Famous Trans Actress on the Hidden ‘Dry Up’ Cost of Trump’s Transgender Crackdown—’Because of This Administration…’

Transgender actress and activist Laverne Cox is currently busy promoting her book, Transcendent: A Memoir. During a recent conversation, she got candid about her professional trajectory while publicly alleging that she’s lost money due to Trump administration‘s policies targeting the trans community ever since President Donald Trump assumed office in his second term.

While speaking with Attitude Uncut in June 2026, Laverne Cox reflected on her professional career and how it transitioned in the second term of the Trump administration. She said, “I’ve lost so much money because of this administration, the past year. I managed to stay busy with acting and branding work, as well as speaking engagements.” Addressing the loss of income, she said, “But I never thought college speaking gigs would dry up.”

The Orange is the New Black alum also remained quite candid about her current financial standing, insisting, “This administration is very punitive with anything that suggests DEI or gender ideology, and corporations have been very scared. The past year or two, I’ve had to dip into savings and my retirement fund. So, the blessing is that I finally have the privilege to have a retirement fund to dip into, but you don’t really want to do that.”

“If it’s affecting me, then it’s definitely affecting other people,” Cox opined while she spoke with Munroe Bergdorf for the special piece.

The Emmy Award winner went on to claim that she had been “scared” and “terrified” for the past three years. “And as I lost opportunities, I felt like I should say less because I didn’t want to lose more. And I didn’t want to damage the community either,” she added.

It is worth mentioning that during his second term, Trump ordered several policies that have been unfavorable for the transgender community. According to a New York Post’s January 2025 report, Trump issued an executive order defining a person’s gender as “male or female” only based on their gender at the time of birth.

He also directed the government agencies to use a permanent designation on forms and IDs while introducing changes to rules governing transgender prisoners.

A month later, Politico reported that Trump moved to restrict transgender people from serving in the military and signed an executive order preventing transgender girls and women from competing in female sports categories at schools and colleges that received federal funding. Rulings like these stirred a major uproar among transgender communities and civil-rights organizations.

Cox had previously been in a relationship with a MAGA supporter whom she publicly described as a “blond-haired, blue-eyed MAGA Republican voter,” adding that he was a “New York City police officer.”

The relationship didn’t last, however, and she later opened up on The View about trying to look past their differences: “The political affiliation became obvious, but I’d already had feelings for him, and I wanted to see him as a human being beyond that.”

Looking back on their three and a half years together, Cox noted that his unexamined life and politics eventually became too clear to ignore. “I was like, ‘I love him, but I love myself more,'” she shared, adding that staying with him would have been a betrayal of her own self-worth.