Laverne Cox has revealed she has lost nearly all of her income since Trump returned to office. In an interview with The Guardian promoting her new memoir, Transcendent, the LGBTQ trailblazer said 90% of her income has disappeared due to the administration’s attacks on gender ideology and DEI.
“This regime has threatened to defund any colleges and universities that promote gender ideology, DEI [Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion],” Cox said, explaining how her teaching and corporate speaking engagements have been impacted. “Even though I’d be teaching a graduate acting class, it could be perceived as promoting trans ideology.”
Cox continued, “I’m not complaining — I’m very blessed. I think the important thing to note is that if Laverne Cox’s income has gone down significantly, what about all the other trans people who are not as privileged and as blessed as I am? There are material consequences for this kind of discrimination and scapegoating.”
However, the actress added that none of these changes were unexpected. Indeed, they were explicitly laid out in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 blueprint before Trump was re-elected. “All these words had to be taken out of every piece of legislation, policy, government document: gender, gender ideology, gender identity, LGBTQ, DEI, abortion, contraception,” Cox said.
Elsewhere in the interview, Cox spoke about the greater impact of the Trump administration’s actions on the LGBTQ community. “If we don’t wake up and don’t understand, trans people will be exterminated,” she said. “People’s rights are being taken away, people are losing their jobs, people are losing healthcare, people are being detransitioned in prison, gender-affirming care is being attacked, not just for children but also for adults.”
“It’s never been about protecting women — it’s always been about creating a permission structure to scapegoat trans people, to dehumanise trans people, to take away our rights and to eliminate us from public life,” she explained.
After taking office in January 2025, Trump signed a flurry of executive orders. One included defining sex to the federal government as a male-female binary based on their gender at birth, while another banned DEI in federal agencies.
Since then, Trump has continued to attack transgender rights. In addition to banning transgender people from the military, his administration has prohibited transgender girls and women from women’s sports. The latter was executed under an executive order titled “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports.”
