This past Tuesday marked the beginning of a long descent for the transgender community while President Trump is still in office. The Supreme Court allowed Trump’s “transgender military ban to go into effect,” as reported by CNN in the article “Supreme Court allows transgender military ban to go into effect.”

SCOTUS apparently allowed this ban—despite the fact that “the justices took no stance on the legality” of it—to grant more time for the lower courts to “hear additional arguments” (CNN).

The last time we heard from President Trump with regards to the transgender community, The New York Times had reported in the article “‘Transgender’ Could Be Defined Out of Existence Under Trump Administration” that “[t]he Trump administration is considering narrowly defining gender as a biological, immutable condition determined by genitalia at birth.”

While these instances of transphobia orchestrated by our current presidential administration are not something new, I still feel defeated when hearing and/or reading these headlines. I know that many others in the transgender community empathize with my exhaustion, as do our sympathetic advocates and allies.

Even recently on campus the community has experienced a blatant opposition, what with the removal of pride flags. Despite the article published in support of the flag removals, it must be understood that removing those flags is one that vehemently dismisses the presence of LGBTQ individuals on campus.

To return to the issue at hand, it is hard enough for the trans community to be recognized appropriately as the gender we identify with; now we have the Department of Health and Human Services openly trying to squash the existence of 1.4 million human beings in the United States as well as President Trump denying them the opportunity to serve this country.

Mind you, they would now be serving a country that denies their existence.

As we enter Trump’s third year of presidency, I can only fear what other attacks will be made against the LGBTQ community. How many more transgender individuals need to die before our country realizes that the political atmosphere that Trump perpetually supports and instigates is unsafe?

And this is not exclusive to the transgender community; women, people of color, immigrants, and even children are subject to this harmful atmosphere, as well.