This Pride Month is a celebration of the contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex (LGBTQI+) people in our community. While they have been fighting for civil rights, justice, and equitable treatment across all aspects of American life, including health care, Donald Trump has spent his time working to hike costs and sabotage the health care they rely on—all to fund tax breaks for billionaires and big corporations. From reversing Biden-era rules protecting LGBTQI+ individuals to making the largest cuts to health care in history and ending tax credits that make coverage under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) more affordable, the consequences have been devastating for LGBTQI+ Americans, who disproportionately rely on Medicaid and the ACA.
At the same time, Trump and Republicans have directly targeted sexual and reproductive health care for LGBTQI+ Americans. Their policies shuttered 51 Planned Parenthood health centers, cut over $800 million earmarked for research into health concerns primarily impacting the LGBTQI+ community, and have systematically targeted, defunded, and eliminated programs dedicated to treating, preventing, and eliminating HIV/AIDS. Trump and Republicans are also waging war on trans people and their health care, ending coverage for gender-affirming care as an essential health benefit in ACA plans and working to strip funding from any hospital or provider that offers life-saving health care for trans youth. The administration has strong-armed over 40 hospital systems into ending gender-affirming care programs. Meanwhile, Republicans in 27 states have enacted laws or policies prohibiting gender-affirming care. The loss of critical life-saving coverage and services is catastrophic for the LGBTQI+ community. This Pride Month, it’s clear that Republicans’ war on LGBTQI+ health care is only getting more extreme.
By the Numbers
- Trump and Republicans ripped away over $1 trillion from Medicaid and the ACA, which disproportionately serve LGBTQI+ Americans.
- LGBTQI+ adults are twice as likely to rely on Medicaid as their primary source of health care coverage and roughly 1.5x as likely to have ACA coverage.
- Over 1.8 million LGBTQI+ adults relied on Medicaid before the Trump-GOP health care cuts.
- Transgender adults – over a quarter of whom use Medicaid – are more than twice as likely as non-LGBTQI+ people to have Medicaid coverage.
- 17% of cisgender lesbian and bisexual women use Medicaid.
- As of 2026, 27 states have enacted laws or policies prohibiting gender-affirming care in some way.
- Last year, Trump-GOP health care cuts shuttered 51 Planned Parenthood clinics, which millions of LGBTQI+ Americans rely on to access sexual and reproductive health care.
- The Trump Administration has cut over $800 million from research budgets earmarked for health concerns primarily impacting the LGBTQI+ community.
Trump and Republicans Are Ripping Away Health Care From LGBTQI+ Americans
Trump’s Big, Ugly Bill Guts $1 Trillion In Funding For Health Care Programs LGBTQI+ Americans Disproportionately Rely On. Last July, Trump and Republicans passed their big, ugly bill ripping away over $1 trillion from Medicaid and the ACA. LGBTQI+ Americans disproportionately rely on the coverage gutted by Trump and Republicans last year. LGBT adults are approximately twice as likely to have Medicaid as their primary source of health care coverage and roughly 1.5x as likely to have ACA coverage. In particular, over a quarter of transgender adults and around 17% of cisgender lesbian and bisexual women use Medicaid. Medicaid also serves disproportionately trans and non-binary Black, Hispanic/Latino, Pacific Islander, and Native American people. LGB individuals are more likely to qualify for Medicaid based on income. Just over a quarter of trans adults have health care coverage through their employers, compared to 37% of non-LGBTQI+ adults.
Trump’s Big, Ugly Bill Gutted Funding For Providers Serving LGBTQI+ Communities Across the Country. In addition to passing over $1 trillion in health care cuts, the Trump-GOP big, ugly bill defunded Planned Parenthood by blocking the organization from receiving Medicaid funds for a year, expiring on July 4, 2026. Without Medicaid funding, 51 Planned Parenthood health centers across the country were forced to close their doors in 2025, leaving patients stranded. Planned Parenthood is a major provider of health care for LGBTQI+ Americans, who are five times more likely to experience barriers to accessing reproductive and sexual health services.
Trump and Republicans’ War on Life-Saving Health Care for Transgender Youth and Adults. Across the country, Republicans have escalated their war on trans people and their health care, targeting life-saving gender-affirming care for trans adults and teens alike. After the conservative-supermajority Supreme Court upheld state bans on life-saving, gender-affirming care for minors last June in United States v. Skrmetti, 27 states have enacted laws or policies prohibiting gender-affirming care in some way. As of January 2026, 50% of all trans youth live in one of these 27 states.
