Southern Queer Newsroom
Of all the horrible months 2026 has thrown at trans Americans and our allies, March has somehow managed to be significantly worse. Putting aside the illegal and cruel war with Iran or the ever worsening atrocities of the Department of Homeland Security which affect all of us, trans people have suffered immensely this year.
Kansas invalidated over a thousand trans people's licenses over the governor's veto. The federal government is attempting to forcibly detransition inmates, which has been found unconstitutional in Georgia over violating the Eighth Amendment; federal Bureau of Prison staff are apparently ignoring an injunction in another case requiring them to provide GAC. Idaho is mandating that school counselors snitch on students that come out to them, no matter if their parents are supportive or safe.
The war on trans legal recognition has been ramping up as well. The State Department finalized a rule mandating foreign passports use the assigned sex at birth instead of the person's current gender to "combat fraud in the [Diversity Immigrant Visa Program]." Many outlets and advocates have flagged this as an attack on trans immigrants and asylum seekers, with the National Center for Transgender Equality estimating 15 to 50 thousand undocumented trans immigrants residing in the U.S.
Worringly, two trans defendants in the Prairieland "antifa" case – Autumn Hill and Meagan Morris – were deadnamed and repeatedly misgendered in the original indictment and during court proceedings. Both of them had legally changed their names years beforehand. The guilty verdict for "material support for terrorism" of eight of the nine defendants is nightmarish for antifascist activists but also consigns those two trans women to years of forced detransition even if their convictions are overturned.
With all this terrible news, panicking and despairing are easy. I'll admit to stewing in it myself more recently. But does what we need to do to survive change? I argue that what we need has not changed, merely the scope.
This is a solvable problem and a winnable fight, and this needs to be kept at the forefront of everything. Resilience is something that has been brought up more and more in trans media and that's a good thing. I would highly recommend taking the advice of friends who are looking out for you in taking care of yourself and avoiding burnout. Getting too burnt out to function, or collapsing from exhaustion or suicide, is no way to go about survival work. You deserve to see the end of this fascist regime and its enablers.
As for what we need, it remains shelter, jobs, and medicine. As more and more trans people are targeted by the state for criminalization, we need to expand prisoner support networks, so that we are staying in contact with political prisoners (because that is what trans prisoners are quickly becoming in the U.S.) and giving them human connection. While prisoner support is often letter writing, sending them books can help keep inmates entertained throughout their sentence, although corrections departments will ban certain books from being sent to prisoners, especially law journals and smut.
With states cracking down further on trans residents, there have been renewed calls to help get folks out of high-risk states and into safer areas. Even before Trump's election, thousands of trans people had moved states, and over 400,000 trans people have left their home state since then. While it is still worth helping people move to safer states, many people are decided to stay stuck in and fight it out on their home front even as repression gets worse and the laws get more and more vicious.
In some states, repression is slowing down as other political problems for the opponents of trans rights mount. Here in Georgia, neither of the anti-trans bills that have been pushed this year have gotten any traction. Senate Bill 74, despite having been amended in committee to lessen the potential impact and two presentations before the House Rules Committee (the bill's last stop before the full House), has not been brought to the floor yet. House Bill 54, amended by the Senate to include a puberty blocker ban and an unenforceable state funding ban, also has not been brought to the floor by the Speaker, despite efforts from far-right groups like Frontline Policy Center according to activists on the ground.
I do not think there is enough gas in the anti-trans tank to result in our defeat, even with the current administration being set against us. This is not me saying "there is nothing to do," but it is me saying "victory is coming." Hold to that when things get tough. Remind yourself you deserve to see it. Refuse self-sacrifice and defeat. It isn't a victory unless as many of us see it as possible.