As we mark Transgender Day of Remembrance 2025 today (Thursday, Nov. 20), here are a few reports from the frontlines in the ongoing battle for transgender equality and safety.
2025 TDOR Report
Advocates for Trans Equality has released its 2025 Trans Day of Remembrance Report offering a comprehensive memorial and data analysis on the trans lives lost to violence, suicide and systemic neglect over the past year.
The report “combines storytelling with new data showing how anti-trans violence, targeted political attacks, and government-led data erasure are converging to threaten trans people’s safety nationwide,” a press release notes. “It includes historical context, family testimonials and a detailed breakdown of every reported loss from November 2024–October 2025.
Key findings include:
• 58 trans people were lost this year, including 27 to violent causes and 21 to suicide.
• Violence against trans women — especially Black trans women — remains disproportionately high: 17 out of 21 trans women of color lost to violence were Black trans women.
• Gun violence continues to be the leading cause of death, responsible for 17 of 27 violent deaths.
• 61 percent of trans people lost to suicide were between 15 and 24, underscoring the scale of the youth mental health crisis.
• The report documents failures of law enforcement, with families recounting ignored wellness checks and slow or incomplete investigations.
• A4TE highlights how the federal government has removed LGBTQ data from public health systems and shut down gender-related research, deepening the crisis of erasure.
More than half experienced violence, harassment
A new report released this month by The Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law found that 59 percent of transgender and nonbinary adults surveyed in California had experienced at least one incident of violence or harassment in the year prior to completing the 2022 U.S. Transgender survey, according to a Williams Institute survey.
The most common form of harassment was online harassment (42 percent) followed by verbal harassment (38 percent), threats of physical violence (19 percent), bathroom-related harassment or violence (17 percent) and physical attacks (7 percent).
Based on data from the 9,146 California adults who participated in the 2022 survey, researchers examined the prevalence and types of victimization those respondents experience and whether individuals who are more visibly identifiable as transgender face greater risks of violence and harassment.
Results showed that transgender visibility is the strongest and most consistent predictor of all types of violence and harassment, the study shows. Respondents who reported they were more often perceived as transgender experienced higher rates of every form of violence and harassment.
Respondents who said they had been targeted for violence and harassment attributed these experience overwhelmingly to their transgender status, gender identity or gender expression.
Key findings indicate:
• Hispanic or Latine transgender women reported disproportionately high rates of physical attacks (12 percent), compared to Hispanic or Latine transgender men (5 percent) and nonbinary individuals assigned female (5 percent) or male (2 percent) at birth.
• Of those who faced victimization in bathrooms, 15 percent were told they were using the wrong bathroom, and 5 percent were denied access.
• Transgender men and those with higher transgender visibility had disproportionately high rates of bathroom violence and harassment.
• On average, respondents who reported threats of physical violence had an average of 2.9 threats in the prior year.
• One in five (20 percent) respondents reported experiencing verbal harassment related to their transgender status or gender by a stranger in a public place.
• The vast majority (84 percent) of those who faced verbal harassment believed it occurred because of their transgender status, gender identity, or gender expression.
• Online harassment included being called offensive names (33 percent), intentional embarrassment (21 percent), sexual harassment (16 percent), physical threats (12 percent), sustained harassment (12 percent), and stalking (9 percent).
• Nearly half (48 percent) of younger respondents aged 18–24 reported experiencing online harassment in the past year, compared with 30 percent of those aged 45 and older.
Communities respond
According to information from GoFundMe, more than $8 million has been raised through more than 130,000 GoFundMe donations to support transgender people and their loved ones in times need. This includes support for:
• The family TikTok influencer Girlalala, who was shot and killed on Nov. 14 in Broward County, Fla., at the age of 21. Authorities have said she was killed by her boyfriend, Shanoyd Whyte Jr., after an argument.
• A memorial to honor Dream Johnson, who was shot to death July 5 in Washington, D.C., by Edgar Harrington, a man she did not know who harassed her with slurs before shooting her. Harrington has been charged with first-degree murder with a hate crime enhancement.
• The family of Amyri Dior, 23, who was shot to death Feb. 21 in Milwaukee. Davion Steed has been arrested and charged with her murder.
• The family of Onyx (Hope) Cornish, 18, who was shot to death in her home Caldwell, Idaho, on Aug. 18 by her non-biological father, Delbert Cornish.
• The family of Kameron “Karmin” Wells, 37, who was shot to death at her home in Detroit. Reports indicate authorities believe she was killed by a man with whom she had arranged a date, who robbed her before killing her.
• The family of Sam Nordquist, a 24-year-old trans man from Red Wing, Minn., who left his home in September for Geneva, N.Y., to meet his online girlfriend, 38-year-old Precious Arzuaga. Police say Nordquist was held captive in a hotel room and tortured for more than a month before he was killed. He was reported missing in December before his remains were found Feb. 13 in a field in Yates County. Five people ages 19-38, including Arzuaga, have been arrested and charged in his death.
• The family of Tahiry Broom, 29, who was shot to death in in February in Southfield, Mich. Robert Louis Ridges III, 28, has been charged in her death.
• Funeral expenses for trans advocate Kelsey Elem, 25, who was shot to death on April 24 in her home in Affton, Mo. Police have said she was killed by her boyfriend, Martino Lewis, 21, after an argument.