tldr for those who don’t want to/can’t read the full article:
the bullshit us govt. and supreme court has reversed the policy that allows trans and nonbinary ppl to have the correct gender marker on their passports despite a federal judge blocking the policy from taking effect earlier this year.
source links and full NYT article after the page break (bc fuck paywalls)
NYT Article, State Department Regs, Gallup Survey, Exec Order, UCLA, NYT First ‘X’ Marker, State Dept. Update, Gallup Survey #2, Pew Research Poll, France24 Trump speech, Fair Disputations Article, NYT Author Bio
New Passport Rule Sends Blunt and Sweeping Message to Trans Americans
November 17, 2025, 5:01am EST
The Trump administration has said that the U.S. passports of transgender people must now reflect the sex on their original birth certificate, reversing a decades-old policy.
The Trump administration has pushed for restrictions on transgender Americans in nearly every arena, including serving in the military and playing on sports teams, but perhaps no measure has struck as broad and direct a blow to their identity and participation in public life as a new policy on passports that the Supreme Court this month allowed to take effect.
Passports must now reflect the sex on a person’s original birth certificate, regardless of whether that matches the person’s gender identity. The policy reverses the State Department’s decades-old practice under both Democratic and Republican administrations of allowing transgender Americans to change the “F” and “M” markers on their passports. The department also removed a more recent option, “X,” for those who do not identify as either male or female.
Earlier this year, a federal judge blocked the policy from taking effect, siding with transgender and nonbinary plaintiffs who said it violated their constitutional right to equal protection. But the Supreme Court granted the Trump administration’s request to allow the policy while a legal challenge continues, saying that “the government is merely attesting to a historical fact” when it requires a passport to show a transgender person’s sex at birth.
To people on both sides of debates over transgender rights, the passport marker question is foundational. The marker gets at the nature of transgender identity itself, rather than addressing a specific activity, and confers a designation from which other rights and restrictions flow.
The passport is a singular document, “attesting to the identity and nationality of the bearer,” according to State Department regulations, so its approach to transgender people may define — more than access to bathrooms, athletic leagues or cross-sex hormone medication — what it will mean to be a gender-nonconforming citizen of the United States.
“This is one of the most tangible, material things that Trump has done to every transgender person who is living in a sex different than their birth sex,” said Paisley Currah, a political scientist at Brooklyn College who is transgender and wrote a book that traces the history of gender markers on government identification documents. “It makes the identity document not work for its intended purpose, which is to prove who you are.”
In a Gallup survey this year, a majority of Americans said they favored including the sex on a person’s original birth certificate on government documents. People who favor the administration’s new policy say that it is important for the sex marker on a passport to reflect what they see as an essential truth about its holder. They say that gender identity — how people see themselves in terms of being male, female or something else — is, by contrast, a quality that relies on self-attestation, which may be shaped by social trends and can shift over time.
“Passports should identify people based on verifiable facts, not subjective feelings,” said Roger Severino, vice president of domestic policy for the Heritage Foundation, a conservative group. “President Trump has restored common sense and objective biology to America’s pre-eminent IDs, which will increase security and prevent fraud.”
Proponents also see the policy as the first part of a larger effort to bar trans girls and women from bathrooms, public housing and prisons designated for females, which they say is important for safety, and from women’s sports, which they say is important for fairness. The executive order directing the State Department to carry out the policy, issued on the first day of the second Trump administration, asserts that women in the United States have been deprived of “their dignity, safety and well-being” by “ideologues who deny the biological reality of sex,” and vows to “defend women’s rights.”
Critics of the passport policy say the effects of the change are practical and far-reaching for nearly all trans and nonbinary Americans, a group that is estimated to be about three million people, or about 1 percent of the population age 13 and older. The new requirement could create confusion and allegations of misrepresentation, they said, for people whose appearance may not match the sex marker on their passport when using it to travel, open a bank account or apply for a job.
“This is, in my view, the most egregious thing the Trump administration has done,” said Brianna Wu, a political fund-raiser who has had an “F” on her passport for at least 15 years but who expects that she will be required to receive an “M” when it expires. “A trans woman in sports understands that they’re kind of playing on the edge of something. But this makes me out myself every time I use my passport. It universally affects us.”
