Donald Trump has been elected by the American people to be the 47th president of the United States. Now, many members of the LGBTQ+ community are wondering: What will a second Trump presidency look like for us?

Project 2025
Despite the detailed plans laid out in the Heritage Foundation's 2022 document "Project 2025," Trump has repeatedly stated that he is unaware of the conservative manifesto and does not intend to use it in office. While alarming in nature — especially as it proposes some draconian ideas, like an end to fault-free divorce and the classification of educators and librarians who distribute LGBTQ+ books as "sex offenders" — Project 2025 is not the first proposed roadmap for conservative leadership in the United States.

Since the 1980s, the Heritage Foundation has released lengthy documents calling for similar changes, such as national bans on same-sex marriage and abortion. Trump has been relatively quiet on these topics since his victory on November 5, but his campaign has pushed its own policy platform, "Agenda 47," on its website over the last few months.

So, taking Agenda 47 into account and not discarding Project 2025 as a possibility, what can LGBTQ+ Americans expect to see in the next four years?

Reversals on LGBTQ+ protections
One likely change will be national rollbacks in protections for Queer and Trans people. In Agenda 47, Trump vows to revoke gender-affirming care policies and plans to use the Republican majority in Congress to "permanently stop federal taxpayer dollars from being used to promote or pay for [gender-affirming care]."

Though our state's antidiscrimination laws are unlikely to change, federal protections for Queer and Trans people may weaken during the next Trump presidency. The Supreme Court is expected to revisit a challenge to a Biden administration attempt to extend Title IX protections to LGBTQ students, and to take up the issue of whether restricting certain medical treatments for Transgender minors violates the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.

Changes for students and patients
Another change may come for LGBTQ+ students, as Agenda 47 calls for reversing Title IX expansions for Queer and Trans students, under the guise that this will "protect women's sports."

"We will keep men out of women's sports, ban taxpayer funding for sex change surgeries, stop taxpayer-funded schools from promoting gender transition, reverse Biden's radical rewrite of Title IX education regulations, and restore protections for women and girls," Agenda 47 states.

Though disheartening, these proposed changes won't have a huge impact. Medical physicist Joanna Harper estimated in 2023 that there aren't more than 100 Trans girls competing in public school sports.

As for government funded gender-affirming care, Medicare — which only covers care for people in a specific income bracket — also only funds "medically necessary" services, as determined by a physician, and then the request must be approved by local coverage laws. As of 2024, Medicare Part A, B, and C usually cover gender-affirming surgeries, and Part D covers hormone replacement therapy. Trans patients can expect to see this coverage federally limited under the next administration.

For anyone worried about funding their transition costs, several private organizations, including the Jim Collins Foundation, Genderbands Transition Grants, TransMission, Black Transmen, Inc. Surgery Scholarship, and Point of Pride offer financial aid to assist with medical costs.

An end to "gender ideology" and "critical race theory"
What will likely have a larger impact on LGBTQ+ youth are the ramifications of Trump's plans to shut down the Department of Education. In Agenda 47, Trump vows to send all education needs to the states — many of which are eager to ban books that include prominent LGBTQ+ and BIPOC characters.

Project 2025, however, goes further in-depth regarding education goals for the near future.

"The noxious tenets of 'critical race theory' and 'gender ideology' should be excised from curricula in every public school in the country," it reads. "These theories poison our children, who are being taught on the one hand to affirm that the color of their skin fundamentally determines their identity and even their moral status while on the other, they are taught to deny the very creatureliness that inheres in being human and consists in accepting the givenness of our nature as men or women."

Trump's official policy echoes the demands to end "critical race theory" and "gender ideology" in schools. If the term "gender ideology" seems unfamiliar, that may be because it is a false assertion that being Queer and Trans is an "ideological movement rather than an intrinsic identity," according to GLAAD. The phrase has become increasingly popular among far-right commentators.

In his Madison Square Garden rally at the end of October, Trump told a crowd of cheering fans, "We will get Transgender insanity the hell out of our schools." Experts are unsure whether this means teaching Queer and Trans issues in health and history classes, including Trans students in sports, banning books, or more.

Marriage equality
While attempts to federally ban abortion have been hinted at by Trump's closest allies, including JD Vance, one fear of many Queer people — the overturning of marriage equality — doesn't seem to be a priority for the next administration.

