Laverne Cox is sounding the alarm on the financial fallout she says comes with today’s culture wars.
In a new interview with The Guardian promoting her memoir Transcendent, the Emmy-nominated actress revealed that “90 percent” of her earnings have evaporated in the wake of what she calls the Trump-era assault on “gender ideology” and diversity initiatives.
Cox said her lucrative speaking circuit and university teaching gigs dried up after the Trump administration threatened to pull federal dollars from schools that promote diversity, equity, and inclusion.
“Even though I’d be teaching a graduate acting class, it could be perceived as promoting trans ideology,” she noted, adding that the financial hit reflects “material consequences for this kind of scapegoating.” Still, she stressed she feels “very blessed” compared with less-visible trans people.
The disclosure arrives during a busy media blitz. Just last week on The View, conservative co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin grilled Cox about a past relationship with a “blonde-haired, blue-eyed, MAGA Republican” NYPD officer—a romance first teased on Instagram last summer while she hyped her July 28 one-woman show Gurrl, How Did I Get Here at New York’s City Winery.
“We didn’t plan to fall in love, but we did,” Cox told the panel, before conceding that “people show you who they are” and that staying with him eventually “betrayed” her values.
Reflecting on the current political climate, Cox told The Guardian the same playbook that squeezed her income is spelled out in Project 2025 policy drafts: “All these words had to be taken out of every piece of legislation—gender, LGBTQ, DEI, even contraception.”
Cox’s professional portfolio has been in flux since she stepped away from hosting E!’s Live From the Red Carpet in early 2025.
