Attrition by Existence
A timeline of events & decisions I made to leave the United States
My decision to leave the United States to seek asylum was not a quick one. It happened as part of a bunch of little decisions over time with an eye to the future. Leaving your homeland to seek shelter elsewhere is never an easy decision regardless of where you started. It requires extensive planning, finances, support, and a lot of fucking effort.
For me, the conversation involved my best friend, my ex girlfriend, my closest friends, my youngest sister, my psychologist, and a lawyer. Why so many people? This type of decision is a one-way decision with no take-backs, no undoing, and one that affects the rest of my life. I wanted, and needed, to be sure this was the right decision for me. There are few decisions in life that have permanent consequences, but this was one of them.
I want to walk you through the overall timeline, starting with the US presidential elections in November 2024 because it gives a concrete starting point. In the timeline, I’ll sprinkle what I considered to be major decision points, and walk through my thought processes with varying bits of context. Hopefully at the end you’ll be able to understand my decision to leave was not made lightly or in isolation.
As an important bit of context for the reader, much of what you will read is hotly contested in courts. However, as compliance in advance is the biggest supporter of fascism and authoritarianism, all of these events have far-reaching and long-winded consequences for my kind. At the time these events happened, there was nothing but uncertainty.
Disclaimer: this is not legal advice, nor is this immigration advice. Every refugee's journey is deeply personal and profoundly unique. The experiences and circumstances that lead to seeking refuge vary dramatically from person to person. This is my story and unique to me.
How We Got Here
To start, I had already wanted to leave the US on the whole long before Trump’s second term. This had always been the plan, but I assumed it would happen differently. My bio family left the continent in 2011 (I really only have contact with one sister), and aside from my teenage child whom I cannot safely visit, I only have a bio aunt (who adopted me) and my bio grandmother (currently in a nursing home).
I cover the details of why I left in my first post, which I would recommend reading.
As an important point to the reader, I am covering what affects me personally. The scope of all these issues affects people of other races, ethnicities, and walks of life. If you look at this and say, this isn’t special to you, you’re right. It’s not. However not enough people are talking about it, so I am going to add visibility, and you should listen. They already came for me.
November 2024
Trump is elected for a second term. At this point my biggest concern was primarily focused on trying to figure out what that meant for me.
My feelings during this time are trepidation & uncertainty. I had argued in September 2024 that Kamala Harris was not a good opponent against Trump due to misogyny (I voted for her regardless) and it was not a good day to be right. What happens now? What do I do about this? I think I’ll be okay?
At this point I had recently “graduated” therapy; my psychologist said we had finally gotten through everything we needed to get through. While I would continue to see her, albeit infrequently, I was essentially on my own now. How do I process this? What happens if I split1 again? In a nutshell: what do I do about this right now?
Realizing my world was about to change, I immediately start retraining in Muay Thai. The goal was to refresh my skills from the Marine Corps because it’s only a matter of when, not if, I get jumped by multiple people. I also went back to the gym for the first time in a few months so I could get into fighting shape again. I had been training my mind, it was time to re-train my body.
I can’t see the future, but I will care for and protect myself from whatever is about to come.
December 2024
I spend New Year’s Eve in Tijuana, Mexico. On my way back over the pedestrian border crossing into San Diego, I am stopped by CBP for a “random” inspection. This was concerning as the election had yet to happen yet enforcement was already more stringent. While this border crossing is the second busiest in the world, it was New Year’s Eve and somewhat empty, so this felt very personal.
At this point, the social rumblings around Project 2025 were in full swing and it was very obvious things were going to get substantially worse. Even Panama was protesting against Trump.
While I was still feeling generally uncertain about the future of the United States, this even really drove home how at-risk I am. Sure, all of my documents are consistent, and that should mean I don’t have any issues, but this will be 10x worse for other people. With the proper presidential election right around the corner, how bad is round 2 of the Trump administration going to go?
How little I knew.
January 2025
Trump is sworn into office as the 47th President of the United Status of America. It was at this point where everything really, truly started falling apart for my kind2. It is hard to overstate the impact this has on my life. I’ll do my best to touch on & cite everything, but there is a lot.
