The U.S. government will only recognize male and female sexes, according to executive orders signed by President Donald Trump on Monday. These orders also terminate “radical and wasteful” diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives within federal agencies.
Senior White House officials described both directives in a phone conversation Monday morning prior to Trump’s inauguration, classifying them as part of the administration’s larger restoring sanity program.
The gender order was presented by the officials as part of a policy to restore biological reality to the federal government and protect women from extreme gender ideology.
According to one of the people, the directive instructs the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security to make sure that official government documents, such as passports and visas, appropriately reflect sex and aims to mandate that the federal government use the term “sex” rather than “gender.”
The Biden administration permitted U.S. citizens to use the gender-neutral “X” as a passport marking in 2022.
According to the official, the gender order will also increase privacy in private areas in institutions like rape shelters, migrant shelters, and jails and prohibit taxpayer monies from being used for gender-transition health care.
Watch live political coverage
Trump stressed the topic in television commercials, including one that was often broadcast in crucial swing states like Pennsylvania, and ran on a platform of reversing rights for transgender and nonbinary individuals. Kamala represents they/them. The most famous advertisement stated, “President Trump is for you.”
According to one of the officials, the second order discussed on Monday’s call is to stop radical and inefficient government DEI programs as well as internal preferencing within the federal government.
The official went on to say that the new administration plans to dismantle the DEI bureaucracy, focusing on equity-related grants and environmental justice programs, and that it will meet monthly with the deputy secretaries of key agencies to determine which DEI programs continue to discriminate against Americans and how to stop them.
Since the DEI order “is meant to return to the promise and the hope, captured by civil rights champions, that one day all Americans can be treated on the basis of their character, not by the color of their skin,” the official said it was highly appropriate that the order be issued on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
Conservatives, including Trump, have attacked DEI programs nationwide in recent years, calling them discriminatory.
In his inaugural address on Monday afternoon, Trump mentioned the directives, stating that his government would oppose attempts to “socially engineer race and gender into every aspect of public and private life.” He went on to say that his government would “create a merit-based, colorblind society.”
DEI proponents in American society have maintained that such programs are necessary to increase the racial and social inclusivity of businesses, educational institutions, governmental organizations, and other establishments.
Big businesses including Walmart, McDonald’s, and Meta have declared they are discontinuing some or all of their diversity initiatives in the weeks preceding Trump’s reelection.
There are significant concerns regarding the specific DEI projects that may be discontinued, according to Jin Hee Lee, director of strategic initiatives for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. She stated that the organization is prepared to take whatever necessary steps to stop prejudice, including filing a legal challenge to the order.
According to Lee, a move to outlaw anything pertaining to initiatives to combat inequality would be a major blow to the progress of racial justice.
“Any incoming president can set the policies for the federal administration,” she continued, “but it would be unsettling if it became acceptable for the government or employers to discriminate on the basis of sex or race.”
LGBTQ legal advocates react
According to Jennifer C. Pizer, chief legal officer of Lambda Legal, a civil rights group that represents LGBTQ Americans in court, she anticipates that the administration will be sued by her group and others for the executive orders.
“The president can’t, with a wave of a pen, change the reality of who people are and the fact that we as a community of people exist,” Pizer stated. “We have equal protection rights, just like anybody else does.”
Trump’s executive order on gender identity will undoubtedly be challenged in court, according to another attorney and LGBTQ legal expert, but the administration can nonetheless carry out the directive and, in certain situations, make modifications right away.
The expert, who wished to remain anonymous in order to discuss the executive order openly, pointed out that rape shelters, jails, and migrant shelters might start relocating transgender individuals right away to areas that correspond with their birth sexes rather than their gender identities. This implies that trans women incarcerated in women’s prisons, for instance, could be transferred to male prisons very quickly.
The attorney added that transgender Americans should be careful when they leave the country since they may face difficulties reentering the country and might be detained by border officials. This is especially true for those who have X as their gender marker on government documents like passports.
A person may be held in Customs and Border Protection custody “until they can work with the Department of State to get an alternate ID issued,” according to the attorney, if a Customs and Border agent is unable to input the individual’s X gender marker into the system to permit them to return to the United States.
However, because agencies must go through a process that takes months or even years to change the rules governing them, some changes, like how the Department of Housing and Urban Development protects trans tenants from being evicted by landlords or how agencies handle health care for transgender Americans, may take longer to implement.
The legal expert stated that in certain instances, it will require time for the agencies to publish a final rule after issuing Notices of Proposed Rulemaking, reviewing the comments, as required by law, and correcting any inadequacies.
Following the filing of the anticipated legal challenges order, courts may attempt to prevent the order’s implementation by granting injunctions. However, if challenges proceed through the legal system, including to the Supreme Court, which may support the Trump administration, judges may potentially choose to permit the order to be put into effect.