President Donald Trump plans to sign executive orders on Monday proclaiming that the US government will recognize only two sexes, male and female, and ending “radical and wasteful” diversity, equity and inclusion programs within federal agencies. according to senior White House officials.
Officials grouped both orders under the Trump administration’s broader “restoration of sanity” agenda. The orders were detailed by an incoming official in a phone call Monday before Trump’s inauguration.
The official presented the gender order as part of a policy “that defends women from the extremism of gender ideology and restores biological truth to the federal government.”
The order seeks to require the federal government to use the term “sex” instead of “gender” and directs the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security to “ensure that official government documents, including passports and visas, reflect sex precisely”.
In 2022, the Biden administration allowed US citizens to be able to select the gender-neutral “X” as a marker on their passports.
The order will also prevent taxpayer funds from being used for gender transition health care and add “privacy in intimate spaces” in facilities such as prisons, migrant shelters and rape shelters.
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Trump campaigned on rolling back protections for transgender and non-binary people and emphasized the issue in television ads, including a commercial that aired frequently in key states like Pennsylvania. “Kamala is for them. President Trump is for you,” the most notable ad read.
The second order detailed by the White House official aims to end “radical and wasteful government DEI programs and preferences” within the federal government.
The official said the new administration will hold monthly meetings with deputy secretaries of key agencies to “evaluate what types of DEI programs continue to discriminate against Americans and find ways to end them.”
The official said the new administration intended to “dismantle the DEI bureaucracy,” highlighting environmental justice programs and equity-related grants.
The official said it was “very appropriate” that the order was announced on Martin Luther King Jr. Day because “this order is intended to return to the promise and hope, captured by civil rights advocates, that one day all “Americans can be treated based on their character, not the color of their skin.”
In recent years, Trump and conservatives have attacked DEI initiatives across American society, calling them discriminatory.
Trump referenced the orders in his inaugural address Monday afternoon, saying in part that his administration would resist what he described as efforts to “socially mainstream race and gender into every aspect of public and private life.” . He added that his administration would “forge a color-blind, merit-based society.”
DEI advocates in American society have argued that such initiatives are essential to making businesses, schools, government agencies, and other institutions more racially and socially inclusive.
In the weeks leading up to Trump’s return to power, major corporations such as Meta, McDonald’s and Walmart have announced that they will end some or all of their diversity practices.
Jennifer C. Pizer, legal director of Lambda Legal, a civil rights organization that litigates on behalf of LGBTQ Americans, said she expects her organization and others to file lawsuits against the administration over the executive actions.
“The president cannot, with a wave of his pen, change the reality of who people are and the fact that we exist as a community of people,” Pizer said. “We have the same protection rights as anyone else.”
Another lawyer and legal expert for the LGBTQ community said that although Trump’s executive order on gender identity will surely be challenged in court, the administration can implement the order and, in some cases, make immediate changes.
The expert, who asked that his name not be published so he could speak candidly about the executive order, noted that prisons, migrant shelters and rape shelters could immediately begin moving transgender people to spaces that align with their birth sex as opposed to their gender identity. . This means, for example, that trans women serving sentences in women’s prisons could soon be transferred to men’s prisons.
The lawyer also said that transgender Americans, especially those who have on the border. agents.
If a Customs and Border agent cannot enter a person’s X gender marker into their system to allow them to return to the US, that could mean the person would remain in Customs and Border Protection custody “until they can work.” with the State Department. to obtain an alternative identification,” the lawyer said.
Still, some changes — like how agencies handle health care for transgender Americans or how the Department of Housing and Urban Development protects trans tenants from being evicted by landlords — could take longer to implement. because agencies will have to go through a process that takes months or even years to change the rules that govern agencies.
In some cases, the legal expert said, “agencies will take time to issue notices of proposed rulemaking, review comments, which is part of what they are legally required to do, and respond to any deficiencies, and then publish a final rule.” .
Once expected legal challenges to the executive order are filed, courts could attempt to block implementation of the order by issuing injunctions. But courts could also decide to allow the order to be implemented as challenges make their way through the courts, including the Supreme Court, which could side with the Trump administration.