For many trans Americans, the policy feels like a blunt, official declaration that the federal government views their gender identities as neither real nor meaningful, and it raises the prospect that such views will spread.
“What this says is that you, as a transgender person, do not matter to the state, and the state gets to tell you who you are,” said Imara Jones, a transgender journalist who runs a media company, TransLash. “This is not in accord with the way that citizens and citizenship has been treated in America.”
United States passports did not include a sex marker until the 1970s. Starting in the early 1990s, the State Department allowed transgender people to change the sex marker on their passport if they provided evidence of surgery. In 2010, the department began accepting a doctor’s letter stating that an applicant had received appropriate treatment for gender transition, which did not need to include surgery.
That requirement was eventually phased out in favor of self-attestation, and in 2021 the department issued the first passport with an “X” marker to a military veteran who identified as neither male or female. The next year, the Biden administration indicated that it would allow passport applicants to choose “M,” “F” or “X.” On passport application forms, the administration also replaced the term “sex” with “gender,” according to court documents. (The term “sex” has now been reinstated on applications for passports.)
Lawyers for the Trump administration argue that the new policy is not discriminatory because it treats transgender people the same as other Americans, requiring everyone’s passport to reflect the sex on an original birth certificate. The intent, the lawyers said in court documents, is maintaining consistent data on sex across government agencies.
Government-issued identity documents can serve as a parameter in policies that determine eligibility to participate in sports, use bathrooms and decide other issues. State governments have adopted a patchwork of policies for changing sex designations on driver’s licenses and birth certificates, so the passport has taken on particular significance.
“It’s really important that we be honest and factual about who the women are and who the men are,” said Kara Dansky, a spokeswoman for Women’s Declaration International USA, a group that advocates excluding trans women from the category of “women” in the context of women’s rights. “There are real, tangible reasons why it’s important to get this right when it comes to passports.”
Some opponents of the passport rule argue that gender identity — rather than sex on a person’s original birth certificate — is their sex. They say they want the sex on their passport to reflect the sex they live their lives as, and to enable them to use their passports the way other Americans do, without facing another layer of questions at airports and elsewhere about their personal lives. The policy, critics say, also fails to account for a small group of intersex people with biological variations that do not fall within the standard male and female classifications.
The passport change is part of what the Trump administration says it sees as a way to dismantle “gender ideology,” which it has characterized as policies and beliefs that conflict with empirical realities about sex. The strategy has won support from some across the political spectrum who felt strong-armed during the Biden era to call trans women “women” and trans men “men,” to include trans athletes in girls and women’s sports or to use the word “sex” to mean “gender identity.’’
In the Trump administration’s paradigm, gender “ideology” stands in contrast to an understanding of biology that divides nearly all animal and plant species into males with small, mobile reproductive cells and females with large, immobile ones.
But for many transgender people, the passport change feels more like an attack on them as people, not a debate about ideology around science or language. It suggests, they say, that their self-representation is intrinsically fraudulent.
One transgender woman, a former deputy director of a cultural organization in New York who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear for her safety, said she was stunned to suddenly feel, in her 50s, that her status as a United States citizen was somehow tenuous. She travels back and forth in business class to a second residence in Spain, and said she now worried intensely about her flights home.
She carries extra documents: a copy of her state driver’s license with her updated name and gender; her original birth certificate, which describes her as male; and a printout from the State Department website stating that the “F” gender marker on her passport remains valid until it’s due for renewal. Even so, she said she was scared that her passport might be confiscated on one of her returns to the United States. Last week, the State Department updated the page she had printed to say that a passport that lists an “X” marker or a sex other than the holder’s sex at birth would be valid “until its date of expiration, until you replace it, or until we invalidate it under federal regulations.”
“I’m like, I’m an American — why do I feel like this?” she said.
Polls show that many Americans want to protect trans people from discrimination, but that Americans also believe that society has gone too far in accommodating them.
In a survey conducted by Gallup this year, about two-thirds of people said they believed that transgender athletes should be limited to playing on sports teams that match their birth sex. A similar proportion said a person’s birth sex, rather than gender identity, should be listed on government documents. In a Pew Research pollin February, 56 percent said they supported banning health care professionals from providing gender transition treatments to minors.
