After President-elect Donald Trump’s win in Florida shredded the state’s reputation for being a swing state, queer people who live there are bracing for a federal government that could adopt policies similar to ones they have locally — and they’re warning everyone to get prepared.

Once considered a swing state, Florida voted for Obama in both terms and flipped red in 2016 following Trump’s first presidential run. On election night, though, Florida shed its reputation of being a swing state and overwhelmingly voted Republican down the ballot, with a margin of more than 1 million votes for Trump.

“It's important for people to realize that elections have impacts well beyond the intended consequences,” said Ashley Brundage, a former candidate for Florida’s 65th District, which includes parts of Tampa.

Brundage lost to her Republican opponent, Karen Gonzalez Pittman, who won more than 57% of the vote.

“People have basic life care access taken away from them,” Brundage said to QNN after her loss. “This is all part of what you'll see nationally, attacks on transgender people, we’re an easy target … a non-existent enemy that people can rally around.”

Pittman used transphobic language and campaign tactics against Brundage, a transgender woman who (if she won) would have become Florida’s first trans legislator.

“We’ve been experiencing the breeding ground for Project 2025 here in Florida,” Brundage said.

A policy initiative of the conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation, Project 2025 includes far-right Christian nationalist goals, including banning transgender military personnel, and removing all reference to genders outside “sex assigned at birth,” and saying transgender people’s existence is akin to pornography.

Although it hasn’t directly been tied to or endorsed by Trump, the mandate is billed as a “presidential transition project,” with its playbook proposing a guide for the President on how to push a more conservative agenda on a national scale.

Local LGBTQ activists in the state argue that the ideas put forth in Project 2025 have already made it into their community, particularly in schools.

“The reality is that here in the state of Florida, even under a Biden presidency, we saw an absolute onslaught of anti-LGBTQ legislation,” said Maxx Fenning, the founder of PRISM, a nonprofit that advocates for LGBTQ+ rights in South Florida schools and communities. “With restrictions and infringements on people's rights to make decisions on their own bodies, trans rights, demolition of our public education system, the only difference now is that for people who can't survive here in this state, and don’t have the means to leave, there really won't be anywhere to go.”

In January, Gov. Ron DeSantis endorsed 23 school board candidates. Though most of DeSantis’s picks didn’t advance to the primaries, their influence shouldn’t be overlooked.

Many were endorsed by Moms For Liberty, a far-right group of parents who advocate against topics that might refer to or include LGBTQ+ people.

Among those endorsed who won is incoming Republican Tony Ricardo, who represents Jacksonville — one of Florida’s largest school districts. He built a campaign platform based on banning gender-affirming bathrooms and banning LGTBQ reading material and curriculum.

“I look forward to working alongside our governor as well as our community leaders to keep our schools safe and free from the radical left's woke rhetoric,” he wrote in a Facebook post this past summer. His campaign funding has come from influential alt-right Political Action Committees, including the 1776 Project, a conservative PAC that opposes “gender ideology” in schools.

For LGBTQ activists, the trend of politics in public school districts could have severe backlash on students who may need peer support, and they are expecting to see more of it under Trump, but at a federal level.

“We’re going to have a lot of work cut out for us and we’re going to need a lot of help to push back against the hate for anti-LGBTQ rhetoric,” Fenning said to QNN. “There’s so much that we need people to do — especially now.”

This story is published in partnership with the Queer News Network, a collaboration among 11 LGBTQ+ newsrooms to cover down ballot elections across 10 states. Read more about us at queernn.com