When Rin entered foster care as a teen in 2021, he quickly felt overlooked and lost inside the system. It was an emotional upheaval, exacerbated by the complexities of his gender identity and fear of expressing his authentic self.
“I promptly locked myself in the closet,” said Rin, who identifies as transmasculine and uses he/him pronouns. CNN is not identifying him by his full name due to privacy concerns.
After opening up about his gender identity and sexuality to another youth at a group home in rural Oregon, Rin quickly regretted it, feeling ostracized from the other youth by his caregivers and misunderstood. In search of an escape, he found a nonprofit supportive of his identity and that helped him transition out of foster care.
Under the Trump administration, state child welfare agencies and nonprofits like the one that helped Rin are walking a tightrope, trying to find a delicate balance between fulfilling their mission of supporting some of the country’s most vulnerable children and working within the guidelines of a conservative administration that has the power to cut off vital funding.
President Donald Trump has pursued an aggressive agenda targeting LGBTQ+ polices, resetting federal definitions of sex to only male and female, banning transgender people from serving in the US military, restricting federal funds in gender-affirming medical care, preventing transgender women from competing in female sports and taking steps to roll back federal protections for LGBTQ+ youth in schools and foster care.
