Laverne Cox on Trump’s Anti-Trans Executive Orders: “The Republican Party Is Worried About the Wrong 1 Percent”
Laverne Cox is addressing President Donald Trump’s series of executive orders targeting the trans community while promoting her upcoming Prime Video series Clean Slate, a comedy about an art dealer (Cox) and her father (George Wallace) who rebuild their long-estranged relationship when she returns home to Mobile, Alabama, as a trans woman.
On his first day in office on Jan. 20, President Trump signed an executive order stating that the government will only recognize two genders, male and female, going forward; ordering the transfer of trans women to male prisons and a stoppage on gender-affirming treatment for incarcerated individuals, noting the attorney general shall ensure “no federal funds are expended for any medical procedure, treatment or drug for the purpose of conforming an inmate’s appearance to that of the opposite sex.” One week later, a second order was issued to ban transgender troops from openly serving in the military.
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“Trans people are less than 1 percent [of the population] and I believe that the Republican party is worried about the wrong 1 percent,” Cox told the The Hollywood Reporter on Thursday. “Obviously, trans people are being scapegoated and targeted relentlessly at every level — and not surprisingly, if you read Project 2025,” added Cox, referring to the presidential transition initiative put forth by conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation.
Cox also addressed the trans community directly.
“Trans folks, I want to remind us that we’ve been here before. Our identities have been criminalized before. Up until the early ‘90s, many cities had anti-crossdressing laws on the books. The brilliant Alexandra Billings has been sharing every single day on her Instagram and TikTok that she transitioned in 1979 and was arrested multiple times just for walking down the street as a trans person. She was arrested and she survived. She got through it, and there are people before her who survived and got through it and we’ll get through it again.”
On Tuesday, President Trump signed a third executive order seeking to end gender-affirming medical treatment for individuals under the age of 19, stating the federal government will not “fund, sponsor, promote, assist or support” such interventions and procedures for children.
“Even when they take away our access to gender-affirming care, trans people have always found a way to get our gender-affirming care,” Cox added. “Similar to abortion, it hasn’t always been in the healthiest way, and we want to be able to have our blood work and have our doctors check us out, but nothing the government will do will keep us from our gender-affirming care. That is the truth. Never has, never will. We are resilient people. We are resourceful people.”
Cox, who is co-creator, executive producer and co-lead of Clean Slate alongside Wallace, feels the timing of the Norman Lear-produced series, which will debut Feb, 6, is particularly divine given the current national attack on trans and LGBTQ rights. Lear died Dec. 5, 2023, at the age of 101, and Clean Slate is one of his final projects.
“This show coming out in this moment is just a reminder to me: God’s time, not my time. It’s a reminder to me that this all is bigger than me and that we are guided. Someone asked me last night, ‘Where do you feel like your Black woman power comes from?’ And I said, ‘The ancestors. Our ancestors who have laid a path for us that is so clear, wonderful and instructive if we just look, listen, learn and replicate.’”
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