US President Donald Trump signed an govt order on Wednesday searching for to ban transgender athletes from collaborating in girls’s sports activities, in his newest transfer concentrating on transgender folks since returning to workplace.
“Any more girls’s sports activities shall be just for girls,” Trump mentioned earlier than he signed the order on the White Home, surrounded by dozens of kids and feminine athletes.
“With this govt order the conflict on girls’s sports activities is over.”
High Republicans together with US Home Speaker Mike Johnson and firebrand Congresswoman Marjorie Inexperienced had been amongst these within the viewers to look at the signing ceremony.
“We are going to defend the proud custom of feminine athletes, and we is not going to enable males to beat up, injure and cheat our girls and our women,” Trump added to applause and cheers.
Trump’s order permits US authorities businesses to disclaim funds to varsities that enable transgender athletes to compete on girls’s groups.
“When you let males take over girls’s sports activities groups or invade your locker rooms, you’ll be investigated… and danger your federal funding,” Trump mentioned.
Trump mentioned he would now push the Worldwide Olympic Committee (IOC) to alter its guidelines on transgender athletes earlier than the 2028 Los Angeles video games.
He mentioned he had ordered Secretary of State Marco Rubio to “make it clear” to the IOC that “we would like them to alter all the things having to do with the Olympics and having to do with this positively ridiculous topic.”
Trump added that he had directed Homeland Safety chief Kristi Noem to disclaim visa functions to “made by males making an attempt to fraudulently enter america whereas figuring out themselves as girls athletes to try to get into the Video games.”
– Tradition conflict –
Republican Trump has repeatedly focused gender non-conforming folks in a blitz of orders pushing his radical right-wing agenda at the beginning of his second time period.
At his inauguration speech Trump introduced that US authorities coverage would solely acknowledge two genders, female and male — ending the follow of offering a 3rd gender possibility in some settings.
Days later Trump signed an order to rid the army of what he known as “transgender ideology” and successfully ban transgender troops. He additionally issued an order to limit gender transition procedures for folks below age 19.
The slew of actions comes although transgender folks make up solely a small minority of the US inhabitants.
Through the 2024 election marketing campaign he repeatedly hammered Democrats on the divisive situation of transgender rights throughout the 2024 election marketing campaign, capitalizing on a broader tradition conflict over the subject.
One among Trump’s most profitable assault strains towards his election rival Kamala Harris — “Kamala Harris is for they/them. President Trump his for you” — focused her assist for trans rights.
Trump additionally focused her one-time assist for gender reassignment operations for prisoners.
His govt order on Wednesday comes after the Republican-led Home of Representatives in January handed a invoice severely limiting transgender athletes from collaborating in women’ and ladies’s sports activities.
As transgender folks have grow to be a extra seen presence in america, sparking questions round gender norms and equity, many conservatives have rallied round girls’s sports activities.