I am not going to do a deep, in-depth analysis on everything as there are many other creators who have done so as it came up. However, I am bringing all of this information into one place for you to understand the mind-boggling scope of everything that happened.
To be completely honest, I was still very much under the assumption that some of the socially expected rules of policy, procedure, and decorum would be adhered to. I was so very wrong. At this point I was struggling with extreme anxiety and frustration from feeling helpless. They came for me on day one. I knew they would come for me, as a nonbinary person it was always an inevitability, but this was a blitzkrieg.
I can definitively tell you I was scared at this point. There were so many changes happening so quickly it was almost impossible to keep up with them. I remember sleeping a lot and being so very stressed about everything. It was at this point I doubled the dosage of my anti-anxiety meds.
Executive Orders and Federal Policy Changes
Trump issued Executive Order 14168, a sweeping executive order redefining "sex" as strictly male or female, fixed at birth, and ordering all federal agencies to end recognition of gender identity. Specifically, this order:
Rescinded Executive Order 13988: Preventing and Combating Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity or Sexual Orientation
Dissolved the White House Gender Policy Council
Attempted to "end legal recognition of transgender and nonbinary people under federal law"
Called for the Department of Housing and Urban Development administration to repeal the Equal Access Rule protecting LGBTQ+ people from discrimination in housing
Required federal agencies to recognize gender as only a male-female binary, replace "gender" with "sex" in materials, and end federal funding for gender-affirming care
Federal funding is withheld from schools and programs that "promote gender ideology," and schools are barred from using federal funds for any "gender ideology or discriminatory equity ideology"
Federal agencies were directed to exclude transgender people from health care and housing protections, and to withhold gender-affirming care in prisons
Secretary of State Marco Rubio directed the Department of State to suspend all applications seeking a sex marker change or a nonbinary "X" sex marker
Trump issued Executive Order 14183, banning all transgender service members. Specifically, this order:
Rescinded Executive Order 14004: Enabling All Qualified Americans to Serve Their Country in Uniform
Led to the Defense Department barring transgender individuals from enlisting and discharging active duty transgender personnel
An internal memo instructed Social Security employees not to accept or process changes to gender markers on Social Security records.
The Department of Education announced plans to roll back Title IX protections for LGBTQ+ students, excluding sexual orientation and gender identity from anti-discrimination coverage, reverting to Trump’s first-term policies
The Trump administration removed LGBTQ history and resources from government websites, censored terms like “transgender,” and attempted to eliminate inclusive language from federal communications
The 119th Congress introduces House Resolution 26, trying to label Antifa as a domestic terrorist organization
Trump administration fires DOJ officials who worked on criminal investigations against him
Trump issues Executive Order 14151, ending DEI programs in the federal government
The Trump administration halts all federal financial assistance programs; including but not limited to SNAP, small business loans, and other financial assistance programs
Iowa tries to remove trans people from legal recognition
Trump issues Executive Order 14187; canceling gender-affirming healthcare funding for trans youth
The Trump administration allows Elon Musk’s DOGE to access US Treasury systems
The Office of Personnel Management instituted new policies affecting LGBTQ+ federal employees:
On January 29, 2025, OPM issued an official guidance memo regarding the implementation of Executive Order 14168 "Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government"
By January 31, 2025, multiple federal agencies ordered employees to remove gender pronouns from their email signatures, following OPM's directive to comply with the executive order by 5:00 PM on that date
The OPM guidance instructed agencies to review their email systems and disable features that prompt users for their pronouns
Federal agencies were directed to review and terminate contracts and grants that included terms related to gender identity, such as "he/she/they/them," "inclusivity," and variants of "nonbinary"
Employees whose position descriptions involved "inculcating or promoting gender ideology" were placed on immediate paid administrative leave
Federal agencies were required to remove all "outward facing media" (websites, social media) that the administration deemed to be promoting "gender ideology"
OPM's actions were part of broader efforts that rescinded protections for transgender federal government employees and LGBTQ+ employees of federal contractors and subcontractors
Social Issues
Trump administration on Wednesday urged government employees to inform on each other and their departments in order to root out any attempts to hide diversity programs.
