Project 2025 is well underway and the queer community has been hit hard. Just ask Bridget LaKyra-Jean Butts, a Black trans woman who lives and works in Detroit. Two months ago, President Donald J. Trump told Butts: “You’re fired.”  More precisely, because of Trump’s executive order that slashed funding for LGBTQ-related programs at the National Institutes of Health, Butts’s job as a peer navigator for trans women of color was terminated.

“The program was geared for medical case management for trans women of color,” Butts told LGBTQ Nation. “After we did the intake, we would kind of get a feel of any resources that they needed, whether it be dental, name change, gender-affirming surgeries, et cetera, et cetera. And then after six months, we would come back and do another intake to see how the resources that we referred them to, how it impacted them.” 

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Butts had been working at a nonprofit healthcare center that serves the LGBTQ+ community in the Detroit area.

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That abruptly ended on March 25. An all-staff meeting was scheduled for 3:00 p.m. 

“By 2:45, they had already called me in and told me that Donald Trump issued an executive order [ending] all medical funding towards transgender research, and that I was to be terminated immediately, no more pay,” Butts said. “They were not allowed to spend any more money, and that I needed to turn in my badge and exit the building immediately.” 

A New York Times analysis of federal data reveals that nearly half of NIH grants canceled through early May were related to LGBTQ+ health, totaling more than $800 million.

Butts’ dream is to open her home—just as Ruth Ellis did—to LGBTQ+ Detroiters like her who are escaping homelessness, violence and the rejection of society. Ellis, a proud Black lesbian who passed away at the age of 101, lived to see the Ruth Ellis Center established in Highland Park, an enclave of Detroit. Butts frequented the center as a teen and young adult, and worked there for six years, three as program manager.

What was Butts’ second job, cashiering at a supermarket, is now her only source of income. With the responsibilities of a manager, “I think they’re trying to push for me to get a promotion,” Butts said. “Meijer is nice, but it’s not what I’m used to. And it’s not somewhere where I would want to be permanently, you know what I’m saying?” 

For the past 10 years, Butts’ focus has been on both paid and volunteer community work, assisting other trans women of color in need of shelter, food, medical care, and other resources. She has first-hand experience with chronic homelessness and survival sex work. Butts said she decided to turn her life around after her goddaughter Treasure was murdered and dismembered in 2011. Several years later, another Black trans woman who was close to Butts, Kelly Stough, was shot by a pastor and left to die in the street.

“I’ve been homeless before,” Butts said, “like, real homeless. Not like, ‘Oh, I’m sleeping on somebody’s couch.’ I mean, eating out the trash, having a coat over me as a blanket, sleeping at the park, and not just for like two days, like months, waking up, not having enough to pay for my hotel room fare and having to lug many bags through the city to go and do survival sex work, not eating for days. I really experienced that. So I wanted to give back to my people.”

“I’m also Black. I’m also trans. So I have many, many, many, many strikes against me.”

Kristi Gamarel is an associate professor in the School of Public Health at the University of Michigan. For 20 years, she has studied the intersections of the field of HIV and LGBTQ+ health. Gamarel met Butts in 2017 when Gamarel began a community-academic partnership with The Trans Sistas of Color Project-Detroit, a collective that aims to uplift, impact and influence the lives of trans women of color in Detroit as well as directly connect them to community resources and services.

Gamarel explained that trans women and trans folks in general often are not accepted by their families of origin. “They form their own families of choice,” she said. “And that provides a tremendous amount of support and resources. But at the same time, there’s not that building of what we might think of as intergenerational wealth or generational wealth in which families are passing down education and employment and different types of affordances and opportunities that we see within other communities.” 

Butts ran away from home at age 13, then returned and ran away repeatedly until her mother permitted her to leave at 18. She transitioned from 18 to 19 and has been living openly and as her authentic self since then, though it hasn’t been easy. Upon leaving REC one hot summer day about 12 years ago, Highland Park police followed Butts home while shouting slurs over the loudspeaker as bystanders looked on and laughed. 

