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Laverne Cox blames Trump’s DEI stance for personal loss of ‘so much money’

June 15, 2026 | | Print Article

Four-time Emmy-nominated star Laverne Cox lamented President Donald Trump’s anti-DEI policies that have allegedly led to a significant loss of income and job opportunities.

“I’ve lost so much money because of this administration, the past year,” Cox told Attitude Uncut in discussing the administration’s rollback of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs.

“I managed to stay busy with acting and branding work, as well as speaking engagements,” the 54-year-old LGBTQ activist added. “But I never thought college speaking gigs would dry up.”

“This administration is very punitive with anything that suggests DEI or gender ideology, and corporations have been very scared,” Cox, whose new book, “Transcendent,” told the publication.

“The past year or two, I’ve had to dip into savings and my retirement fund. So, the blessing is that I finally have the privilege to have a retirement fund to dip into, but you don’t really want to do that,” added the transgender star who played Sophia Burset on the Netflix series “Orange Is the New Black.”

“If it’s affecting me, then it’s definitely affecting other people,” Cox contended.

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Cox reflected on the current political atmosphere, saying, “I’ve been scared. The past three years, I’ve been terrified.”

“And as I lost opportunities, I felt like I should say less because I didn’t want to lose more. And I didn’t want to damage the community either,” the star continued.

“Even leading up to the 2024 election, I was like, ‘Should I not be so vocal?’ But what I’ve come to realise for me, just in terms of my own mental and spiritual health, is that when I have the audacity to speak the truth the way I have now, I feel like myself. I feel empowered,” Cox told the outlet.

Discussion around the TIME magazine cover from 2014 found Cox questioning whether the headline, “The Transgender Tipping Point,” was accurate.

“I love that how we as a community have been very critical of that [TIME magazine] framing. Was that indeed the tipping point? It was definitely an unprecedented moment of visibility for trans people, particularly in the United States, I would say,” Cox said.

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“When I booked Orange, I was 40 years old. I didn’t have any savings. I didn’t have any retirement. I was in student loan debt. I was working really hard to get out of a financial hole. But then I was also working hard to try to lift up my community,” Cox added. “When Orange came out in 2013, I didn’t know how long that moment would last. I didn’t know how successful it would or wouldn’t be. Then, you know, there was [the] TIME magazine [cover]. I was doing speeches all over the country. I was doing whatever I could to humanise us by telling my story, trying to elevate the stories of other trans people as much as possible. We did a roundtable for Variety with a lot of other trans people.”

Social media users had little sympathy for Cox’s alleged struggles in the Trump era.

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Frieda Powers
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