The stock market started crashing
Personal Issues
I got laid off. Somehow the only engineering team affected is the one led by a nonbinary engineering lead and has all-Black engineers 💅🏼 At least there was a severance.
I empty my retirement accounts to survive as long as possible
I apply for 64 jobs and receive zero callbacks
Anti-LGBTQ+ State Laws Filed
This is a list of all anti-LGBTQ+ bills filed in each state in January 2025. In January, there were 137 different laws filed to erase my kind, in one way or another. Some seem innocuous, but have all been verified by the LGBTQ+ community to be anti-queer in one way or another.
February 2025
January hurt.
I doubled my anti-anxiety medication dosage, got laid off, and my government started taking away as many of my rights & privileges as possible. To say I was terrified is an understatement. My concerns at the time were primarily focused on the disruption of the continuity of government. Quoting myself in a private message to my best friend from February 1st:
this is my stance on elected officials, has been since i was a teenager. i'm not upset they're doing what they said they would do. i'm very concerned about the way they are going about it. slowly dismantling things, while absolutely asinine, is problematic for sure - an unavoidability. the part that has me so very concerned is how fast and reckless they are being because of the insane stupidity and sheer arrogance of it.
i'll use the us treasury as an example. the entire global financial system is based on the us dollar, for better or worse. this means that any form of change to it's structure, concerns about it's validity, concerns about it's stability, are global financial concerns. this also puts pressure on the federal reserve, a private entity of private banks, causing more [strain] on a very taut system. when silicon valley bank went under in early 2023, the us treasury was able to save what could've been a major economic disaster. if people are fucking with the us treasury and social security, that is trillion of dollars in stability, debt, bills, etc. that cannot be fucked with due to the perceived risks of changing too fast.
using musks's bullshit with USDS3 as another example, now musk directly has access to the entire us government workforce's personal information. this is an insane security risk because he has untrained and unvetted private citizens access classified government systems and illegally locking people out of them. this includes all the people at DOE4. DOE is one of the most sensitive systems in the us and the military is VERY protective of it. what happens if all that information gets leaked and a foreign adversary gets it? what if that's already happened because of the carelessness? what happens if the military needs to step in due to the inherent security risks that are being created right now?
things this administration are doing that the states can compensate for, like medicaid/medicare/health/etc., are less concerning to me. same with immigration. clinton, bush, obama, trump, and biden have all sanctioned horrific human rights violations in the name of national security. that won't stop. it's the structures that allow for continuity of government that i don't want to be fucked with
Looking back at my own decisions and thing I was concerned about, I had yet to reach the “it’s time to go” point. I was frustrated and heavily focused on the destruction of the continuity of the federal government structures at the time.
Foreshadowing: I had no idea just how much immigration was going to become a forefront issue.
Executive Orders and Federal Policy Changes
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) formally withdrew the Biden-era guidance titled "HHS Notice and Guidance on Gender Affirming Care, Civil Rights, and Patient Privacy." This rescission was pursuant to Executive Order 14187 and signaled that HHS would no longer promote, assist, or support gender-affirming care.
HHS had added disclaimer language to LGBTQ+ resources on its website stating: "Any information on this page promoting gender ideology is extremely inaccurate and disconnected from the immutable biological reality that there are two sexes, male and female." This occurred after a federal court order required HHS to restore LGBTQ+ resources that had been removed from government websites.
The Department of Education issued a "Dear Colleague" letter stating it would enforce Title IX under the 2020 Rule from Trump's first administration, which aligns with narrow biological definitions of sex that exclude gender identity.
