President Donald Trump signed an executive order Wednesday that will block transgender athletes from competing in women’s sports.
With this latest executive order, Trump aims to address his campaign promise to “keep men out of women’s sports” and build on the policy he outlined on his first day in office, calling on the federal government to only recognize two sexes: male and female.
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“Under the Trump administration, we will defend the proud tradition of female athletes, and we will not allow men to beat up, injure and cheat our women and our girls,” the president stated at the signing ceremony Wednesday evening. “From now on, women’s sports will be only for women.”
The president’s remarks were delivered in the White House’s East Room, with hundreds of girls and young women standing behind them, including former ESPN anchor Sage Steele and former University of Kentucky swimmer Riley Gaines.
“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 continued. “We hope they continue onward because I don’t think we could lose a race. This was one of the big reasons that we all won and one of the big reasons that we had a record, a landslide like they haven’t seen before.”
A senior White House official told reporters on a call preceding Trump’s event that the order will “uphold the promise of Title IX and end the dangerous and unfair participation of men in women’s sports.”
That person called former President Joe Biden’s move to allow transgender athletes to compete against the gender of their choice “a slap in the face to the countless female athletes who dedicate tremendous effort to be the best in their sport.”
White House officials argued that the Biden administration misinterpreted the Title IX rule, which provides equal opportunities for male and female college athletes, “to elevate gender identity as equivalent to sex.”
Trump’s Wednesday order, on the other hand, takes “the exact opposite position” and will require women’s sports to be “equally safe, equally fair, and equally private.” The White House suggested that institutions found to be violating its Title IX interpretation could be in danger of losing out on federal funding.
The order also calls for investigations into high schools and universities the administration claims are “not providing privacy and dignity for women” by allowing transgender athletes to compete in women’s sports.
Trump’s order will seek to loop in private sector sporting bodies to “come to the White House and listen to the stories of female athletes and their parents.”
“These are stories that maybe people don’t want to cover, maybe people don’t think are important, but these are our nation’s daughters,” one White House official said. “This is happening every day.”
The White House claimed that pursuant to Trump’s order, the administration will “use all of our authority and our ability” to block international transgender athletes from competing in women’s sports on U.S. soil, including not approving visa applications for biological males self-identifying as female.
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White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed later in the day that Trump “does expect the Olympic Committee and the NCAA to no longer allow men to compete in women’s sports,” including at the 2028 Summer Olympic games in Los Angeles.
You can watch Trump’s remarks in full below.
