This Month in Criminalization
February 11, 2025
(Part II)
You can also read the original newsletter in Mailchimp here.
The waves of criminalizing legislation, executive orders, and copaganda emanating from the White House, Congress, and state legislators and governors in the current moment are dizzying and overwhelming, to say the least. As many have pointed out, that is the point — to destabilize us, to sow fear, to secure compliance, and thus enable and justify the most blatant and violent seizures and abuses of power aimed at entrenching a white supremacist Christofascist authoritarian regime.
Our goal in these monthly roundups is not to contribute to the overwhelm, but to help you sift through the firehose of information and focus in a few things we can and must do from wherever we are — as organizers, community members, health care providers, educators, legislators, and funders — to interrupt the criminalization that is the core mechanism and methodology of implementing and rationalizing Right-wing and fascist agendas.Because so much has happened on multiple fronts of criminalization over the past month, we had to divide this month’s roundup into two sections: Part 1 focused on criminalization of migrants; Part 2 focuses on criminalization of trans people, gender-affirming care, abortion care, and Palestine solidarity organizing on campus.
The War on Trans People
Over the past month there have been a slew of federal Executive Orders (EO)s — which, in and of themselves, do not carry the force of law — that instruct federal agencies to cut funding and take actions targeting trans people and organizations which provide vital services to trans communities, including:
➡️ Asserting that the federal government will only recognize two “sexes” and that individuals will be treated by the federal government according to the gender they were assigned at birth. Some impacts of this order were immediate and include:
Beginning the process of transferring transgender women in the custody of the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) and immigration detention facilities to facilities for men by placing them in administrative segregation, halting gender-affirming care, and denying access to gender-affirming clothing and commissary products in federal facilities.
A federal judge has issued a temporary restraining order blocking the transfers in lawsuits brought by the National Center for Lesbian Rights and GLAD Law;
Directing the Department of Housing and Urban Development to reverse rules that give trans people safe access to shelters — potentially criminalizing and denying critical services, shelter, and safety to trans survivors of violence;
Directing federal agencies to cut federal funding to any programs that “promote gender ideology,” potentially prompting witch hunts threatening the viability of programs that provide critical services to trans people and inclusive services to many populations;
Directing the Attorney General, federal anti-discrimination agencies, the Department of Labor, and federal workplaces to enforce the existence of sex-segregated facilities at work — i.e. enforce bathroom bans — and protect expressions of transphobia in the workplace through investigations and enforcement of anti-discrimination laws;
Directing federal agencies to ensure that federal employee records and identity documents, and federal documents such as passports, visas, Global Entry, etc. reflect gender assigned at birth, and eliminating any mention of gender identity on federal forms and websites.
This directive exposes trans people to potential harassment, abuse, violence, and criminalization at borders and other locations requiring federal identity documents, as well as when interfacing with federal government agencies, including potential allegations of fraud for using identification documents and gender markers consistent with gender identity.
More information about what will happen with federal identification documents can be found here. This Executive Order does NOT affect state IDs!
➡️ Banning federal funding for sponsoring, promoting, assisting, supporting, and providing gender-affirming care to trans youth under the age of 19. The order, which has been challenged by PFLAG and GMLA, and which does NOT make provision of trans health care a crime, directs agencies to:
Cut funding to health care facilities, medical schools, and research facilities that provide, teach, and research gender-affirming care;
Require that insurance companies that provide federal health benefits exclude coverage for trans health care for people under 19;
Coordinate state attorneys-general and local law enforcement to fully enforce state laws banning gender-affirming care.
➡️ Banning federal funding for schools that support trans youth and directing the Attorney General to coordinate with state and local law enforcement to target teachers and school staff who support trans youth.
➡️ Banning participation of trans athletes in sports at federally funded educational institutions.
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✅ Insist on refusal; target institutions that comply in advance.
Nothing in these Executive Orders mandates or prohibits anyone from doing anything — they simply represent threats to federal funding and enforcement of existing state laws.
As Andrea said in conversation with Kelly Hayes: “We owe it to trans youth and communities to push back with all our might, to refuse to deny care, to challenge administrators who try to shut it down, to support providers under attack, and to contribute to mutual aid efforts that will ensure continuity of care.”
