“A fighting chance”: Trans rights are in the balance in the midterm elections
Trans people’s rights are a top concern among LGBTQ Nation readers this year.
Last month, we asked you what your main concerns are for the 2026 midterms and what you think they could change. Quite a few people discussed trans rights, which have been under attack for the past several years.
“Like all trans people in the US right now, the relentless attacks, both through real action and through political messaging, have had a profound impact on my own health and wellbeing,” Ellie Spoering told LGBTQ Nation. “I don’t have any trans friends who are not feeling the impact of these attacks, especially my friends in red states. We are feeling increasingly isolated, depressed, and unsafe.”
She went on to explain that the attacks have had material consequences on her and the trans people she knows. “Resources that we once relied on are either already gone or in danger of disappearing. “Those of us who are able are attempting to stockpile medications.”
Reader “E” shared similar concerns: “It truly feels like the lives of the trans community are hanging on these midterms.”
She said that Donald Trump’s second term has been “extremely stressful” because she wakes up every day “knowing that what im about to read can have lasting consequences for years to come” when it comes to how trans rights are “getting torn apart by a Christian nationalist movement and by these people who revel in destroying the lives of normal everyday people.”
“I just hope the midterms give us a fighting chance and that maybe one day there will be a life that I can live without constant fear of using the restroom, being harassed, or losing job security. So that I can actually build a life worth living and loving,” she wrote.
Spoering, though, was less hopeful.
“I don’t see the midterm elections as having much impact on these threats, unfortunately,” she wrote, “and in the short term, seeing the increase in attack ads and violent rhetoric from the GOP has been making things much worse, and will continue to do so at least up until election day.”
Reader Gerri Erich also told LGBTQ Nation that she believes “The trans community might see some real change” if voters “actually remove some of the MAGA scum that has poisoned the country against us.”
She’s not leaving everything up to chance, though. She gets her health care through the Affordable Care Act and said that she is moving fast to get top surgery, which is currently covered. “I feel like, at the moment, that if I don’t do this now, I may never get the chance again.”