President Trump, who came into office promising to “stop the transgender lunacy,” has aggressively pursued the issue in ways that reach far beyond passports. He has sought to withhold federal funds from schools that let trans athletes play on girls’ and women’s sports teams, bar transgender people from serving in the military, end funding for hospitals that provide treatments to minors, house transgender women in federal prisons with men, and eliminate mentions of transgender people from sex education curriculums in public schools.
Even some critics of other issues promoted by trans advocates have raised questions about the passport policy. Alex Byrne, a philosophy professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who has argued that trans women are not women and that medical transition for minors carries underappreciated risks, wrote in an online magazine, Fairer Disputations, that “it is understandable that someone seeking peace of mind by living as a member of the other sex would want a sex marker to match.”
“The problem with pushing the pendulum too far in one direction,” Dr. Byrne wrote, “is that it will tend to swing too far in the other.”
As a class action against the passport policy by transgender and nonbinary people plays out in the courts, many trans people say they are wrestling with the immediate effects on their lives.
Many people interviewed said they had no intention of changing or hiding their own gender identities. Some said they were weighing moving to other countries; Joshua Harrell, 26, a nonbinary automation engineer, moved to Finland out of concern for safety in the United States. Others said they were still sorting through all the implications and taking precautions when they travel.
When Jay T. Conrad, 36, a nonbinary Ph.D. student in Seattle, and Dana Savage, a trans lawyer who lives nearby, travel across borders now, they call each other just before going through security and then once more after clearing it. Sometimes, they leave the phone connection open for the whole process.
“We consider the freedom to travel to be such an inherent human right,” said Jay Conrad, who worries about new scrutiny over a Washington State driver’s license, which shows an “X,” not matching their passport. “To be able to move where you want to move. Can I travel freely? It feels like a question to me. And is it really freedom of movement if it feels like a gamble?”
Seamus Hughes contributed research.
-Amy Harmon covers how shifting conceptions of gender affect everyday life in the United States.
How many people’s most beloved childhood stuffed animals are actually teddy bears, like I feel like that’s a thing someone made up. Reblog this and put what your longest owned and/or favorite stuffed animal as a child was in the tags, inquiring minds want to know
i don’t usually do these but tagging @amanita-jack @myxchemicalximbalance @barkbarkboy @lactosegremlin @cummandercold @earlycuntsets if y’all want to do it
On April 4th, 2002, Tom Williams experienced something that has stuck with him to this day.
The location was the legendary Sahara in Syosset, a hotbed for underground hardcore and metalcore bands to thrive in the heart of Long Island. The occasion was the stacked line-up of Poison the Well, American Nightmare, Eighteen Visions, Codeseven, Every Time I Die, and Anterrabae, a true who's who of American turn-of-the-millennium heaviness. And for Tom, it was what Codeseven did at the end of their set that struck the deepest chord. At the time, their album
'The Rescue' was yet to be released, but as the final chords of their set rang out, vocalist Jeff Jenkins pulled out a handful of copies and started to throw them to the crowd in front of him.
Serving as a chance for those present at that moment to hold onto and experience something physical that the rest of the world didn't have access to, it's a gesture that, 23 years later, in the era of instant gratification and technological addiction, may feel a little alien to many. But it's for this very reason that Tom thought it was time to replicate such magic. And it's why over the Slam Dunk Festival weekend, Stray From The Path's new album
'Clockworked' was available to buy at merch, as well as copies being thrown out during the band's chaotically brilliant sets, a whole week before it was scheduled to be surprise-released. Spontaneous, exciting and punk as fuck.
"When I was a kid, I heard 'Change (In The House Of Flies)' on the radio or saw the video, and that was it," Tom hammers home. "I then remember buying
"White Pony' on the day it came out, and that was when I listened to the record, too. And I think of the people who caught those Codeseven albums and what a special experience it was and how I have never forgotten it. And I feel like when you roll albums out now, there just isn't that excitement because you already know that it's coming. That's why we wanted to do something different. It felt like there had to be a new and fun way to release records, and this felt like it."
The urgency that has accompanied this rampant rollout is reflected brilliantly in what the album represents, too. A caustic and unrelenting takedown of modern complacency and how we have all sleepwalked into feeling like this is how things should be, it finds Stray at their most unforgiving, volatile and seething. A shared consensus on what so many of us are feeling and a rallying call for once again not staying quiet in the face of injustice, the need for the band to be this unrelenting has never been more necessary.