The Department of Education announced cuts of over $600 million in what it termed "divisive teacher training grants," which included programs supporting LGBTQ+ inclusive education
Trump issued Executive Order 14201, which represents one of his administration's most significant anti-LGBTQ+ actions in February. This executive order:
Declared it "the policy of the United States to rescind all funds from educational programs that deprive women and girls of fair athletic opportunities" by allowing transgender women to participate in women's sports
Directed the Secretary of Education to "prioritize Title IX enforcement actions against educational institutions (including athletic associations composed of or governed by such institutions) that deny female students an equal opportunity to participate in sports" by allowing transgender women to compete
Required all executive departments to "review grants to educational programs and, where appropriate, rescind funding to programs that fail to comply with the policy established in this order"
Called for the Secretary of State to "use all appropriate and available measures to see that the International Olympic Committee amends the standards governing Olympic sporting events" to ensure women's events are determined by sex assigned at birth rather than gender identity
The House Education and Workforce Committee advanced two anti-transgender bills in February 2025: H.R. 2616 and H.R. 2617. These bills would restrict educators from acknowledging the existence of LGBTQ+ people and require teachers to "out" LGBTQ+ students to their parents, even in potentially unsafe situations
Trump issued Executive Order 14222 implementing the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) Cost Efficiency Initiative. While not specifically targeting LGBTQ+ people, this order had significant impacts on programs serving LGBTQ+ communities by targeting what the administration deemed "non-essential" spending, which included many LGBTQ+ support and health programs
Trump issued Executive Order 14202, creating the “Anti-Christian Bias Task Force”, which raises concerns from Christian organizations
The Department of Education began implementing policies to prohibit schools from respecting transgender students' identities, including blocking them from using facilities that align with their gender identity.
The Department of Education rescinded guidance that had required NCAA schools to distribute name, image, and likeness (NIL) payments on a nondiscriminatory basis, a move that particularly affected LGBTQ+ student athletes.
The administration began removing LGBTQ+ resources and educational materials from federal education websites, with the Department of Education directing schools to censor terms like "transgender" from their communications.
Although signed in January, February saw major implementation actions related to Executive Order 14187, which aimed to restrict gender-affirming care for transgender youth under 19 years old5
Hospitals in blue states like Massachusetts and New York stopping gender-affirming care for transgender adolescents and young adults despite state laws protecting such care
My local LGBTQ+ healthcare clinic at Denver Health stopped gender-affirming care for transgender youth
An attempt is made to halt payments to US federal contractors who have DEI program
The Department of Justice issued a memo ordering changes to DEI programs based on a new interpretation of the Bostock v. Clayton County decision
Social Issues
The 2024 Election vote results have been proven to be statistically improbable in Clark County, NV and Pennsylvania
The NCAA implemented a new policy limiting competition in women's sports only to student-athletes assigned female at birth, while allowing transgender men to compete with men's teams. The NCAA president Charlie Baker stated that the order provided "a clear, national standard" on the issue compared to existing conflicting state laws
Initial reports about CECOT start surfacing
Arizona accuses the Trump administration of dictatorial actions
Trump declares that he “essentially attacked California”
Anti-LGBTQ+ State Laws Filed
This is a list of all anti-LGBTQ+ bills filed in each state in January 2025. In January, there were 265 different laws filed to erase my kind, in one way or another. Some seem innocuous, but have all been verified by the LGBTQ+ community to be anti-queer in one way or another. By the end of the month, there have been 393 anti-LGBTQ+ bills filed in state legislatures in just 2025.
March 2025
Specific to me, March was a “quiet” month as most of the new policies were implemented and not a lot of “new” happened. I say this because there were a lot of moving pieces on immigration issues, however at the time most of it was not something I was paying too much attention to at the time due to so much changing for me. At this point pretty much every safety net I had left had since dissolved.