A number of health care facilities, including NYU Langone, Children’s National Hospital in D.C., Virginia Commonwealth University and University of Virginia, Denver Health, Seattle Children’s Hospital, and Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, have pre-emptively paused or stopped trans health care for people under 19.
This has sparked protests, petitions, and statements from legislators and attorneys generalcalling on health care providers to continue to provide care and comply with state anti-discrimination laws.
Join or organize a protest, sign a petition, and call your legislators and policymakers todayto demand that health care providers continue to provide life-saving care to trans youth!
Petition and action alert to reinstate care at NYU Langone
Call to action to reinstate care at Seattle Children’s Hospital
Action alert to reinstate care at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles
Action alert to reinstate care at Children’s National Hospital in D.C.
✅ If you are a health care provider committed to continuing to provide gender-affirming care, learn about and join Interrupting Criminalization’s Beyond Do No Harm Network!
✅ Support trans youth and their families! Contribute to any of the following organizations working across the South, or find a local group in your area that is supporting trans youth and their families in accessing care:✅ Resist and repeal efforts to criminalize trans health care and people at the state level — check out this map of current bans and database of proposed legislation.
✅ Fight for shield laws protecting access to trans health care!
✅ Show up for trans co-workers, trans students, and trans community members!The Executive Orders do not make it against the law to support and defend trans people — it is essential that we continue to vocally and forcefully organize support of trans people in our health care facilities, workplaces, schools, and public spaces.
Continue to fight for and support gender-neutral restrooms and trans-affirming policies. Bathroom bans in particular are often violently enforced through harassment and abuse by private security and police, as well as arrests and prosecutions for trespassing and “disorderly conduct.”
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“Trump’s Anti-Trans Education Order Relies on Intimidation. We Must Not Yield” (Truthout, 2/7/2025)
Death Panel podcast episode on attacks on trans health care (“Theatre of the Austere w/ Melissa Gira Grant,” 2/6/2025)
“Protests Erupt Across US At Hospitals Complying With Trump’s Unlawful Under-19 Trans Ban EO” (Erin In The Morning, 2/5/2025)
“FAQ: New Considerations for U.S. Passports, Immigration Forms, and Documents for Trans, Non-binary, and Intersex People” (February 2025) from Immigration Equality, Oasis Legal Services, and National Immigrant Justice Center
Advocates for Youth’s Trans-Affirming Schools Project Resource Guide
Criminalization of Abortion Care
➡️ Last month New York doctor Margaret Carpenter was indicted by a Louisiana grand jury for prescribing and mailing abortion pills to a patient in Baton Rouge, in the first known case of criminalization of a health care provider for providing abortion care since the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs struck down Roe v. Wade. Carpenter was previously subjected to a civil suit in Texas in connection with provision of abortion care.
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✅ Support the Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine Access (ACT Access) co-founded by Dr. Carpenter, which fights to ensure access to abortion care across the U.S. through telemedicine.
✅ Learn more about medication abortion.
✅ Advocate for the passage of shield laws protecting providers and patients across the country.
✅ Donate to your local abortion fund!
✅ If you are a health care provider committed to continuing to provide abortion care, join the Beyond Do No Harm Network!
✅ Stay tuned for more action items from IC in the coming weeks
Criminalization of Palestine Solidarity Organizing
➡️ Last but certainly not least, the administration issued an Executive Order directing federal agencies to use criminal and immigration law to investigate and prosecute individuals at educational institutions who engage in antisemitism, which has been interpreted to include any critique of Israel and organizing in support of the rights of Palestinians.
As noted by Palestine Legal, this is “the latest in a growing list of dangerous, authoritarian measures aimed at enforcing an ideological strangulation on schools by attempting to scare students into silence about Israel's genocide in Gaza with threats of prosecution and deportation. It strikes at the heart of students' free speech rights.”
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Community Fact Sheet from Muslims for Just Futures with support from Building Movement Project
Statement from Palestine Legal and interview, “Trump's Executive Order Targets Pro-Palestine Students And Free Speech on Campuses” (In These Times, 1/30/2025)