Hey everyone, it's me, W. Kamau Bell. If you haven't heard the news, well, this news, I'm the

2025 official host of the ACLU's podcast at Liberty. Whoop, whoop. Every episode, I'll be asking

the big questions on the big issues affecting our country, and we know there's lots of big issues,

and especially those issues happening

to some of our hardest hit

in most vulnerable communities.

And I'm calling on ACLU experts,

or as I'm calling them,

the WKB-ACLU Special Correspondents Task Force.

That is, the WKB-ACLU-S-C-T-F.

They are here to answer those questions.

For our first episode of the year, I sat down with the ACLU's legal director, Cecilia

Wong, to discuss the Trump administration's first days in office and the first wave

of executive orders that followed. Go ahead and check out that episode after you listen to this

one.

And make sure that you're subscribed at Liberty so you don't miss a single conversation.

They're all good. They're all necessary. We're here together.

Today we're focusing on one of our most critical frontiers for civil liberties,

LGBTQIA plus rights. See, we keep all the letters in there. And specifically transgender rights.

On his first day in office, President Trump signed an executive order requiring federal agencies to discriminate against transgender people by denying who they are. The Trump administration is

also attempting to shut down access to necessary medical care for transgender people under the age of 19 nationwide.

One of the first actions that the House took in 2025 was to order the State Department to stop granting requests for new or updated passports with gender markers that don't conform with the new definitions of

...