THE SOUND
From the get-go, chaos has always been the Stray From The Path model. Creating soundscapes that resonate with whatever direction heavy music is heading at that moment in time whilst also managing to sound like absolutely nobody else simultaneously, 'Clockworked' is no different. Picking up where 2022's 'Euthanasia' left off in terms of the razor-sharp viciousness that encompasses it but pushing into even more discordant waters, the band have crafted an atmosphere that is as apocalyptic as it is audacious, as devastating as it is damning and as undeniably bleak as it is unapologetically crushing.
There's 'Can't Help Myself', which lures you into the darkness with a hip-hop-leaning underbelly before delivering the killer blow via a blunt force breakdown of the highest calibre as well as 'Shocker', which delivers the sort of machine gun battery that has helped solidify Stray's name over the years, with quintessential "Blegh" thrown in for good measure. And it's all heading towards the garish closing crescendo of 'A Life In Four Chapters' that feels like the ground caving in because it can't take the strain anymore.
Although the most unrelenting example comes from 'Fuck Them All To Hell, a song that Tom states was initially intended to be released on Election Day in the US. A mesh of blastbeats, pummelling riffs and bile-drenched intent, it is as dizzying and debauched as the record gets, which is fitting for the subject matter. A complete dressing down of the current American political system where no matter which box you put your cross in, the figure at the top is an abhorrent crook.
"The only reason we didn't end up going with it on Election Day was because of Kamala Harris's vice president pick," Tom admits. "I don't fuck with Kamala or the Democrats at all. However, with Tim Walz, he had some progressive bones in his body, and if that's a good thing, then we're kind of standing in the way of it, and so we kind of advised against it.
"But we also wrote the song when Biden was the Democratic nominee, and it was Biden versus Trump. It was just like, 'Man, fuck all of this.' That's why the chorus is, 'The only way I'm writing your name is on a motherfucking headstone'. It's not going on a ballot; it's going on your headstone."
It doesn't get much heavier than that, really. But when needs must, and you're an artist with the sort of streak that Stray has, crafting your truth has never been more critical. Every weave and turn feels more and more like the end of the world than the last, which, on a record that flirts with such possibility within its subject matter, too, is more than fitting. The possibility of the end should be discomforting, scary, and hard to stomach, so by producing the most stomach-churning heaviness they can muster, Stray is more doing its part in keeping that association alive.
THE COLLABORATORS
Change is only possible when we stick together, which is why community has always been so vital to everything that Stray produces. And in the same way, as they have invited Sam Carter, Keith Buckley, Bryan Garris, Jesse Barnett and Brendan Murphy, to name just a handful, into the fold in the past, 'Clockworked' also serves as a platform for celebrating some of heavy music's best, both from the past and present.
Firstly, there's the title track, an ode to not staying quiet because it's easier, featuring a guttural appearance from LANDMVRKS' Flo Salfati. The two bands toured the UK together in 2019, both serving as support for While She Sleeps, and the relationship forged over half a decade ago has clearly stood the test of time. And whereas a little bit of Stray made it into a LANDMVRKS banger recently, with vocalist Drew York appearing on their 2022 heater 'DEATH', the opportunity for Flo to express his own disdain for the state of things stands out in abundance here. A reminder that no matter what side of the Atlantic you are born and raised, the want and need to denounce oppression, antagonism and injustice will always unite us.
And secondly, there is 'Bodies In The Dark', which includes a spine-tingling verse from Jeff Moriera of the legendary Poison The Well. Considering how much that fateful show in 2022 stuck with Tom, having a personality that has served as near life-long inspiration appearing on such a vital album for them is clearly a dream come true. Yet for them to completely flip perceptions and croon their way through a hypnotically discomforting verse on the track rather than shred their vocal cords, slowing things down to a glacial pace, feels even more special.
To represent and hold up such different corners of the scene is as much of a gift as a band can have. But it also serves as a benchmark for how every band should treat their peers. For those who have come before, it is about paying respect and allowing them the chance to see the lasting impact their legacy has had. And for those who are shaping the future, it is a case of holding them aloft and sharing their vibrancy and vision with those who may not be familiar with their game. It's always been the Stray From The Path way, and by being open to who is out there waiting to be worked with, then the possibilities are truly endless. After all, it's exactly how they ended up recruiting a drummer!