Neither Project 2025 nor Agenda 47 explicitly mention passing legislation to limit marriage to one man and one woman. Additionally, any reversal would likely need to come from the Supreme Court, regardless of whether Trump is in office or not. A federal protection of same-sex marriage, however, does seem rather unlikely to pass in the next four years, especially with a conservative majority in Congress.

While it doesn't use specific language to plan a path to federally ban same-sex marriage, Project 2025 does support the belief that the government should "affirm that children require and deserve both the love and nurturing of a mother and the play and protection of a father."

Yes, abortion is a Queer issue
Project 2025 proposes reinstating the Comstock Act, a law from the 1800s that banned pornography and contraception, though Trump is unlikely to support this. It also provides a roadmap to reversing the FDA's approval of mifepristone, the oral medication used for abortions, but once again, Trump has expressed that he would not sign such a law. Melania Trump, though often behind the scenes, spoke out on the campaign trail in support of abortion.

What's the Trump cabinet looking like?
Trump has made several alarming promises to those who supported him throughout his campaign. At a rally on October 27, Trump said he would appoint Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to a top position in the Department of Health. "I'm going to let him go wild on health. I'm going to let him go wild on the food. I'm going to let him go wild on the medicines," he said to a cheering crowd.

Kennedy has spoken out repeatedly against vaccines, pushing the lie that they cause autism. He has also spoken out against gender-affirming care.

At a campaign rally in 2023, Kennedy took his distrust of the LGBTQ+ community further by claiming that manufactured chemicals in the water lead to the "feminization of boys" and the "masculinization of girls." He has repeated this on his popular podcast. Doubling down in 2022, he said, "If you expose frogs to atrazine, male frogs, it changes their sex, and they can actually bear young. They can lay eggs, fertile eggs. And so the capacity for these chemicals that we are just raining down on our children right now to induce these very profound sexual changes in them is something we need to be thinking about as a society."

According to Kennedy's campaign following his remarks, he does not believe chemicals in the water are the only factor. "Mr. Kennedy's remarks are being mischaracterized. He is not claiming that endocrine disruptors are the only or main cause of gender dysphoria," a spokesperson said. "He is merely suggesting that, given copious research on the effects on other vertebrates, this possibility deserves further research." Scientists from around the world have debunked this theory.

"I will create a government efficiency commission tasked with conducting a complete financial and performance audit of the entire federal government," Trump said in a September rally. He has since selected Musk, the wealthiest man in the world and founder of Tesla, to lead the "Department of Government Efficiency," along with Vivek Ramaswamy.

Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, warned Reuters that this department could mass fire nonpartisan civil service workers to fill government jobs with workers loyal to the Trump administration.

Other picks
According to Politico, Trump confirmed that his next chief of staff will be Susie Wiles. She was the CEO of his Save America PAC in 2021 and ran his Florida operations while he campaigned in 2016 and 2020. Insiders have described Wiles as "left on LGBT issues."

The chief of staff oversees daily White House issues and administration policy. In his first term, Trump went through four: the first two were fired, the third quit after Trump was impeached, and his final one was indicted in election interference cases in Georgia and Arizona.

Trump selected Sen. Marco Rubio as to be secretary of state. Rubio earned a 0 out of 100 on the Human Rights Campaign's "Congressional Scorecard" for his votes against LGBTQ+ protections and abortion rights in the Senate. In 2022, he ran on similar anti-Trans rhetoric that the Trump campaign pushed throughout the last election cycle. Rubio has spoken out against a ceasefire in Gaza and promotes a "negotiated settlement" in Ukraine, which could result in Russia seizing large parts of the country.

Trump has tapped Lee Zeldin, a former New York representative and fracking supporter, to head the Environmental Protection Agency. Under his leadership, voters can expect to see many of Biden's environmental policies halted and reversed. Experts from Politico speculate that clean-air regulations will be the first to go.

New York Rep. Elise Stefanik is the next proposed ambassador to the United Nations — despite repeatedly speaking out against the UN. Stefanik strongly supported Trump during his first impeachment trial in 2019. She has also condemned student protests about the Israel-Hamas War and supports its continuation.

With 21 more open cabinet positions and many anti-LGBTQ+, pro-fracking, and climate change-denying conservatives vying for a spot in Trump's next administration, the next four years are looking bleak. Now, more than ever, it is essential for Queer and Trans people to embrace the protection of the community and prepare defensive legislation.