March was the first month when I first considered leaving the United States to seek asylum elsewhere. I remember sitting down at the Garbanzo restaurant in Golden, Colorado with my best friend and sharing my initial concerns about Real ID coming. Here is a quote by me that sums up the fears I had started to feel:
this is partly why i’m so scared about real id going into effect. all it would take is a very quiet memo that goes out to TSA and will look something like this: “pull anyone who’s gender does not match their driver’s license name into a private search and immediately notify ICE”. no laws have technically been broken. then, ICE will magically lose my ID, have “database connectivity issues”, and say, “well since we can’t verify you’re a citizen you must be deported”. then i’m off to a remote slave labor prison until i die having done nothing but try to board an airplane6
Part of what I started to question the viability of leaving the US was due to a lot of the issues surrounding Kilmar Abrego Garcia and Andry José Hernández Romero. So I will be adding a new section focused specifically on the issues surrounding immigration that heavily impacted my decisions. While I am a half jus soli, half jus sanguinis citizen7, I was alone on the continent so anything having to do with immigration will also affect me. Until this point I had looked at the immigration issues dispassionately8, but I couldn’t ignore them any longer.
Part of the conversation that I had been having about leaving was steeped in “where do I go?” that will actually understand why I had to leave. My options were Canada, Spain, Portugal, Iceland, Sweden, Norway, or New Zealand. However, as someone who unironically yet immensely struggles with SAD, Canada, Iceland, Sweden, and Norway were off the table. Before you say “stop being a little bitch”, I have literally gone from stable to on-the-phone-with-988-because-the-cold-and-dark-of-winter-is-making-me-suicidal in 4 hours. Hopping out of the frying pan and into a different fire isn’t really what I was trying to do. Judge me if you will, but I won’t run for my own safety only to end up in a worse situation - I survived 6 suicide attempts and I’m not about to go down that path again.
Originally my target location was Mexico City so I could stay off the radar and live a quiet life in a warm climate. However, after a conversation with an attorney and my clinical psychologist, at the end of the month the final decision was made to select Portugal. An Airbnb was booked, flights were booked, and I started making final preparations to wind down my life.
Executive Orders and Federal Policy Changes
18F is shutdown and impacts absolutely critical federal services. I worked here 2019-2020 as one of the principal engineers for cloud.gov.
Federalist. Every US federal site that displays this banner uses this technology
login.gov. This is the SSO system for both federal employees and US citizens. It backs critical agencies like the Department of Veteran’s Affairs, Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, and many other places…
cloud.gov. This is one of the most critical pieces of government technical infrastructure. It underpins the CDC, the Department of Defense, the Department of Energy, the Department of Veteran’s Affairs, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Federal Election Commission, and so many others. It would be easier to list which agencies aren’t using it. Every Federalist service runs on top of cloud.gov.
The Supreme Court takes up a Colorado case which challenges the ban on conversion therapy
Elon Musk, the special government employee, announces himself as a Nazi
Trump issues Executive Order 14253:
Ended “divisive race-centered ideologies” from federally funded museums, educational & research centers, and the National Zoo9
Erased LGBTQ+ references from federal websites and historic sites managed by the National Park Service
Ordered the Department of Interior to determine whether monuments, memorials, statues, and markers had been "removed or changed to perpetuate a false reconstruction of American history" and to restore them to their previous state, which affected LGBTQ+ historical markers and interpretive materials at national sites
The Department of Justice issued a memo ordering a new interpretation of the Bostock v. Clayton County decision
This new guidance instructed federal agencies to narrow the application of Bostock solely to employment discrimination under Title VII, rather than applying it to other areas such as education (Title IX), housing, healthcare, and federally funded programs
The guidance provided federal agencies with a framework for refusing to acknowledge discrimination against LGBTQ+ people in contexts outside of employment
The Bureau of Prisons (BOP) implemented their new policies from Executive Order 14168
The BOP issued formal guidance on housing transgender inmates according to their sex assigned at birth, which resulted in transgender women being transferred to men's facilities
The bureau discontinued providing gender-affirming care to transgender inmates in federal custody
The BOP stopped tracking and reporting the number of transgender people in federal custody, eliminating transparency and accountability
The Department of Education implemented their new policies from the Department of Justice’s memo
The department began enforcing its new Title IX interpretation that excluded protections based on gender identity and sexual orientation
It initiated reviews of school districts and educational institutions with transgender-inclusive policies, threatening to withhold federal funding
Schools receiving notification of these reviews were required to provide documentation showing compliance with the administration's narrow interpretation of sex discrimination protections
HHS implemented it’s new policies concerning earlier executive orders
HHS began conducting healthcare facility audits to ensure compliance with Executive Order 14187, specifically targeting facilities that continued to provide gender-affirming care to individuals under 19
The department issued guidance to Medicare and Medicaid administrators to update coverage policies, excluding gender-affirming treatments from covered services
Federal funding was frozen for research projects related to LGBTQ+ health that did not comply with the administration's definition of sex as "an individual's immutable biological classification as either male or female"
Trump issued Executive Order 14246 which limited a law firm’s ability to work with the federal government due to them supporting transgender clients.
