• New Jersey native celebrity Hunter Schafer speaks out against the Trump administration’s policies targeting trans people.
• The actress and model, who is a trans woman, shared her personal experience in a video feeling the effects of the executive orders.

New Jersey-born actress and model Hunter Schafer took to social media to speak out against President Donald Trump’s policies that do not recognize the transgender community.

The “Euphoria” star posted an eight-minute video on her TikTok account, sharing a story where she applied and received a new U.S. passport after hers was stolen while filming in Spain last year. Schafer, a transgender woman, said she put female in the application, but when she received her new passport, she saw male in the identification listing.

Schafer said in the video she first changed her gender markers when she was a teenager, and it has never been a problem putting her preferred identification, female, on government documents such as her driver’s license and original passport.

“I do think it is worth posting to sort of note the reality of the situation that it is actually happening,” she said. “And I was shocked. I was shocked because I didn’t think it was actually going to happen.”

She alluded to the fact that she never had her birth certificate changed, which may be how the agencies were able to identify her as trans, but she admitted to not knowing what is different in the processing.

“It doesn’t really change anything about me or my trans-ness, however it does make life a little harder,” said the actress who was born in Trenton.

She said how she may feel uncomfortable “outing myself to border patrol agents,” more than she would like to, but will learn more about her personal experience when she travels abroad for the first time next week, she states in the video.

The celebrity not only shared her story, but spoke out against the recent executive orders made by the Trump administration that she said disregards the existence of trans people.

“I just want to say trans people are beautiful. We are never going to stop existing. I’m never going to stop being trans. A letter and a passport can’t change that,” she said.

She also expressed how she was scared that transphobia may become normalized amidst recent policies made by the Trump administration.

Trump executive order

Trump signed an executive order on his first day in office where he declared the federal government will only recognize two sexes, male and female assigned at birth.

This order has implications where many trans, nonbinary and intersex people have had their passports suspended or frozen. The State Department wrote in an email to USA Today that passports “seeking a different sex marker than that defined by the terms in the Executive Order,” will be suspended from being processed or issued.

The President also signed an executive order that banned transgender student athletes from playing on women’s sports teams. Trump wrote in the order that federal funding will be cut off with schools that don’t comply.

Trump also passed an executive order that banned transgender people from joining the U.S. military, an order that Trump passed in his first term as president.

Advocacy groups, judges and other politicians look to take legal action against Trump’s long list of executive orders that they say discriminate against the transgender community.

Other popular celebrities have joined Schafer in making public statements supporting the LGBTQ+ community. Pop-star singer Chappell Roan stated her support for transgenders on the Grammys red carpet several weeks ago. “Trans people have always existed and they will forever exist and they will never, no matter what happens, take trans joy away,” she said.