Today is Transgender Day of Visibility, which celebrates the lives of trans people around the world.

Unfortunately, this year we’ve become a little too visible, with the attention of President Donald Trump focused on us like the Eye of Sauron. Since Jan. 20, he has issued four executive orders directly attacking the ability of transgender people to live our lives and even to die for our country.

One might reasonably ask what Maryland is doing to protect its trans residents. Alas, the answer is “vanishingly little.”

In the face of this unprecedented assault, the Maryland General Assembly is on track — for the first time in years — to not pass a single bill focused on trans Marylanders. Even the Birth Certificate Modernization Act (BCMA) — a modest bill with practically no cost that is supported by Governor Moore, the Maryland Department of Health, and the Maryland Legislative Agenda for Women — appears dead in the water.

The BCMA is hardly radical. The bill merely makes it easier for trans people who are parents to update their names on their children’s birth certificates and removes the requirement for a medical sign-off before trans people can change the gender listed on their birth certificate, something already possible in fourteen other states. So why can’t it move forward?

The answer is simple: Senate President Bill Ferguson, who instructed the Senate Finance Committee to remove the BCMA from its voting list.

When we spoke with President Ferguson’s chief of staff, she confirmed his office had cancelled the vote, allegedly due to insufficient floor time given the state’s budget crisis. And yet, that day’s Senate floor session was adjourned a mere 21 minutes after convening.

With President Ferguson refusing a vote in the Senate, House leadership has also declined to allow the BCMA to move forward until the logjam is cleared, something increasingly unlikely with only a week left until Sine Die.

And so we find ourselves on Trans Day of Visibility with President Trump engaged in an all-out attack on the ability of trans people to live our lives, and Senate President Bill Ferguson denying a vote on a bill that could mitigate some of that harm for trans Marylanders.

Being visible is exhausting.

Charlotte Persephone Hoffman is policy director at Trans Maryland.