The deadline for Pete Hesgeth’s new Department of Defense transgender policies arrived
The Department of Defense released the final implementation plan for excluding transgender individuals from military service
The plan included a timeline for the discharge of currently serving transgender personnel and procedures for their separation from military service
Medical care related to gender transition was completely eliminated from military healthcare coverage, even for dependents of service members
Immigration
Trump signed Proclamation 10903, invoking the Alien Enemies Act, claiming the Venezuelan criminal gang Tren de Aragua had "invaded" the United States. This was the first time the Act had been used since World War II
The Trump administration deported 238 Venezuelan migrants and 23 Salvadoran nationals to El Salvador's Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), despite a federal judge blocking the deportations
According to El Salvador's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Trump administration agreed to pay the Salvadoran government $6 million to hold these prisoners for one year "pending the United States' decision on their long term disposition."
Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele posted a video showing deportees arriving at CECOT. El Salvador's government also shared photos showing men handcuffed and kneeling, surrounded by guards, after having their heads shaved
Concerns around very mysterious mounds outside of CECOT start appearing.
Andry José Hernández Romero, a gay Latino hairdresser seeking asylum in Minnesota, is illegally deported to CECOT
Kilmar Abrego Garcia
Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran living in Maryland, was arrested by ICE officials on March 12, 2025, while leaving his sheetmetal apprenticeship job in Baltimore
Despite having a "withholding of removal" order granted by an immigration judge in 2019 that should have prevented his deportation to El Salvador, Kilmar Abrego Garcia was deported on March 15, 2025
Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele posted a video showing deportees arriving at CECOT, which Jennifer Vasquez Sura used to identify her husband, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, being "dragged by guards."
ICE officials later admitted in court filings that Kilmar Abrego Garcia's deportation occurred because of an "administrative error" and an "oversight."
While the Trump administration repeatedly claimed Kilmar Abrego Garcia was a "verified" and "prominent" member of El Salvador's MS-13 gang, Maryland District Court Judge Paula Xinis noted the evidence against him was minimal and uncorroborated
Social Issues
Elon Musk gets shit from Stephen King in an epic way. He’s not wrong.
Personal Issues
I almost get jumped at a gas station in Frisco, Colorado while trying to pee. This gas station was a place I frequented and was generally considered to be “safe”.
Anti-LGBTQ+ State Laws Filed
This is a list of all anti-LGBTQ+ bills filed in each state in March 2025. In March, there were 228 different laws filed to erase my kind, in one way or another. Some seem innocuous, but have all been verified by the LGBTQ+ community to be anti-queer in one way or another. By the end of the month, there have been 621 anti-LGBTQ+ bills filed in state legislatures in just 2025.
April 2025
Come the first of April, I’ve already made the decision to leave and begun executing what is required to make a one-way trip. At this point most of what was going through my mind was really around leveraging my support systems to stay sane, pack up my life, and start divesting of everything. A big question I had at the time was “how do you wind down a life?” Honestly I never got an answer for it, and coping with it has been difficult.
Realizing no one in my new life will have witnessed who I used to be caused a lot of internal anxiety and some external despair. No one will know the Marine who survived OEF, the engineer who built systems the government relied on, or the person I was before I grew into Sienna. When you leave everything behind, you're not just losing a place - you're losing every shared memory that validates your history. I can tell new people "I used to do this" or "I was that," but it's not the same as having someone who was actually there. It's like my past self is dying, and I'm the only one attending the funeral. Each step toward safety meant accepting that I'll always be explaining fragments of myself to people who only know the asylum seeker version of me, not the whole fucking complicated human I was before the bigots tried to legislate me out of existence. I even started wearing my old wedding ring as a way to take a piece of who I was with me. That’s how desperate I’ve been to retain a sense of identity throughout all of this.
