Donald Trump has just handed rapists across the country another huge victory.
On Monday, the Department of Education announced it was rolling back Title IX protections surrounding sex discrimination, sexual orientation, and gender identity.
Among other things, this rollback now means that those who allege sexual assault on college campuses may now be required to have near-absolute proof that their assault took place. That means witness accounts alone aren’t sufficient. Nor are texts, testimony, or essentially anything other than a rape kit conducted immediately after someone has endured the most traumatic experience of their life.
What this really means is that even more burden falls on the victim to prevent rapists from getting off and being free to harm more people. As if that’s not bad enough, the rollback has now also eliminated protections for LGBTQ Americans at the same time as hate crimes against them have reached record highs.
To understand why this is happening, we have to zoom out.
It was all there in Project 2025.
The fascist manifesto called for Trump to “abandon” Title IX protections and insist that sex be understood as a fixed biological fact. Not only that, but it went further and called for ongoing Title IX investigations to be dropped outright.
Not on a case-by-case basis, but to abandon victims without so much as a second thought.
In 2023, Donald Trump was on trial for sexual assault and rape against E. Jean Carroll, who said Trump pushed Carroll into a dressing room, pulled down her tights, and sexually assaulted her. Carroll’s was one of countless accusations of sexual assault made against Trump dating back decades.
Trump was subsequently found liable for sexual abuse.
Since his trial, Trump has railed against the legal rules and standards that he’s said have created a “TOTALLY CORRUPT” justice system (that is, one that holds perpetrators of sexual abuse accountable). Trump has said that cancel culture, DEI, and “woke ideology” have “infected” American society, and has made it one of his personal missions to not so much as correct that but to obliterate it entirely.
At best, Trump’s latest move is an effort to redefine the bounds of how survivors of sexual abuse can seek and win justice against their attackers. At worst, it’s a concerted effort by Trump, MAGA, and the same acolytes that authored Project 2025 to enable the darkest and most twisted in our society and to let rapists from coast to coast know that they have an ally in the White House.
Given the fact that Trump has already been found liable for sexual abuse, it makes sense why he just might have an interest in making it harder for survivors of sexual assault to pursue justice. It also suggests his true aims are to fundamentally change our culture, turning it into one that gives the benefit of the doubt to alleged aggressors and causes victims to think twice before coming forward.
Put simply, Trump wants more protections for those accused of sexual assault at the expense of the victims of it. When you elect a sexual abuser to the highest office in the country, it should come as no surprise that he’ll go to war to defend his kind.
Take the controversy swirling at Cornell University as another example.
In 2024, a Cornell student reported that she was sexually assaulted by members of the Chi Phi fraternity. After Cornell conducted its own investigation and issued slaps on the wrist, the criminal investigation into the matter has been reopened this month. Going forward under Trump’s new Title IX rules, sexual assault victims like the one at Cornell will have even less protections.
The dangers for LGBTQ students in light of the rollback are even greater.
The Biden administration updated Title IX regulations to explicitly prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity in the wake of rising levels of hate crimes against those communities.
Just as Project 2025 foretold, Trump has now rolled those very same protections back — even as hate crimes have continued to climb.
At the same time, the administration has gutted the Depart of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, the team responsible for investigating discrimination complaints and protecting more than 70 million students.
To date, more than half of its staff has been fired and 7 of its 12 offices have closed entirely. When Trump took office, Ed’s OCR had just had its most discrimination claims ever recorded in 2024. Today, the office now has a backlog of over 20,000 cases, with 9,000 of those between March and September 2025 alone.
Trump understands something that many of us have been far too slow to realize: your rights, even if they exist on paper, mean nothing if there’s nobody to enforce and protect them. In his war on DEI, gutting Offices for Civil Rights across the federal government, defanging the Consumer Protection Bureau, and obliterating the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission, Trump has fired, intimidated, or gagged those once in a position to protect you.
It is the explicit goal of Trump and his Project 2025 acolytes to go after the most vulnerable among us, and they will continue to do exactly that until we take that power away from them.
Despite all that, we still believe in an America where we respect the right of others to love whomever they choose, to live openly and with pride, and in an America where we not only trust victims but do everything in our power to protect them.
He hates women. It has been obvious. This is just one more display of his hate.
I can’t believe anyone actually has to ask this question….