On 30 September 2026, twelve people who had spent their working lives fighting for trans rights received a one-sentence email telling them they were done. "Dear Employee, September 30th, 2026 will be your last day of employment at A4TEEF." The organisation couldn't even spell its own name correctly. That is how Advocates for Trans Equality said goodbye to nearly half its union membership.

I have been watching the funding crisis inside US trans advocacy organisations build for months, and what happened at A4TE is not a surprise. But a surprise and a shock are different things, and this is a shock. Not because organisations facing a $2.4 million deficit sometimes have to make brutal choices, but because of the way it was done, and because of who it was done to.

The money dried up, and the people paid for it

A4TE was itself born from crisis. In 2024, the National Center for Transgender Equality and the Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund merged to form a single, supposedly stronger organisation. The logic was sound: consolidate, reduce duplication, build something more resilient. What neither organisation could have fully anticipated was the speed at which corporate funding would collapse under a second Trump administration that has made the erasure of trans identity a central political project.

About 86% of A4TE's budget goes to staff. When the money goes, the people go. Management says it also cut discretionary spending, combined roles, delayed hiring, and reduced executive and managerial pay. The union argued there was more that could have been done: salary freezes for those earning above $135,000, restrictions on executive hiring, consolidation of senior positions. Management said those options wouldn't close the gap. The collective bargaining agreement gave leaders the final word on personnel decisions, and they used it.

What they didn't have to do was use it the way they did.

"Management led with cruelty and threats"

The Union for Trans Liberation, which represents A4TE workers through UAW Local 2325, was blunt in its response. "Our hearts are heavy that we are losing nearly half our Union today," they wrote. "In the final days of our layoff negotiation period, management has led with cruelty and threats."

Ash Lazarus Orr, who worked in press relations at A4TE and was among those let go, told the Advocate what he saw when he looked at the list of who had been pushed out. "I see people who have been vocal about workplace conditions, people who have been involved in union activity, and people who have raised ongoing concerns about our leadership and management." He called the dismissal notice callous. "'This is your last day,' and that was it."

The union has accused the organisation of a history of union busting through its predecessor organisations, and says it is prepared to pursue unfair labour practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board. These are serious allegations, and they deserve a serious response from leadership.

The question nobody wants to ask

Orr said something that I keep returning to. He said he still believes in the mission as strongly as ever. But there is "an enormous disconnect between the values A4TE asks the rest of the world to uphold versus the experiences some of us have while working inside this organisation." And then, harder still: "I just no longer believe that A4TE is that organisation to carry that mission through."

That is not a throwaway line from someone bitter about losing a job. It is a considered judgement from someone who built their career around this work, and it raises a question the trans community needs to be willing to ask: what happens when the organisations built to fight are themselves failing the people they were built to serve?

A former staffer at one of A4TE's predecessor organisations put it simply on Instagram: "A measure of how you care for trans people is reflected in how you care for your trans staff." She added two words. "Shame on y'all."

Where does that leave us?

The funding crisis is real, and it is not A4TE's fault that donors are retreating under political pressure. That part of the picture deserves honest acknowledgement. Organisations fighting on the front lines of a deliberately hostile political environment are being starved of the resources they need, and that is a deliberate strategy, not an accident.

But the response to that pressure matters too. The people losing their jobs are trans people, and advocates, and union members who believed in this work. They did not create the deficit. They did not choose the political climate. They showed up, day after day, for a cause that the rest of us needed them to fight, and they were let go with a misspelled sentence.

If trans advocacy is going to survive what is coming, it will need organisations that are worthy of the people working inside them. Right now, A4TE's own former staff are saying it is not that organisation. That is something its leadership needs to take seriously, not as a PR problem, but as a question about whether the mission can be carried by an organisation that treats its people this way.

I hope they do. The work is too important to fail because the institutions doing it forgot what they were fighting for.

If there is a news story you would like me to cover then just let Sammy know.

Dr Helen Webberley is a Gender Specialist, Medical Educator, writer, and advocate, and the founder of GenderGP.