“The radical left has waged an all out campaign to erase the very concept of biological sex and replace it with a militant transgender ideology,” he said in remarks at the ceremony.
The executive order itself does not have the power to immediately ban trans women and girls from sports. Per the text of the EO uploaded to the White House website, Trump’s declaration threatens to “rescind all funds from educational programs that deprive women and girls of fair athletic opportunities, which results in the endangerment, humiliation, and silencing of women and girls and deprives them of privacy.” It further states that the administration will deem the participation of trans women in women’s sports to violate Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, a federal law barring sex-based discrimination in federally funded educational opportunities
“It shall also be the policy of the United States to oppose male competitive participation in women’s sports more broadly, as a matter of safety, fairness, dignity, and truth,” the order states.
Trump’s position on Title IX is opposite of the Biden and Obama administrations, which previously held that the law’s prohibition of discrimination on the basis of sex also pertained to gender identity. In a day-one executive order defining sex as binary and assigned at birth, the president rescinded guidance from his predecessors stating that Title IX should be enforced to prevent discrimination against trans athletes. That EO claimed the trans-inclusive interpretation of Title IX under Biden and Obama was “legally untenable” and “harmed women.”
Although the order is intended to empower the Department of Justice to investigate federally funded K-12 educational institutions that violate the ban, it aims to go even further. The directive calls upon the Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy, within the next 90 days, to bring together state Attorneys General and representatives with major athletics bodies to promote “policies that are fair and safe, in the best interests of female athletes, and consistent with the requirements of Title IX.” It also advises the Secretary of State to press the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to ban trans women from competition.
As Trump signed the order, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed that the White House “does expect the Olympic Committee and the NCAA to no longer allow men to compete in women’s sports.” While college sports are bound by Title IX, it remains to be seen whether the administration has the influence to make the IOC comply. The Olympic Games are not a federally funded institution and, thus, not under the purview of anti-discrimination law in education.
Trump hinted on Wednesday that further guidance on the subject is likely to come, stating that he intended to prevent all trans athletes, not just U.S. competitors, from participating in the 2028 Olympic Games by refusing them visas to enter the country.
“When the Olympics comes to Los Angeles… my administration will not stand by and watch men beat and batter female athletes,” he said. “We’re just not going to let it happen. And for the same reason, I’m also directing our Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, to deny any and all visa applications made by men attempting to fraudulently enter the United States while identifying themselves as women athletes.”
Trump has directed Noem’s office to evaluate immigration policies to address males falsely claiming to be females when competing in women’s sports.
LGBTQ+ advocates sharply criticized Trump’s newest anti-trans order, which was issued following a flurry of directives targeting trans people in the military, trans youth access to medical care, and trans inclusion in schools, among other things. Sarah Kate Ellis, the president and CEO of GLAAD, proclaimed that the EO “smears an entire group of Americans but does not change the law or the facts.”
“All women and girls, including transgender women and girls, should be welcome to play sports if they want, make decisions about their own bodies, be hired for jobs they are qualified for, and be free from lawless attacks by elected officials,” Ellis said in a statement. “Anti-LGBTQ politicians with a record of abusing and silencing women and stripping their health care have zero credibility in any conversation about protecting women and girls.”
A previous order from Trump barring schools from affirming a trans student’s “social transition” had already threatened to revoke funding from schools that allow trans students to compete in alignment with their gender. The January 29 memo, entitled “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling,” specifically calls out participation “school athletic competitions or other extracurricular activities specifically designated for persons of the opposite sex” under its definition of social transitioning.
According to the LGBTQ+ advocacy organization Lambda Legal, doubling down on attacking trans athletes illustrates that there is “no bottom to which this administration will not go to hurt and exclude transgender people, especially transgender children and youth.”
“Make no mistake, multiple states have attempted to enact similar bans,” said Lambda Legal senior attorney Carl Charles in a statement, highlighting the fact that 27 states already restrict the participation of trans athletes in sports. “We’ve confronted them in court repeatedly and have won repeatedly. There is no reason to think a national ban will avoid being similarly squashed. We are appalled, and in fact disgusted, at this administration’s insatiable appetite for fearmongering about and relentless targeting of this most vulnerable population. And we are neither cowed nor deterred.”
Prior to signing his most recent order, Trump launched a weird 30-minute rant on trans athletes, full of misinformation and false claims. The president falsely claimed that trans athletes have won “more than 3,500 victories” in women’s sports and “invaded more than 11,000 competitions,” but he did not provide specific evidence to back up his claims. He went on to assert that “men are beating up, injuring, and cheating our women and our girls,” referencing the story of Olympic gold medalist Imane Khelif, a cisgender boxer whom critics erroneously thought was trans. Khelif was reared in Algeria as a woman and holds a female passport.
