzed the primary anti-trans objectives within Project 2025, segmented by section.

Executive Actions and Anti-Trans Legislation in Project 2025

Idea: “[T]he primary purpose of consolidating political power is to undermine the family. Its aim is to substitute people’s natural affections and loyalties with unnatural ones” (4).

Goal: Remove “the terms sexual orientation and gender identity (‘SOGI’), diversity, equity, and inclusion (‘DEI’), gender, gender equality, gender equity, gender awareness, gender-sensitive, abortion, reproductive health, reproductive rights…” from all federal rules, agency regulations, contracts, grants, legislation, and regulations (5).

Goal: Replace Biden’s Gender Policy Council with a Domestic Policy Council to “eliminate… the new ‘woke’ gender ideology, which promotes ‘gender affirming care’ and ‘sex-change’ surgeries for minors” (62).

Civil Rights (especially pages 582-585)

dea: “During the Obama and Biden Administrations, every facet of labor policy was utilized to promote race, sex, and other classifications, often discriminating against conservative and religious viewpoints, including pro-life perspectives.”

Goals:

• “Limit the application of Bostock’s sex discrimination protections to sexual orientation and transgender status specifically in hiring and termination contexts.”
• “Revoke regulations that prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity, transgender status, and sex characteristics.”
• “Instruct agencies to concentrate their enforcement of sex discrimination laws on the biological binary definition of ‘sex.'”

Education (especially pages 333-346)

Idea: “There is no scientific or legal justification for redefining ‘sex’ as ‘sexual orientation and gender identity’ under Title IX.”

Goal: “Restore the Trump Administration’s Title IX regulation, emphasizing that ‘sex’ refers to a biologically defined fact recognized at birth; and enhance protections for faith-based educational institutions, programs, and activities.”

Idea: “Federal lawmakers should prevent public school employees from keeping information about a child secret from their parents.”

Goal: “Prohibit educators from using a name other than the one listed on a student’s birth certificate or using a pronoun different from the student’s biological sex without permission from the student’s parent(s) or guardian(s).”

Health & Human Services

Idea: “Permitting parents or physicians to ‘reassign’ the sex of a minor constitutes child abuse” (5).

Goals:

• Enact a federal Parents Bill of Rights (345).
• Cease Medicare coverage for gender-affirming surgeries.
• Eliminate discrimination protections for LGBTQIA+ individuals in the Affordable Care Act (475).

Military (104)

Idea: “Gender dysphoria is inconsistent with the requirements of military service.”

Goal: “Revoke policies permitting transgender individuals to serve in the military.” Note: This objective gained momentum recently in the Senate Armed Services Committee report on the 2025 Military Funding Bill, which includes provisions preventing the Department of Defense (DoD) and its insurance plan from funding gender-affirming surgeries for service members and gender-affirming care for their minor dependents.

The Things We Won

Yale Law School and Yale School of Medicine recently collaborated on a report criticizing the Cass Review, authored by Dr. Hillary Cass in the U.K., which evaluated National Health Service (NHS) guidelines on gender-affirming care. The NHS cited the Cass Report in its recent decision to restrict puberty blockers for transgender minors. Additionally, conservative Indiana lawmakers referenced the Cass Report in IN SB0480, a law banning gender-affirming care for minors enacted last year.

The Cass Report concluded that “there is not a reliable evidence base” to recommend clinical interventions for transgender minors. The Yale review highlighted several critical issues with this conclusion, asserting that the Cass Report “obscures key findings, misrepresents its own data, and misapplies the scientific method.”

Federal prosecutors are currently investigating Dr. Eithan Haim for leaking confidential transgender patient files to conservative journalist Christopher Rufo. Outrage over these documents significantly contributed to the passage of TX SB14, a ban on gender-affirming care for minors. Formerly employed by Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston, Dr. Haim claims whistleblower immunity, alleging exposure of “illegal gender surgeries” on minors.

The hospital contends that all care provided was lawful and accuses Dr. Haim of jeopardizing patient and physician safety by leaking the documents. Dr. Haim has garnered broad support from conservative media and politicians. Ryan Patrick, son of Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and former U.S. Attorney during the Trump Administration, will represent Dr. Haim in the ongoing legal proceedings.

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