United States: As part of his 2024 presidential campaign, President Donald Trump implemented executive powers on Wednesday that banned transgender competitors from women’s sports leagues.
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The order sets broad guidelines for sex and sports policy, which will instruct the Department of Justice and other federal agencies to read Title IX rules as preventing transgender females from competing with women in their designated sports categories.
The order was titled “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports,” which would mandate immediate enforcement, which would also be applied in schools and athletic associations that “deny women single-sex sports and single-sex locker rooms,” as per the document.
Trump stood in front of female athlete members at his signing event and denounced the “transgender lunacy.”
“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,” Trump added, as ABC News reported.
Additionally, he also wrongly claimed that Algerian boxer Imane Khelif, who had to go through attacks over her sex and gender during the 2024 Paris Olympics, was “a male,” who identified as a woman and having been assigned female at birth, as per the IOC.
A senior administration official has pointed out that the White House plans for athletic associations such as the NCAA to modify their rules per the pending order after its signature.
According to NCAA President Charlie Baker told Republican senators at a hearing in December, “We’re a national governing body, and we follow federal law,” and “Clarity on this issue at the federal level would be very helpful.”
The number of transgender athletes present in women’s sports remains low despite the heated complaints from right-wingers.
Baker disclosed in his Senate testimony that only nine out of the 500,000 NCAA athletes he investigates are currently transgender.
The White House observance gathered athletes alongside coaching staff who intensely oppose transgender athlete participation in women’s competitions together with their advocates.
The event gathered more than sixty people, including former Connecticut native Riley Gaines, as ABC News reported.
She pointed out that the court established such rules were unnecessary while the presidential executive order explicitly prohibited them.