Trump 2.0 Meets a Queerer TV: Are Our Stories Being Written Out?

At the very moment LGBTQ+ rights are under renewed attack in the United States, queer and trans characters on American TV are slipping backwards after a decade of historic gains. For a Brussels‑based queer audience that has grown up binge‑watching US series, this matters: what happens in Hollywood still shapes how we see ourselves, our families and our futures.

The Numbers: A Quiet Decline After a Historic Peak

According to GLAAD’s annual “Where We Are on TV” report, the number of LGBTQ+ characters in US scripted series peaked around 2021–2022, with 637 queer characters across broadcast, cable and streaming – the highest tally ever recorded. Since then, the curve has bent downwards.

For the 2023–2024 season, GLAAD counted 468 LGBTQ+ characters, a drop of roughly 21% compared to the 596 characters in the previous report. On US broadcast networks alone, only 8.6% of regular primetime characters were LGBTQ+, down by around two percentage points – and 31 characters – from the year before. Cable television lost 62 LGBTQ+ characters in one year, while streaming platforms shed 29.

Trans representation remains particularly fragile. In the 2023–2024 snapshot, GLAAD identified just 24 trans characters out of 468 LGBTQ+ characters (about 5.1%), eight fewer than in the previous study. For a generation of viewers discovering themselves through trans characters in shows like “Pose” or “Euphoria”, this is not just a statistic – it is a narrowing of the imaginative space where they can exist.

2024–2025: A Rebound With a Dangerous Cliff Edge

The latest GLAAD report for the 2024–2025 season brings a brief sigh of relief: the number of LGBTQ+ regular and recurring characters climbs to 489, an increase of 21 characters (+4.5%) compared to the previous study. On paper, it looks like a soft rebound after the 2023–2024 dip.

Yet buried in the same report is the real bombshell: 201 of those 489 characters – 41% – are not expected to return in the 2025–2026 season. Series cancellations, planned final seasons and characters written out of the story create a looming cliff edge. Trans characters are hit even harder: of the 33 trans characters counted, 20 (61%) are not set to come back.

This volatility shows how conditional queer visibility still is. One merger, one strategy change, one cost‑cutting wave and entire clusters of queer stories vanish from the screen. For LGBTQ+ audiences in Europe, who often rely on US series to see certain identities and family models represented for the first time, the impact is immediate – fewer queer couples to root for, fewer trans storylines that go beyond tragedy.

Trump’s New America and the Pressure on Hollywood

There is currently no academic study that proves a simple causal sentence like: “Trump’s second presidency reduced LGBTQ+ characters by X%.” But the political climate created by Donald Trump’s return to the White House is already colliding with Hollywood’s diversity efforts in ways that are hard to ignore.

US trade press reports that Trump’s administration has launched aggressive attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programmes in the entertainment industry, including a federal inquiry into Comcast’s diversity schemes and mounting pressure on media conglomerates to retreat from explicit diversity targets. Disney, once vocal about inclusive casting, has been publicly rolling back some of its DEI language and ambitions under political and shareholder scrutiny. In parallel, Trump allies in Congress and conservative state governments have positioned “woke Hollywood” as a culture‑war enemy – with LGBTQ+ content as a favourite punching bag.

At the same time, analysts expect a more merger‑friendly, deregulation‑heavy environment under Trump, favouring big media consolidations. Fewer studios and bigger conglomerates often mean more risk‑averse programming, more franchise‑driven content and less space for niche queer stories that don’t guarantee blockbuster ratings. That trend had already started under previous administrations (think of Warner Bros Discovery’s cancellation or shelving of several queer‑friendly shows), but a government openly hostile to DEI sends a clear message: stripping back queer and trans visibility is not just acceptable – it is politically rewarded.​

All of this creates what activists and media watchers describe as a chilling effect rather than direct censorship. No one at the White House has to call a showrunner to say “kill the gay character”; it is enough to threaten funding, regulation or public backlash around anything labelled “LGBTQ+ propaganda” or “gender ideology”. The result is the same for viewers in Brussels or Brussels‑adjacent queer spaces: fewer complex queer protagonists, more sidelined sidekicks, and a constant sense that our stories can be switched off at any moment.

Why This Matters for Queer Audiences in Brussels

For a site like Ket.brussels, which speaks to a multilingual, international LGBTQ+ community, these US trends are not distant gossip. Many of the series that shape queer imaginaries in Belgium – from major Netflix hits to cult HBO dramas – are directly affected by these cancellations, mergers and political headwinds. When the number of LGBTQ+ characters shrinks, when trans roles disappear from the slate, the effect ripples across borders.

Representation is not a luxury add‑on; it is a mental health issue, a question of belonging and a source of cultural power. For queer and trans youth in Brussels watching American shows with French, Dutch or English subtitles, seeing a non‑binary character navigate work, love and chosen family can be the first time they realise they are not alone. When those characters vanish, it sends the opposite message: you are optional, disposable, easy to cut for budget or politics.

That is why following the GLAAD numbers matters – not only to celebrate milestones but to ring the alarm when the curve turns down. And it is why the political context in Washington, from attacks on DEI to culture‑war campaigns against “woke” TV, is not an abstract US story but a concrete factor shaping what lands in our Brussels streaming queues.

Want to Go Deeper?

Here are useful links if you want to explore the data and the politics behind it, or cite them in your own work:

• GLAAD – “Where We Are on TV” 2023–2024 (full report and methodology)
  https://www.glaad.org/whereweareontv​
• GLAAD – “Where We Are on TV” 2024–2025, with the 41% non‑returning character figure
  https://www.glaad.org/whereweareontv24
• Deadline – “Nearly Half Of LGBTQ TV Characters Are Canceled, GLAAD Finds: ‘A Dangerous Precedent’”
  https://deadline.com/2025/11/nearly-half-lgbtq-tv-characters-canceled-glaad-1236608720/​
• KQED – “LGBTQ+ Representation on TV Has Grown Thanks to These Shows” (context and examples)
  https://www.kqed.org/arts/13983504/lgbtq-representation-on-primetime-tv-glaad-study-results​
• Coverage of Trump’s assault on DEI in Hollywood (Comcast, Disney and others)
  https://www.imdb.com/news/ni65125955/​

For Ket.brussels, this is not just a story about US series but about how our community here in Brussels sees itself reflected – or erased – on screen.

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