Many shoutouts and thanks goes to my close friends, local and out-of-state, for supporting me through this 🫶🏼
Executive Orders and Federal Policy Changes
The "Anti-Christian Bias Task Force," held its first meeting on April 22, 2025, and began developing recommendations to prioritize religious exemptions over LGBTQ+ protections
Trump attacks transgender children in a Proclamation about National Child Abuse Prevention Month
Trump creates a Title IX Special Investigations Team focused on keeping transgender women and girls from sports teams and restrooms designated for females
HHS began implementing new guidelines for Medicare and Medicaid that exclude gender-affirming care, affecting coverage for transgender individuals nationwide
The Department of Education accelerated its enforcement of the "No Men in Women's Sports" executive order in April, beginning investigations of schools and colleges that allow transgender students to participate in sports aligned with their gender identity
The Department of Justice ended a major school segregation order
The US Supreme Court takes up the issue of nationwide injunctions regarding birthright citizenship
Department of Justice Attorney General Pam Bondi issues an anti-transgender memo directing agencies and departments to implement stricter rules around gender-affirming care for children
Immigration
Salvador President Nayib Bukele responds to questions about returning Kilmar Garcia Abrego to the US: “How can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States? Of course I'm not going to do it. The question is preposterous”
Prisoners in Texas make a giant “S.O.S.” with their bodies as fears grow about being deported to CECOT
The Trump administration argues it is not required to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the US
Social Issues
I travel by plane, for the first time in several years, to the Center Dinner in NYC as a personal guest of one board members. I am terrified to go through the TSA security checkpoints
Anti-LGBTQ+ State Laws Filed
This is a list of all anti-LGBTQ+ bills filed in each state in April 2025. In April, there were 159 different laws filed to erase my kind, in one way or another. Some seem innocuous, but have all been verified by the LGBTQ+ community to be anti-queer in one way or another. By the end of the month, there have been 818 anti-LGBTQ+ bills filed in state legislatures in just 2025.
Post-April 2025
At this point it is getting harder and harder to track the minutiae what is happening in the US as I’m no longer there. Obviously I will continue to report on the issues as they come up, as well as provide more context on many things, but at this point, all of the decisions regarding why and how I left the US have been shared. All that’s left now is to put one step in front of the other. I hope this has been helpful, insightful, or just plain interesting. Like I said at the beginning, this is my story and it is unique to me.
We keep moving forward, opening up new doors and doing new things, because we're curious...and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.
— Walt Disney
Context: In July 2023 I was diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder. Through extensive & intensive therapy I was able to integrate and be whole again, however under too much stress there is a chance I could split and a new identity be created to protect us from new traumas. See DID Research for the latest information on the disorder.
Context: “my kind” refers to queer & neurodiverse people of all ethnicities. It is an easy yet purposefully inflammatory way to denote “us vs. them”
Context: “DOGE” is a rebrand of the US Digital Service
Clarification: Department of Energy, not Department of Education
Informed and educated opinion: Note the wording: “under 19”. This means they are technically restricting adult healthcare too as the age of majority in the United States is 18. So some transgender adults are already blocked from gender-affirming care in some places. Policies & rulings like these are known as the “Overton window shifting”, the “Boiling Frog Syndrome”, a “creeping normality”, or “salami tactics”. This approach allows authorities to test boundaries and normalize increasingly severe actions against vulnerable populations while avoiding the backlash that might come from implementing dramatic changes all at once.
Context: While all of my documents are marked “F”, I have changed my name and gender documents and all federal systems track that change for processing and identification purposes. So I could easily be flagged.
Context: I will do a functionally separate blog post discussing both of these topics as it relates to birthright citizenship. It’s too much information to add here.
Opinion: All presidents do horrific things in the name of “national security”.
Comment: Not the zoo 😭