What it’s like raising trans kids in Trump’s backyard

This story was produced in partnership with The 51st, a worker-led local news source for D.C. Subscribe to The 51st’s weekly newsletter.

Annie, a school librarian, has lived in Washington for almost two decades. She’s raised her children here and found a community where her neighbors, and her neighbors’ kids, know her family well. 

In June, Annie’s 9-year-old began feeling intense distress. They were overcome with mood swings; hit themself; and taped band-aids over their breast buds, causing rashes. As worrying as this was, Annie had prepared for this moment with her child’s doctors. For transgender youth, the start of puberty can be a difficult time. They had a treatment plan.

Her child had been seeing gender specialists at Children’s National Hospital since they were 3 years old, when they first declared that they were not a girl. Through frequent visits, Annie knew she would be able to get medical care for her child’s gender dysphoria once they got older. 

But just as her child started puberty, those options vanished. 

Annie’s family is one of many across the country who have been affected by the Trump administration’s crusade against gender-affirming care, left reeling by rapid changes to educational and medical policies, and fearing that they will be personally targeted as they navigate the difficulties of getting their child health care. 

The 19th and The 51st spoke with five families in the D.C. region who are living these fears every day, which are often exacerbated by being in the federal government’s backyard. Several parents asked to be identified only by their first name out of concern for their family’s safety. Others declined to be cited on the record at all. 

“Every day you wake up and there’s still uncertainty, if not more, and I think that’s what a lot of people are feeling,” said Brian, the father of a 10-year-old trans girl in Arlington, Virginia. “It’s not easy to just up and move and get a new job. You kind of feel trapped more every day.”

As these parents doomscroll and consider whether they should leave the D.C. area, their kids are living normal lives, mostly sheltered from the politics that depict kids like them as mutilated or confused. They’re playing with their friends, pursuing college degrees, going to summer camp, dating, and enjoying hobbies like hip-hop dance, baking, and cooking. 

Meanwhile, their parents are kept up at night with a slew of questions: What if their child’s medical records are subpoenaed by the Justice Department? What if D.C. public schools roll back their trans-affirming policies as the Department of Education launches Title IX probes? And what if all access to gender-affirming care in the region is stripped away?

In fact, it has already been eroded. The Trump administration has taken a hostile stance against gender-affirming care, demanding that hospitals turn over patients’ private data and threatening to withhold federal funding to hospitals treating youths. Medical providers in blue states where gender-affirming care is legally protected have folded under this pressure — including in D.C. 

In late June, an endocrinologist at Children’s National told Annie that she couldn’t provide treatment to her child. Gender-affirming care for minors at the hospital — the leading provider of such care in D.C. — would stop altogether on August 30. 

After years of preparation to ensure her child’s access to puberty blockers — which alleviate gender dysphoria by delaying the hormones that cause kids to go through puberty — and years of psychiatric evaluations to ensure that this medical treatment was the right choice, Annie was back at square one. She had to scramble to find pediatric care somewhere else. And as they faced unexpected treatment delays, her child was showing early signs of self-harm. 

“What we worry about as parents the most with our kids is all these really intense feelings of wanting it to stop,” she said. “They turn those in on themselves.” 

For Brian’s family, the greatest threat from the administration has arrived at school, rather than the doctor’s office. His daughter’s school district is one of five in Northern Virginia that rejected a deal with the Department of Education to bar trans students from restrooms and locker rooms that align with their gender identity. They are now at risk of losing millions in federal funding because the administration found them to be in violation of Title IX, the federal civil rights law that prohibits sex discrimination in educational institutions.

The school district’s decision was a relief for Brian. He had considered moving to Maryland — putting his daughter, Em, at a new school, without any of her friends, to ensure she would be treated equally. But the idea of moving was fraught. He’s lived in northern Virginia, off and on, for about 30 years. Their family ties are deeply rooted. 

“We deserve to live here. She deserves to live here,” he said. “No trans person is asking for more rights. Just stop picking on us. Stop picking on them.” 

Shortly after Niko came out as trans in 2021, his family rushed to update his legal documentation to reflect his gender, including his birth certificate, driver’s license, and school records. Glenn Youngkin, Virginia’s Republican governor, was about to take office, and, as anti-trans rhetoric grew around the country, they weren’t sure what the future would hold. 

“It’s really pretty scary to be existing as a young trans person, even in Northern Virginia,” Niko said. “Everything’s just really uncertain.”

Niko’s father Hans said that, as a parent, it’s hard enough navigating a child’s gender transition without also having to fear legal and political consequences. He runs a monthly support group for parents and caregivers of transgender youth in the D.C. region, a local chapter of the Richmond-based trans advocacy group He She Ze and We. About a dozen people attend each month, including those who tune in remotely from other cities. Fear, anxiety, and worry permeate the meetings, he said. 

