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Ann, who is intersex, and their wife, who is trans, sprang into action immediately after the election. At first, because their wife was working remotely, they looked into leaving the country, but then their wife was laid off, cutting that avenue off. So now they’re trying to leave Texas, where they live, for a friendlier state. To make it happen, Ann took a job with the Department of Agriculture based in California, in December, ending what had been a break from federal employment. “Getting out of Texas and getting my wife to a safer place was really priority number one,” they said.

Transgender people were right to be afraid—they’ve been in the Trump administration’s crosshairs from the start. On January 20, Trump signed an executive order against what it called “gender extremism” and defending “biological truth.” Then on January 29, the Office of Personnel Management sent a memo to all agencies telling them to, among other things, turn off pronoun features in email systems and disband all employee resource groups that “promote gender ideology.” Agencies subsequently removed the app that had allowed everyone to document their preferred pronouns and ended internal affinity groups like Pride. Rian, who was a member of such a group at work, now feels “newly defined as an enemy of the administration.” Ann said all email signatures that had pronouns in them, including theirs, were wiped.

Soon after that, Ann was on a Zoom call in which they still had pronouns in their username. A colleague contacted them to point it out. “I think it was probably good natured,” they said. Still, “it was irritating that anyone noticed.” A similar thing happened to Felix: He had been out sick when the executive order was signed, so his pronouns were still in his signature when he came back. A co-worker responded to an email with a screenshot of his signature line, telling him he was directly defying the president.