Arm yourself, surround yourself with those you love and can trust, and just hope I'm wrong. Pray if that's your thing.

But we have to face the reality that we are a representatively small, marginalized group within a marginalized group (each LGBTQ+ letter is when they're all on their own) that neither political party has an active interest in protecting. We will be the first "others" after the "illegal" immigrants (or simultaneously, who knows). When the quality of life of our fellow citizens begins to be threatened, we will absolutely be thrown to the wolves. "Preferring a negative peace with the absence of tension to a positive peace with the presence of justice", white moderate, that whole thing.

And even within the LGBTQ+ community, there are letters of it that do not support the other letters (LGBdroptheT, TERFs, Bi-erasure, etc). So be aware that even amongst the LGBTQ+ community, there will be those who look to scapegoat the T just buy a bit more time from the leopards.

I'm pessimistically hopeful that maybe, just maybe, the DNC will be able to recover a bit politically at the federal level during the midterms and stave off the worst of it. But I'm also not naive in the idea that laws, customs, and norms are going to stop the GOP from trying to enact things. And even should that happen, the work isn't done: we need to be a core tenet of the DNC's platform, or they don't deserve our votes or support.

I should also point out, I am not saying January 20th Trump is sworn in, and January 21st Congresswoman McBride is the first trans person marched into an oven. That's why I said they're going to budget us out via healthcare services, they're not going to outright make trans people illegal on day 1. It's going to take time, but I do believe it's going to happen, or at least that's how they're going to try to do it.