Transgender federal employees say they face fear and discrimination under Trump

Описание: (4 Sep 2025)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:

ASSOCIATED PRESS
Outside Springfield, Illinois - 30 July 2026
1. Various LeAnne Withrow showing off medals from her military career
2. SOUNDBITE (English) LeAnne Withrow, Lead Readiness Specialist, Illinois National Guard:
"I supervise a team of military and family readiness specialists across the state of Illinois who essentially engage family members, service members, their dependents, and veterans, and help them out when they need resources or referrals, whether that's financial, legal, behavioral health, anything like that."
3. Withrow holds up last medal she was awarded
4. SOUNDBITE (English) LeAnne Withrow, Lead Readiness Specialist, Illinois National Guard:
"It's a way to continue sort of my military life in some way. After I medically retired, you know that happened earlier than I'd planned. And so this is my way to continue to give back and be part of that community."
5. Withrow working on computer
6. SOUNDBITE (English) LeAnne Withrow, Lead Readiness Specialist, Illinois National Guard:
"The executive order essentially redefined gender as immutable and assigned at birth, and it erases trans people essentially entirely. And then it designates that gendered spaces, intimate spaces, like locker rooms and bathrooms have to be utilized based on your birth sex, period, point blank."
7. Various Withrow working on computer
8. SOUNDBITE (English) LeAnne Withrow, Lead Readiness Specialist, Illinois National Guard:
"I kind of have to choose between using no bathroom or using a bathroom that isn't correct for me, right? So, generally what I would have to do in that case is either curtail my visit and not be able to spend as much time doing those site inspections or staff assistance visits that I need to, or I would actually have to leave campus, like leave the armory and go use like a gas station bathroom or something like that and then come back."

ASSOCIATED PRESS
San Francisco - 14 August 2026
9. Various exteriors of federal building housing Equal Employment Opportunity Commission office
10. SOUNDBITE (English) Marc Seawright, Ex-Staff, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission:
"Because I'm someone who has worked at the highest levels inside the nation's premier civil rights agency and it's just madness right now. It's utter chaos and the chaos is all from the fact that people are experimenting with other people's civil rights."
11. Various of Seawright working at desk inside attorneys office
12. SOUNDBITE (English) Marc Seawright, Ex-Staff, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission:
"I was required to create a technology-supported business practice that would allow the agency to rapidly review and censor all of the EEOC's presentation materials, all of their training materials that they provide to employers and to the public about their rights, and erase the words transgender and non-binary and sexual orientation. That was extremely concerning to me. For an agency to use its resources that were intended by the American people to eradicate discrimination and suddenly begin to use those resources to discriminate against others, it's a concern of mine, but it should be a concern everyone."
13. Seawright meeting with attorneys
14. SOUNDBITE (English) Marc Seawright, Ex-Staff, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission:
"I am transgender and I'm an openly queer person and it affects me. This has been my experience in the workplace. So it has affected me to the point that I refuse to go on in an environment where a presidential appointee is suggesting that it's okay to discriminate and harass people like me. I won't do it."

ASSOCIATED PRESS

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