Parents often aren’t sure how to talk with their kids about what the Trump administration is saying and doing about trans people, according to Hancie Stokes, director of communications for SMYAL, the LGBTQ+ youth support organization in Washington. They want to be able to tell them that everything will be okay, but they’re not sure if that’s true. 

“Kids are scared,” she said. “Especially being in D.C., where a lot of kids’ families are very tapped into what is happening politically, those kids are also hyper aware of what’s going on in the news. And if they’re not listening to the news, they’re hearing their parents talk about it. They’re talking about it with their friends.” 

Families of trans youth living in D.C. are painfully aware that the city’s lack of statehood makes it vulnerable to the Trump administration’s policy whims. This has been driven home as the White House deploys federal troops to patrol the streets, threatens to federalize the city’s police force, and reshapes the city’s art centers like the Smithsonian and Kennedy Center in its own image. As the administration threatens to take action against gender-affirming care providers nationally, families fear that D.C. will become a prime target for a crackdown.

Children’s National initially paused gender-affirming prescriptions for minors receiving puberty blockers and hormone replacement therapy in January, in response to Trump’s executive order cutting federal funding to hospitals who provided such care to anyone under 19. Hundreds of people protested outside the hospital and the offices of D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb. And in March, a federal judge blocked the policy from taking hold nationally. That spring, the hospital quietly resumed care for existing patients — meaning those who had already begun blockers or hormone treatments.

But it reversed course a few months later. In July, Children’s National announced in a statement that it would stop providing gender-affirming care to all of its minor patients on August 30 “in light of escalating legal and regulatory risks.” 

The hospital said it would continue to provide mental health services for LGBTQ+ patients, but it did not respond to a request for comment to elaborate on what those services are. 

Parents of trans youth felt like the rug was being pulled out from under them, Stokes said. There are other options in the city for children who are at least 10 years old, but these changes, especially the back-and-forth on policies, have been jarring for families that are already scared, she said. 

To local parents, Children’s National was known as rigorous and conservative in its gender development program. The hospital required extensive proof that a minor required medical intervention to treat gender dysphoria, including a longstanding patient relationship and multiple psychological evaluations. Like most youth gender clinics around the country, the hospital didn’t perform gender affirming surgery for minors.

Now, parents must look elsewhere to find pediatric gender-affirming care. And increasingly, they’re looking outside the District to find the best options, according to conversations with local advocates and families in the D.C. region. 

Annie’s child, who had been treated at Children’s National for the past six years and identifies as nonbinary, loves to bake more than anything. They make cookies, brownies, and cakes for their friends. They also enjoy soccer, swimming, and acting in school plays. From a young age, they’ve been persistent in expressing their expansive gender identity; their first week of pre-K, they told their teacher they wanted to use he/him pronouns. 

When Annie thinks of the worst-case scenario of being publicly identified as the mother of a trans child, she worries about being charged with child abuse for trying to get her kid medical care. 

“I don’t want to go to jail,” she said. “But my feeling, at least now, still continues to be that community has a huge amount of insulating power. I don’t know why I would leave D.C. when everyone that cares about us and would stand up for us lives right here.”

Doctors prescribe three main puberty blockers, which have been shown to reduce depression and suicidality in trans and nonbinary teens: Two are given as an injection, and one is an implant that stays in the arm until it needs to be replaced. Annie’s family sought the implant for their child, which requires further consultations with a surgical team. They began discussing details of the process at Children’s a year ago, with doctors that had treated their child for years.

As her child grew inconsolable, Annie spent most of her summer trying to get them to a new provider. They faced a months-long wait before her child could be seen at Chase Brexton Health Care in Maryland, an hour away from their home. 

After going through a virtual intake appointment in the spring, they were told that the earliest in-person appointment was in September. Annie made more calls. She was able to move that appointment up, which started their insurance approval process. They scheduled another intake with a surgical team. Only after that would they be able to schedule the surgery itself. 

The long process has taken its toll. At one point, Annie’s child sobbed on the couch for an hour. They wanted to be able to start the new school year without continuing to go through puberty. And as they continue to work with Chase Brexton, where a number of other former patients of Children’s National are now seeking care, the family is making other contingency plans.

“Our pediatrician is also wanting us to begin the process of establishing care in New York as a plan B, if things don’t work out in Maryland,” Annie said.

But at the very end of August, she and her husband were finally able to give their child some good news. 

As they loaded the dishwasher, their father told them that the implant surgery was scheduled for September 19. Their cries of joy were immediate. And together, they marked it on the fridge calendar.