Since taking office, President Donald Trump has wasted no time making good on his campaign promises to persecute the transgender community. He has issued executive orders to deny passports that match trans citizens’ gender identities; force federal prisoners to detransition; and ban trans soldiers from serving openly in the military. He’s threatened to defund major hospitals and medical schools with gender clinics serving the needs of trans youth, and public schools that acknowledge and accommodate trans and nonbinary students. And he’s ordered unscientific, illogical definitions of “male” and “female” to be implemented throughout federal policy.
Trump’s moves are a major escalation in the political war on transgender people that’s been roiling states since the late 2010s—fomented and coordinated by religious-right organizations and seized upon by opportunistic Republican politicians. In recent years, about half of states have restricted trans youth medical care and sports participation; nearly a third have implemented bathroom bans in schools. Others censor LGBTQ issues from the curricula, or force schools to out gender-diverse students to their parents.
These laws, and the often-hateful rhetoric surrounding them, have created vast areas of the country where many trans people feel unsafe in their daily lives. But some states have taken the opposite approach, passing “shield laws” for transgender healthcare providers and enacting other LGBTQ-friendly policies. Colorado is one of these places: Once known as the “hate state“ due to the political influence of anti-LGBTQ evangelical groups in Colorado Springs, over the last 25 years it’s passed some of the country’s strongest legal protections for queer and trans people and their families.
Keira Richards, a former government auditor born and raised in Colorado, quit her job in April 2024 to help other transgender people flee to her home state. Her nonprofit, known as the Trans Continental Pipeline, helps its “transplants” pay for moving costs, secure their basic needs, and put down roots in the community.
Her story has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Being gay became culturally acceptable while I was in school, in the early 2000s. But pretty much nobody in my circles had heard of being trans until Caitlyn Jenner. Early in my transition, I didn’t have any trans friends, and I had always felt like the odd man out.
During the summer of 2023, I was at a Denver bar for a show by a local raging feminist band. I went up to this table of obviously queer people, and was like, “Can I hang out?” I went with them to Underground Pride in 2023. I felt like I was home. By being plugged into that community, I really understood the value of shared experiences and identities.
As the year went on, and state-level legislation was getting worse, everybody was talking about how they were seeing all these new people on Tinder saying, “Hey, I just got to the area. I don’t know anybody.” We started trying to get people connected to friends. “All right, you’re new here. What are you looking for? You want the DIY shows? Talk to Pigeon. You want to join a roller derby team? Talk to Sarah.”
But then the tone shifted. We were hearing horror stories about how difficult it was to move to Denver. People with one-way tickets landed at the airport wondering, “Now what? I have no money.” A girl packed her car in Amarillo, drove here, and slept in her car with no plan. She just needed to get out of Texas.
At the heart of it, we’re glorified movers, trying to help people get where they want to go, and out of traumatic situations.
I remember having conversations about this at a community event on Trans Day of Remembrance 2023, at Seventh Circle Music Collective, a DIY collective-run music venue and one of my favorite places on Earth. The music happens in the garage, and because the garage is so small, in between sets, everybody hangs out in the courtyard. We’re all standing there in the November cold, catching up because we don’t see each other all at once a lot of the time. I started talking to one friend, and then they pulled another friend in, and suddenly I’m pitching this idea to a little huddle of people: Maybe we could help people move, help people with housing.
Everybody started throwing in their ideas. That’s the joy of the DIY community. They’re like, “Oh, you want to see this? Okay, do it.” Trans Day of Remembrance is all about remembering everything that it took to get where we are and to be able to have this community. The phrase that goes around is, “Remember the fallen, fight like hell for the living.”
We needed to hurry. So I brought the idea of a trans relocation support network to bigger local queer nonprofits. It was not a priority for them, which was rather disheartening. So then it just got more DIY. I’m like, “All right, I guess I’m starting a nonprofit.”
I quit the state auditor back in April. This is what I’ve been doing since. At the heart of it, we’re glorified movers, trying to help people get where they want to go, and out of traumatic situations. We help them decide whether Colorado is right for them. We have a grant program giving $500 per case on average—sometimes more, sometimes less—for U-Hauls, gas, shipping, food. Two different networks of pilots can pick people up and bring them to Colorado in these little four-seaters, the Toyota Camry of the air.
Our queer housing network connects people with those who have rooms, and our temporary housing network offers free housing for up to a month. We’re trying to break that cycle where people in retail service jobs aren’t able to move, because how do you apply for Safeway in Denver from 2,000 miles away?
We provide the local connections people are going to need right when they arrive—hormone replacement therapy providers, employment resources, getting on Medicaid and SNAP. The last step is to connect people socially.
It’s hard to look at the 40-odd people who have gone through our process, versus everyone who still needs help, and feel like it’s an accomplishment. We got 22 relocation requests in October, and over 400 in November after Trump was reelected. With couples and families, we’re looking at 1,000 people waiting for relocation right now. The top three states they’re coming from are Oklahoma, Florida, and Texas. A lot of people come from housing voucher programs, or are on disability. Some reach out from shelters or from the street. The oldest was in their mid-70s, and we have families with middle schoolers.
In 2024, we threw the Trans Day of Remembrance event. We had an open mic. Everybody got up, said their piece, or shared music. It was gorgeous seeing my community together, sharing this resilience, when it’s easy to feel like everything’s against us. It just felt good to give back, to help build this thing that I had been looking for for so long.