"In America, we were always a band where people didn't really like us, but bands did." Tom laughs. "So, we always got opportunities because our friends would take us out where we would do okay, but then we would go over to Europe and England, and they loved us and gave us so much. They gave us Craig! We met Architects, they took us on tour, and Craig was their drum tech. And now, Craig is one of my best friends and a main songwriter in the band as well. All because of opportunity.”
THE TITLE
In the centre of the liner notes that accompany the vinyl version of
'Clockworked' is the sentiment 'THE ONLY WINNING MOVE IS NOT TO PLAY'. This relates directly to the cover art that accompanies 'Clockworked'. A simple yet effective diagram showing a game of noughts and crosses. All spaces have been filled in, except for one, the top right corner, with whoever's move it's in this hypothetical game being the supposed winner. But what if both eventualities are bad ones?
Such a delicate balance is proposed when the space is left unfilled. We are one move away from the possibility of total disaster on either side of the table, and we don't know who is sitting at it, about to make their choice. It's a truly frustrating position to be in, but is it one that's so different from how it has always been? That's where the idea of the society we are existing in being
'Clockworked', that this situation has been the case for as long as the hour and minute hands have made their way through the hours.
There's undoubtedly an air of hopelessness to it all, as if there is no way out of the mess that some of us have made, and others have been left to wonder if it will ever be cleaned up. For a band like Stray, all they can do is keep the spotlight firmly on these facts, letting all that be known.
Speaking of facts, we should turn our attention back to Slam Dunk Festival, where as well as being sold exclusively, the album was also advertised on both billboards around the site and in the special edition of Rock Sound that was handed out to patrons.
The ad read: NOT INTO POLITICS? OKAY. DO ME A FAVOR. GO HOME. TAKE ALL YOUR ALBUMS, ALL YOUR TAPES AND BURN THEM. CAUSE YOU WHAT? THE MUSICIANS THAT MADE ALL THAT GREAT MUSIC THAT'S ENHANCE YOUR LIVE THROUGHOUT THE YEARS? REAL FUCKING POLITICAL.
For Tom, it is another reason why the UK, and those attending Slam Dunk in particular, felt like the perfect place to share such an important moment with first. Because he knew that they would get it. That they would see these words and resonate with them. That in understanding that art has been, and always be, influenced by the matters of the world, they will also understand exactly where this body of work has come from. It's once again all about connection, and in sharing the record
with the UK first, Tom hopes that people understand just how much the support has meant to him.
"We always say, like, we're from New York and the UK," he beams. I love the UK. We never have a bad show here.
The UK, and Slam Dunk, have given us so much. It's such a big part of our history. And, like, we weren't going tell anyone ever about the album. No press, no nothing. But when we remembered how much this place has given us, that's when we thought, 'Let's go tell them first’.
THE LYRICS
Though they have always worn their emotions firmly on their sleeves, it feels like there has been an awful lot more for Stray to be furious about this time around. Not just looking at what is affecting them but also considering the impact on people around the world, 'Clockworked' is as much about the plights on their doorstep as it is about the global consensus among citizens that we are sleepwalking towards a way of living that we promised our elders we would never let happen again. Be it watching on as a genocide takes place or allowing our planet to be sent even closer to the brink because of supposed technological advances, the band are leaving nothing to chance when stating how they feel.
A prime example of this is 'Kubrick Stare', written in response to Tom watching someone get shot in the face during a road rage incident on social media and, in scrolling past it, realising how desensitised to such barbarity being on our phone screens we had become, and how that relates to our reaction to much bigger parts of history playing out in front of it.
"I don't want to say I didn't care, but, like, it just didn't really affect me," he laughs, knowing how strange a sentence that is to associate with such a horrible vision. "And it goes further to how people have been able to look the other way with Palestine. Like, I don't know how you can because it's so awful. But a part of me is still like, 'Well, people see awful shit every day,' and people have a hard time sympathising for people that aren't themselves because they are probably struggling with their own family."
That sort of skewed moral compass also comes into play on 'Can I Have Your Autograph?', a very real callout to those in the music industry who turn a blind eye to disgraceful behaviour just because those engaging in it have sold millions of records.