- The Trump Administration Is Targeting Providers Offering Life-Saving Health Care To Trans Youth. In December 2025, the Trump administration issued proposed CMS rules threatening to strip Medicare and Medicaid funding from any hospital or provider offering gender-affirming care to youth. Although the policy was blocked by a federal judge in April, more than 40 hospital systems shuttered their trans youth care programs in response. The Trump administration has continued to use its power to threaten and intimidate providers offering gender-affirming care, putting two prominent Manhattan systems, NYU Langone and Mount Sinai – which collectively serve over 3 million patients – under federal investigation.
- Trump’s CMS Eliminated Gender-Affirming Care from ACA Benefits. Last June, Trump’s Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services finalized a rule eliminating coverage of gender-affirming care as an essential health benefit in ACA plans, which took effect earlier this year. As a result, costs for gender-affirming care are no longer required to count toward out-of-pocket maximums, deductibles, or lifetime limits — effectively putting this type of care out of reach for many trans Americans.
- Trump Signed an Executive Order Effectively Defunding Community Health Centers and HIV/AIDS Clinics Supporting Trans Patients. On his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order redefining sex as a binary and removing acknowledgment of gender identity altogether. This order has led to community health centers and HIV/AIDS clinics’ funding being stripped away due to their programs supporting transgender individuals.
- Trump Signed An Executive Order Barring Funding For Life-Saving Health Care For Trans Youth. A few days into his second term, Trump signed an executive order aimed at broadly banning life-saving health care for trans youth. The order banned medical care for trans youth who are dependents of federal employees and barred federal funding for any health care organization that provides lifesaving gender affirming care for trans people under 19 years old.
Trump and His Administration Are Eliminating Protections For the LGBTQI+ Community
Trump Admin Has Cut Over $800 Million from LGBTQI+ Health Research. The Trump Administration has cut over $800 million from research budgets looking into health concerns that primarily affect those in the LGBTQI+ community, including certain cancers, viruses, and sexually transmitted infections. As of last May, out of 669 research grants that the National Institute of Health has canceled, nearly half were related to LGBTQI+ health. In letters to programs that received these research grants, the NIH has stated that these cuts “no longer effectuates agency priorities” and in the cases that research based on gender identity was being conducted, they said that the research led to “unscientific” results that ignored “biological realities.”
- Trump Is Gutting HIV/AIDS Treatment and Research Funding. The Trump administration has systematically targeted funding dedicated to treating, preventing, and eliminating HIV/AIDS, which disproportionately impacts the LGBTQI+ community. Last June, Trump proposed ending all CDC funding dedicated to HIV prevention. Though the cuts didn’t pass Congress, his administration proceeded to dismantle the CDC’s Division of HIV Prevention. The Trump administration also allowed the National HIV/AIDS Strategy to lapse, attempted to strip millions in HIV funding from state and local health departments in four states, and drastically cut a program that was developing an HIV/AIDS vaccine, ending a $258 million project. Last year, Trump also barred the Ryan White HIV/AIDS program from supporting any gender-affirming services. In his FY 2027 budget proposal, Trump pushed to eliminate all federal funding for part F of the program, including its AIDS Education & training centers, and the Minority AIDS Initiative.
Trump Reversed Biden-Era Rules Protecting LGBTQI+ Individuals. On Trump’s first day in office, he rescinded executive orders signed by President Biden, undoing several actions aimed at protecting members of the LGBTQI+ community. These executive orders targeted Biden-era executive actions aimed at preventing and fighting against discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation (Section 1557), as well as advancing equity for LGBTQI+ individuals and establishing the White House Gender Policy Council. Getting rid of these orders removes protections for those in the LGBTQI+ community, as well as ending orders to improve public health and data collection for LGBTQI+ individuals and ending nondiscrimination protections, especially in health care. In October, a federal district court vacated Biden-era Section 1557 rules prohibiting gender identity-based discrimination. On June 2, Trump’s HHS announced it would no longer investigate or enforce gender identity discrimination complaints under Section 1557.
Republicans Are Still Working To Pull Medications They Don’t Like From The Market – Setting a Dangerous Precedent for LGBTQI+ Care
Republicans Want to Pull Medications They Don’t Like Off The Shelves. Over the past three years, Republicans have been fighting to remove a popular medication used to induce abortion from the market. Despite getting blocked by courts, the Trump administration has continued to target the abortion drug. This June, Trump’s FDA moved to launch a “safety review,” despite a demonstrated record of safe use over decades, which could create a path for the Trump administration to restrict access to the drug. This effort sets a dangerous precedent for taking controversial medications off the market, regardless of the science behind approval decisions or the bureaucratic steps taken to prove safety and efficacy. As Lambda Legal has pointed out, the effort could “just as easily (or perhaps more easily) could be aimed at HIV-related medications and puberty blockers and hormone treatments, as well as medications for many other health conditions that are specially relevant for our communities.”