Samuel Redfern believes USC is one of the safer places to be a transgender man in the United States right now.
But Redfern realized he didn’t fully trust university officials to have his back as a trans student last October while he waited over two weeks for the university to decide on President Trump’s “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education.” A proposition that would give universities that accepted the terms preferential funding. USC declined to join the compact in October 2025.
“I was definitely worried on some level that they were going to take that deal,” said Redfern, a second-year majoring in neuroscience.
Redfern regularly checks Erin in the Morning, a LGBTQ+ legislation tracking newsletter run by independent trans journalist Erin Reed.
From the Supreme Court ruling to reverse bans on conversion therapy in Colorado to the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic team barring trans-athletes from competing in women’s events, legislation is overrun with anti-trans rulings.
The Trump administration’s campaign against transgender rights reflects anti-LGBTQ+ objectives outlined in Project 2025, a conservative guidebook for the administration’s second term. The administration has targeted trans athletes, barred trans soldiers from serving in the military and threatened to cut funding for gender-affirming care programs at a wave of hospitals nationwide.
Since his election, Trans citizens across the U.S. have faced reductions in gender affirming care.
L.A. lost one of the oldest pediatric gender clinics in the country last July. Children’s Hospital Los Angeles ended its Development and Gender-Affirming Care surgical program because of a “need to safeguard CHLA’s ability to operate amid significant external pressures beyond our control,” said CHLA executives in an email to the patient community.
Two months after the federal government threatened to pull funding from hospitals that provide gender affirming care to minors, NYU Langone Health discontinued its Transgender Youth Health program on Feb. 17.
On Feb. 23, Vanderbilt University Medical Center stopped providing surgical gender-affirming care for adults and canceled all previously scheduled surgeries “due to operational limitations and lack of surgical coverage,” said VUMC Chief Communications Officer John Howser in a statement to Annenberg media.
Keck Medicine of USC has continued to offer gender-affirming care services to adults. Launched in 2022, the USC Gender Affirming Care Program offers services such as hormone therapy, surgical care, voice therapy and occupational therapy.
USC Chief Campus Health Officer Sarah Van Orman said Keck would continue to offer gender-affirming care for adults.
“We don’t anticipate at this point any changes in those programs,” Van Orman said.
Redfern, who receives hormone therapy from Keck, said he’s had a great experience, aside from the USC pharmacy’s requirement to file patients under their legal name.
“Often, the people there don’t know I have a preferred name, and then will just shout out my legal name, and that’s a little bit awkward,” said Redfern.
He also noted that the university allows students to have only their legal name on their USCard, which adds to the problem.
Although Keck continues to offer gender-affirming care amidst the surrounding crackdowns, the Trump Administration has targeted USC’s gender inclusive policies in the past.
Sent to nine colleges in October, the Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education called for policy changes on subjects such as diversity values, international student enrollment and gender inclusivity in exchange for federal funding. It required universities to recognize gender solely on the basis of biological characteristics.
The compact threatened the presence of gender-inclusive campus spaces such as gender-inclusive housing, the LGBTQ+ Student Center (LGBTQ+SC), the Queer & Ally Student Assembly (QUASA) and the Rainbow floor, a LGBTQ+-centered living-learning community that USC will no longer offer in the 2026-2027 academic year.
“Those kinds of places I went to mostly when I was a freshman, and that’s how I met a lot of folks,” fourth-year history major Isabel Jasen-Montoy said about QUASA and LGBTQ+SC.
Redfern said meeting other trans individuals in the student center opened his eyes to what was possible for him.
“It’s been a really positive journey,” he said. “There are not a lot of trans elders. So it was important for me to see people, even just a couple of years older than me, moving on to the next steps of their career, and being able to live their lives.”
The Trump administration’s other anti-trans initiatives have trickled from the federal level. At the State of the Union Address in February, Trump demanded that schools ban trans youth from being able to transition without parental consent socially.
Three days later, about 1,700 transgender Kansans had their driver’s licenses invalidated because of Kansas Senate Bill 244. The law states that licenses bearing gender markers inconsistent with the assigned sex at birth are null and must be surrendered to the Kansas Division of Vehicles.
It also prohibits trans Kansans from updating their identification or birth certificates to reflect a gender identity different from their assigned sex at birth.
“This is an action that’s only going to apply to trans people, so it’s very targeted,” said Redfern. “It’s very predatory and extremely discriminatory, to an egregious level.”
The invalidation was effective immediately after the bill passed, leaving many trans citizens without the legal ability to drive or vote.
“Transgender Kansans should have protection and dignity in our state instead of persecution,” said ACLU of Kansas Executive Director Micah Kubic in a January press release.
Sudhir Mathew, a first-year student studying philosophy, politics and law, said that transgender rights in his academic discussions are often seen as a debate.
He’s open about his transmasculine identity. Being able to pass as a cisgender man, he code switches in spaces where he’s not sure transness would be received.
Mathew said that being able to pass means he “gets to see the way people talk about it when they don’t think there are any trans people in the room with them.”
“I feel like an animal in a zoo watching them watch me,” he said.
Alex, a second-year design major granted partial anonymity for fear of retaliation, shared that they’ve become less open about being a transmasculine nonbinary person since coming to USC.
When they transferred out of their first high school after getting bullied for being transgender, their second high school became the one place they weren’t scared to share their pronouns.
Alex mentioned that it was common practice at their second high school for people to share pronouns at the beginning of a class. They haven’t noticed that same practice as much at USC.
“None of my professors really ask for students’ pronouns anymore, even if they seem very woke or supportive, and I think that’s just kind of awkward,” they said. “People always dance around how to refer to me.”
They also noted that they’ve had professors who correctly gendered them in previous semesters but misgendered them in current ones.
“I wish the onus didn’t lie so much on trans people to explain themselves or to assert their identities and their pronouns,” said Alex.
The LGBTQ+SC offers specialized counseling and mental health resources, but trans USC students said they often found support within their community.
“Even in the cases where I would have thought that being trans would have been a limiting factor, I found pockets of the student body that are just really doing their best to be inclusive, and that has had a really positive impact on my ability to just exist at USC,” said Redfern.
Keeping informed, “It actively lowers my quality of life,” said Redfern. “But to me it’s kind of a duty.”
Redfern keeps his identity as a trans man central to who he is and his goals. He said he never wanted that part of him to become a “fun fact.”
“I want to be living proof that a trans person can be successful,” he said.
In a time of trans people being misunderstood and persecuted, Redfern tries to be his own beacon of hope.
“Every trans person that survives through this and continues to be strong is a really important person,” Redfern said. “Because we’re examples of people thriving under a ton of incredibly negative influence.”