Nearly half of LGBTQ+ Americans are going back in the closet.
That’s not a metaphor—that’s the finding of a new survey from the Human Rights Campaign measuring the real-world impact of one year under Trump 2.0.
Parents are hiding who they are from their kids’ schools. Workers are shrinking themselves to keep their jobs. Couples are thinking twice before holding hands on the street.
This is what state-sponsored bigotry looks like.
THE DETAILS: HRC surveyed more than 14,000 Americans and found that 47.5% of LGBTQ+ adults report being less out somewhere in their lives during the last 12 months—at work, in healthcare settings, in public. More than half (51.1%) feel they are less visible than a year ago. Two-thirds of transgender and nonbinary Americans report difficulty accessing healthcare.
And here’s the economic kicker: LGBTQ+ adults are nearly twice as likely to say their financial situation worsened over the past 12 months as non-LGBTQ+ adults. This isn’t just culture war theater—it’s material harm.
OF COURSE: In 2025 alone, the Trump administration enacted 225 executive orders—many targeting LGBTQ+ people directly. We’re talking about officially declaring only two sexes exist, banning trans people from the military, restricting gender-affirming care, and going scorched-earth on DEI programs.
The corporate dominoes fell predictably: Walmart, Target, Ford, Harley-Davidson, and others gutted their diversity policies after MAGA activist Robby Starbuck came knocking. Workers at businesses that rolled back DEI were more than twice as likely to report experiencing stigma, bias, and discrimination—54.2% versus 24.9%. (SURPRISE: treating people like second-class citizens makes them feel like second-class citizens.)
BUT BUT BUT: Republicans want you to believe this is what America wants. HRC’s polling says otherwise. Strategist Joey Teitelbaum noted her firm has never found more than 18% of voters in any state who believe being transgender should be illegal.
That means over four in five Americans reject the GOP’s project to legislate trans people out of existence.
Recent elections back this up—pro-equality candidates won decisively in Virginia, New Jersey, and Nebraska, where one mayor responded to culture war attacks with: “My opponent is focused on potties. I’m focused on potholes.”
BOTTOM LINE: “These are harrowing times,” HRC President Kelley Robinson told reporters. “The emergency that we warned about is no longer a warning. It is the reality that we are living inside.”
But here’s what matters: this isn’t a permanent condition. HRC is mobilizing 75 million “Equality Voters” for the 2026 midterms with a simple message—stop playing defense and go on offense.
As Robinson put it: “Every day that you show up being exactly who you are is as much resistance as you’ve got to have.”
The cruelty is the point. But so is the fight back.