Trump uses child abuse proclamation to attack transgender people

President Donald Trump used two national awareness proclamations last week—intended to spotlight child abuse and sexual assault prevention—as vehicles to attack transgender people and undocumented immigrants. The proclamations, released on back-to-back days, sparked immediate backlash from LGBTQ+ advocates, immigrant rights groups, and public health experts.

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In an April 3 proclamation declaring April National Child Abuse Prevention Month, Trump claimed that “one of the most prevalent forms of child abuse facing our country today is the sinister threat of gender ideology.” He accused educators and health professionals of promoting “sexual mutilation” and praised his administration’s efforts to defund schools and institutions that support trans youth.

Related: National Center for Missing & Exploited Children site scrubbed of transgender kids

“It is deeply disingenuous for Trump to use National Child Abuse Prevention Month as a platform to attack and stigmatize the trans community,” Ash Lazarus Orr, spokesperson for Advocates for Trans Equality, toldAxios. “Denying trans youth medical care won’t change who they are.”

All major medical associations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Psychiatric Association, have long supported gender-affirming care as safe, evidence-based, and life-saving. Treatments like puberty blockers are reversible and have been used for decades.

American Civil Liberties Union attorney Chase Strangio called the proclamation “vile and upsetting,” noting that while it carries no legal authority, it signals dangerous intent.

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“It does not change the law or direct any agency action,” Strangio wrote on Instagram. “But it does continue to suggest that the government is moving towards efforts to explicitly criminalize trans life and support of trans people.”

“It also clearly demonstrates the direct line from attacking families with trans kids to attacking same-sex parent families to attacking alternative family structures,” he added. “They hate trans people because they hate anyone and anything that deviates from the white heterosexual Christian family structure. We are a symbol of a freedom they loathe.”

The following day, Trump issued a proclamation for Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention Month that blamed undocumented immigrants for a rise in sexual violence. MSNBCreports that the proclamation falsely described an “invasion” of immigrants and labeled them as a leading cause of assault—a claim widely discredited by crime data and immigrant rights experts.

The rhetoric comes amid broader efforts by the Trump administration to erase LGBTQ+ people from federal visibility altogether. As The Advocatepreviously reported, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children recently scrubbed all references to transgender youth from its public materials after reported pressure from the Department of Justice. The purge included critical resources on child sex trafficking and suicide risk among LGBTQ+ youth—populations already at disproportionately high risk.

During a March press conference with the Irish prime minister, Trump complained that “everything is transgender” and insisted that trans people are “hurting women very badly”—then pivoted to tax policy.

The trans erasure follows Trump’s day-one executive order eliminating federal recognition of transgender people and directing all agencies to enforce rigid, binary definitions of sex.