On a late Monday, Donald Trump, the former president, exercised his authority by signing an executive order. This action was specifically aimed at discontinuing federal recognition of transgender individuals. Such an order emerges as part of a more extensive executive suite that seeks to dismantle the previous administration’s endeavours towards instigating diversity and negating discrimination. The decree details that the federal government will exclusively acknowledge two, unalterable genders, thus reversing the course set by the Biden administration.
Alongside this order, Trump instrumented additional directives, which effectively disbanded orders brought into power during Biden’s tenure. These unprecedented revisions concerned the allowance of transgender military servicemembers and updates around changing gender identities on passports, among others. Such a robust stand from Trump on soliciting a bill that federally recognizes only two genders is anticipated to fuel further conflicts in Congress around the care and safety of transgender community, as well as broader discrimination protections.
Previously, within the last year, Congress had passed a law, reaching a culmination on Tricare coverage for gender-affirming care for minors. The House of Representatives has continuously discussed amendments on funding bills that could perhaps impact the availability of care for transgender individuals. The potential implications of Monday’s executive orders from Trump may very well spur legal battles over the rights of the LGBTQ+ community.
Notably, Trump’s administration is already in the midst of courtroom disputes related to state laws that restrict or prohibit gender-affirming care for minors. One salient case has already risen to the Supreme Court level. The Monday order, however, put forth an argument that efforts aiming to nullify sex’s biological reality ‘fundamentally attack women by depriving them of their dignity, safety, and well-being.’
The Trump-led order mandates the federal government to desist from supporting gender identity, referring to an individual’s sex rather than gender, and discontinue issuing new passports or other government documents permitting a person to alter their sex. It also demands an end to the ‘misinterpretation’ of a 2020 Supreme Court case that proclaimed the Civil Rights Act outlawed LGBTQ+ discrimination in the workplace.
Further, the mandate instructed the DOJ to produce ‘guidance to ensure the freedom to express the binary nature of sex,’ and to litigate in defense of that right within the workplace and entities funded federally. Noticeably, the Monday order abstained from discussing intersex individuals or others who might not accord with the new federal definition.
Census Bureau records show that approximately one percent of Americans identify themselves as transgender, a value conspicuously overlooked in this order. Moreover, the decree contained additional clauses urging the need for legislation to solidify the order.
The president of the advocacy group the Human Rights Campaign, Kelley Robinson, lambasted Trump’s move as a misdirected affront to the LGBTQ+ community, rather than a genuine effort to marshal our country and address urgent national concerns. In Robinson’s words, ‘We are not going anywhere, and we will battle these detrimental provisions with everything at our disposal.’
Trump’s actions, however, were met with applause from his Republican Compatriots in Congress. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a representative from Georgia, viewed it as Trump fulfilling a critical campaign promise. Adopting a stance that seeks protection for women’s spaces, Greene maintained that ‘no biological man should be in our spaces or contest our place.’ Greene was ecstatic to hear that Trump was making good on his promise.
Criticisms abound as well. One such critic, Representative Mark Takano, D-Calif., chairman of the Equality Caucus, remarked that Trump had seemingly made smeared strides to ‘erase the existence’ of transgender people with his order. In his remarks, Takano drummed up the notion that such actions are a deliberate ploy by Republicans to divert attention from their billion-dollar tax cuts for wealthy friends, a cost they plan on covering through reductions in Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.