And then there is 'Shot Caller', a song that details that if you push the people too far, they will eventually fight back.
"You know, we made 'Shot Caller' before that United Healthcare CEO got clipped, even though it's essentially about that," Tom adds. "How the people getting denied healthcare after paying for it for 20 years aren't going to take the shit no more and are going to start fighting back. So we made that song, and then it happened. We were just like, 'Motherfucker'."
Every song is a no-holds-barred assault, leaving no stone unturned and nothing to the imagination in terms of where Stray stands right now. And it may be a testament to how closely tied to the will of the people they are that some sentiments are coming true. Of course, that has always been the case, but the limits that they are pushing feel even further, and the anger coursing through their veins feels even stronger.
"It's really just about the stuff that is affecting us and the stuff that we see is happening," Tom admits candidly.
"It's getting hard to live, and it's hard to survive, and that's what we want to speak up on. It's typical of Stray, but that's just the way we are. We have had the privilege of touring the world and meeting people from diverse cultures. From Japan and Africa to England, Europe, America, and Canada. And everywhere we go, there's a lot that's fucking with everyone, so that means it's fucking with us. And the thing is, we will never hide that."
Throughout all of this, that aspect is perhaps the most important one. It is easy to be complacent, to feel like there is nothing that we can do because it is all much bigger than us. However, as a community, hardcore was built on the notion that all it takes to change someone's mind and life is for one other person to stand up for them. If that one individual speaks out, then thousands may end up hearing them.
It's a notion that has followed Stray From The Path throughout their careers, from VFW halls and the back of bars to arena stages and beyond and has only grown more potent as they have become more prominent. No matter the stage, they will never be quiet, complicit, or hide their thoughts. So, to be using 'Clockworked' as their most unapologetic statement on the way they see this dumpster fire that's only getting bigger is the least they can do because without speaking up, it will just keep on growing until oblivion is the only option. But also, what if it's too late? As the last line of the record states, closing out
'A Life In Four Chapters', "Give peace a chance? It never stood a chance?". If that's the case, then at least there is pride to be had in trying.
THE FUTURE
The reality is that who honestly knows what tomorrow holds. The uncertainty of things is terrifying, to say the least, but Stray From The Path knows that they have done all they can to let their feelings on everything be known. And no matter where they roam, there will be an audience that stands with them. Of course, coming from a country that is so divided, those numbers vary depending on the city in which they reside.
"Back home, we will play Denver and absolutely crush it, but then we will go through Dallas, and there will be like 100 people there," Tom shrugs. "Like, that's alright because there is probably a clear reason why. But then it's why it's funny that when we go to Australia and Canada and the UK and Europe, and we crush it. It's just the way it is. We love to stick out, and that has always been a good thing as well as a bad thing."
And it is in sticking out, in not diluting their views and in always being completely themselves that one thing will always be true. For anyone feeling like they aren't being heard and that nobody cares about how close to the end we are, Stray From The Path is a band that hears them. Stray From The Path is a band that sees them. Stray From The Path is a band who are as infuriated as them. If all of this were to end tomorrow, that fact would never change. In fact, it has been the case throughout the last 20 years of Stray's career and will remain the case regardless of what the next 20 years look like. As long as we know we aren't doing this alone, then there is still hope. And hope, even in drabs, is a remarkably powerful thing.
one of my fave bands, like they’re neck and neck with mcr okay (if not equal to), are “retiring” and i’m fucking…..i’m so fucking not alright???
like Stray From The Path had a good run, 24 years, but goddamn. pls i’m not fucking ready for them to stop???
i started listening to them in 2008 with their villains album and make your own history became so fucking important and integral to me all throughout HS. that album really actually kept me sane enough to survive some really rough shit during that time.
“If you're lucky enough to get a crowd and a stage like we do, to put that to waste is kind of a shame. We have to use what we're so fortunate to get, and use it for good. Whether you agree or disagree, we're writing music that makes you feel something, and to me that's a victory in itself.” -Thomas Williams (lead/rhythm guitarist/vocalist)
i really hope they come to the north east for a final show bc i’d drop fucking everything to see them play. they’re from long island so i’m thinking they most likely will. 😭
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