It went on for an hour: “Hey, do you know this is a man? Get your gay a*s back across Six Mile!”

Butts had the last laugh. She got the officer’s names and badge numbers, then reported back to her boss at REC, who typed up a letter to the chief of police. Ultimately, the officers were held accountable. “And that’s kind of how I got into my advocacy,” Butts said, “because I have had moments always where I was pushed to become an advocate.”

In terms of educational attainment, Butts has taken classes toward a GED, though she lacks a diploma. Despite her skills and work experience, Butts is finding the job market practically closed to people like her.

Trans women and trans women of color who work to better the lives of their own community members often aren’t paid well. Gamarel said this is true, “especially for entry-level positions that just do not pay the amount that they need to pay. Given the labor, the emotional labor that they take. And we see that beyond just trans women of color, people who work in community health centers really are underpaid in general.”

Once employed, trans women of color face an enormous pay gap. According to the most recent data from the Human Rights Campaign, trans women were paid 60 cents for every $1 earned by the average American worker. Workplace discrimination is common, and it’s worth noting that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission recently dropped all cases involving trans and nonbinary people in the federal government’s effort to silence queer folks and prevent them from existing in public spaces. 

Despite the obstacles and barriers that have been thrown in Butts’ way, she’s focused on a brighter future. Yet Butts has a house that needs fixing up, three dogs to care for and a car note. She’s calling on the queer community. “For the people who love us, you know, give us opportunities,” Butts said. “You see what Trump is doing. You see what the government is doing, taking jobs away, taking money away from us.” 

Butts’s plea includes a segment of the queer community who often get to speak for its entirety.

“Those people who are LGB, who we call ‘pick me’s,’ who don’t necessarily agree with the T, they get to have a voice,” Butts said. “But at the end of the day, we’re all f**king each other over. It’s not like, you know, they’re going to look at you and be like ‘Oh, yeah, they’re just missing trans women, so, like, let’s give you a go.’ No, they’re coming for all of us. They’re just using [trans women of color] as scapegoats.”

While Gamarel is well aware of the “incredible discrimination against trans women of color,” she also offers some hope for this horrific time in history.

“Trans communities have poured into their own communities and in particular trans communities of color,” Gamarel said. “That is, I think, one of the things I have learned as a dedicated ally in this space. As an example, Bre Rivera, who founded the Trans Sisters of Color Project, one of the first programs that she started at [TSoCP] was ‘no strings attached’ emergency assistance.”

While acknowledging that those are band-aids, Gamarel said programs like that and others created by groups such as the Black Trans Foundation and Groundswell remain vital economic resources. 

One of the projects Gamarel is working on at the University of Michigan teaches trans women of color how to launch and run a business. The women learn the nuts and bolts of a business plan and hear from a tax expert. “All of our program participants had a mentor who worked with them on their business goals or their economic goals,” Gamarel said. “That was combined with a grant that you did not need to pay back in any way, but it was a grant of $1,200 to sort of invest in your business.”

At this time, Gamarel and her colleagues doing this vital research are at risk of losing their grants at a moment’s notice. Yet Gamarel said she will find a way to continue the work.

“Trans people are incredibly strong,” Gamarel said. “And they have dedicated allies, myself included, that are going to continue to fight because trans people have always existed.  Just because Trump decided to write an executive order that is actually factually inaccurate in terms of biology, it doesn’t mean that people don’t exist.”

Meanwhile, Butts already has plans for the house she moved into a year and a half ago. At a critical moment when she was unexpectedly evicted and living out of her car while also holding a job, Butts received word that her bid on a land bank house was the lucky winner. She now resides on the west side of Detroit in a four-bedroom with a guest house in the back.

“All I ever wanted was to buy property and have spaces for homeless trans men and women, and even gay men and women to come and have shelter and have a space where they can feel safe,” Butts said. “Because that’s all I needed growing up.”

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