Transgender Americans are bracing for attacks from the White House and in their own neighbourhoods after Donald Trump’s U.S. election victory Tuesday, following a presidential campaign that promoted anti-trans rhetoric.

Trump repeatedly made false claims about trans people in speeches, while his presidential campaign spent millions on campaign ads with anti-trans messaging, despite trans people making up less than one per cent of the U.S. population.

“There’s no way to sugarcoat this. I’ve been fielding people who have wanted to end it all, in chats and messages to my inbox,” Erin Reed, a journalist and trans rights activist based in Maryland, told CBC News Wednesday. 

“The danger is real. Their feelings are valid, and this is just what we’re dealing with right now.”

Trump’s policy agenda includes a ban on trans participation in women’s sports and an end to federal funding for gender-affirming care.

In speeches and interviews, he has repeated false stories about children getting sex change operations at school without parental permission, among other misleading claims.

PBS reported that from Oct. 7 to 20, Trump’s campaign and pro-Trump groups spent an estimated $95 million US on ads, 41 per cent of which targeted trans people.

Independent journalist collective the Bulwark estimated the Trump campaign and other groups supporting it spent up to $40 million US on anti-trans advertising in a five-week span late in the campaign.

Bulwark found the Trump campaign itself spent less than half as much on ads addressing immigration, and less than one-fifth on ads addressing the economy.

One such ad claimed Democratic candidate Kamala Harris supports “biological men” competing against girls in sports, and placed a photo of Harris next to a photo of a person with a moustache and a bald head who was wearing a red dress and lipstick. “Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you,” was the tagline at the end of this and other similar ads.

‘Blue states’ will no longer be safe: activist

Reed says trans people living in Democrat-run states have been able to live “relatively peacefully and freely” over the last few years, even as anti-trans bills have been passing in Republican state legislatures amid a rise in anti-trans rhetoric. 

She does not expect that peace to last much longer.

“Everything that I’ve seen in the reddest of state legislatures, I’m expecting to see all of that at a federal level, at minimum,” Reed said. “I’m expecting Trump to likely use his office to target transgender people in blue states.”

The ACLU has tracked 531 anti-LGBTQ bills across the U.S. in this year’s legislative session alone, including restrictions on gender-affirming care and pronoun changes in schools. Reed expects Trump to target trans youth in schools, end or obstruct access to medical care for trans people of all ages and end passport gender marker changes.

Still, the public attacks don’t seem to be resonating with a large number of voters.

In an October survey by media research group Data for Progress, most respondents, including 41 per cent of Republicans, said Republican candidates using anti-2SLGBTQ rhetoric as part of their campaigns is “sad and shameful.” A majority of respondents, including 45 per cent of Republicans, said they want less government regulation of trans people’s lives, including their health care.

A Gallup poll from September found transgender rights ranked last among 22 key issues influencing voters.

Transgender people make up 0.5 per cent of the U.S. adult population and 1.4 per cent of U.S. teens aged 13 to 17, according to LGBTQ research group The Williams Institute.

“I don’t think that [the anti-trans messaging] is organic. I don’t think that this is coming from our peers, our neighbours, the people that we speak to,” Reed said. “I just think that this is a hate campaign, and people got swept up in it.”

Trans Americans already facing more discrimination: advocate

Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen, executive director of New York-based group Advocates for Trans Equality, says he similarly expects the Trump administration “to weaponize every part of the federal executive branch” against the trans community.

He said the rhetoric has already fostered “an environment of hostility” and he has heard from trans people across the U.S., especially in swing states where the attack ads were prominent, who are facing more harassment and discrimination in their day-to-day lives and in their own neighbourhoods. 

Heng-Lehtinen notes that physical attacks also tend to increase alongside rhetorical attacks, evidenced by a spike in hate crimes after Trump’s 2016 election. Overall, FBI data shows hate crimes motivated by gender identity and sexual orientation have been on the rise in the U.S. since at least 2021.

“That is not a coincidence that when a leader of the country sends a signal that some members of our society aren’t considered valuable, it opens the door for someone who does have hate in their hearts to follow through with it,” he said.

But Heng-Lehtinin said the election of Delaware democratic Sen. Sarah McBride, as the first openly transgender person elected to Congress, offered a glimmer of hope to hold onto after election night. 

He said the trans community is prepared to fight back against whatever comes in the next four years.

“We will do what we have to do,” he said. “Trans people, we know how to fight. So we’ll be just gearing up for a new chapter of our resistance.”