Trump Ends Government Promotion of Gender Ideology and Child Mutilation

Trump’s ban on gender transitioning has turned the tide on an indefensible cult,” writes Telegraph columnist Suzanne Moore. “The pretense that sex can be changed is over.” In just ten days, President Trump has worked a stunning reversal of ten years of federal policy. From the Obama years to the Biden era, progressives sought to “eradicate the biological reality of sex” and replace it with “an ever-shifting concept of self-assessed gender identity.” They largely succeeded.

Although Democrats in Congress, for the most part, were unsuccessful in their attempts to embed “gender identity” in the law, Biden imposed gender ideology by fiat. (Democrats failed, for example, to pass the Equality Act, which redefined “sex” to include “gender identity,” but succeeded in passing the Violence Against Women Act and Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which include “gender identity” language.) The Biden administration instead “interpreted” federal laws as if they mandated gender ideology, and privileged “gender identity” in nearly every area funded or regulated by the federal government. Under Biden’s direction, federal agencies promulgated reams of “gender” tainted regulations, and deployed cabinet officials to tout hormones for identity-distressed children as “medically necessary” and “lifesaving.” Government schools taught kids they could choose (without telling mom and dad) whether to be a boy, girl, or “something else.” Unprecedented numbers of children began to believe the “gender identity” lie, including the fantasy that “transition” would magically banish their pain, and birth them anew in their desired identity. Gender clinicians, who collected over a billion dollars in federal grants for their mutilating “gender” experiments on children, defiantly defend their work even now.

Candidate Trump campaigned hard on the “transgender” issue. One of his closing messages to the American people was: “Kamala is for they/them; President Trump is for you.” The ad worked because Americans oppose “gender” hormones and surgery for minors by wide margins and are fed up with “woke” schools and gender policies. Trump listened, made promises, won, and now is delivering.

Thus far, President Trump has fired off four executive orders (EO) that directly target gender ideology (or its application), plus several EOs on other issues that include language against gender ideology. 

The first EO, Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism And Restoring Biological Truth To The Federal Government (a “Day One” EO), lays the philosophical and legal foundation for the ensuing EOs. It defines sex, rejects “gender identity,” requires “sex” not “gender” on identification documents, protects women’s privacy and safety in all federally funded prison facilities and shelters, ends federal funding of gender ideology, and rejects the erroneous interpretations and misapplication of the Supreme Court’s Bostock decision.  

The second EO, Protecting Children From Chemical And Surgical Mutilation, ends federal funding for and promotion of “mutilation” interventions in youth under nineteen, orders the development of evidence-based guidelines and best practices, and discredits “junk science,” particularly the ideological recommendations pushed by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), a transgender advocacy group. This EO stipulates that TRICARE, the insurance program for military families, can no longer provide coverage for “chemical and surgical mutilation,” euphemistically called “gender affirming care,” and states that the federal government will actively prosecute female genital mutilation. Moreover, the EO protects whistleblowers, urges private right of action for injured children and their parents, and mandates an end to “child-abusive” custody practices in sanctuary states.

Next, the EO Prioritizing Military Excellence And Readiness tackles the damage done by gender ideology to the military. This EO notes the demanding standards of physical and mental fitness required for military service and instructs the Department of Defense to update its standards to reflect the “medical, surgical, and mental health constraints on individuals with gender dysphoria” and the incompatibility of transgender identification and “shifting pronoun usage” with military readiness. Moreover, the EO directly addresses the integrity concerns raised by a soldier’s “adoption of a gender identity inconsistent with an individual’s sex,” which “conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle.” The EO also rejects the practice, justified by gender ideology, of requiring others to affirm the “falsehood” of an asserted “transgender” identity, or to use “invented” pronouns. Consistent with the “Day One” EO, this EO acknowledges sexual difference and requires sex-segregated private spaces, absent “extraordinary operational necessity.” An additional EO, Restoring America’s Fighting Force, ends DEI programs and the promotion of gender ideology in the military, including DOD schools. 

The fourth EO, Ending Radical Indoctrination In K-12 Schooling, addresses the “radical indoctrination” in government schools, which undermines patriotism, promotes lies about the nature of the person, and disregards parental rights. The EO directs agencies to craft “ending indoctrination” strategies, promising to defund schools, programs, trainings, and so forth that promote “discriminatory equity ideology” or gender ideology. Moreover, this EO strengthens parental rights by forbidding schools that receive federal funding from “socially transitioning” children and stipulates that schools must honor and protect parental rights. Finally, one of the first executive orders issued by the Trump administration, Reforming The Federal Hiring Process And Restoring Merit To Government Service, ends DEI hiring practices, including those requiring “commitment to the invented concept of ‘gender identity’ over sex.”

Executive orders set policy direction but have limited scope. An EO doesn’t repeal an act of Congress, nor does it change federal regulations. Executive orders are written policy directives from the president, instructing the executive branch what to do. They arise from the president’s charge to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed” and generally effect change in one of two ways. First, an EO can direct changes within the federal government. Given that over three million people work for the U.S. government, not including another 1.3 million active-duty military personnel, that is no small thing. Second, an EO gives marching orders to federal agencies, instructing them to align their agency actions and to issue guidance and regulations that reflect the president’s policies and interpretations of the law.

When EOs tie federal funding to complying with the president’s directives, they become powerful instruments for change. Under Trump’s new EOs, entities that receive federal funding risk losing access to those funds if they promote gender ideology. For example, nearly all healthcare systems and insurers are in some way reliant on federal funding, or deferential to federal policy, particularly when serving populations covered by Medicare, Medicaid, or TRICARE. 

The prohibition on federal funding in the EO declaring an end to “chemical and surgical mutilation” of children had an immediate impact. Denver Health, VCU Health, and Richmond Children’s Hospital announced that they would no longer offer gender affirming surgeries to minors. In contrast, when a 2021 study found that transgender-identifying youth increased their use of psychotropic medication after initiating hormone therapy (undermining the claimed benefits), researchers explained away the results and continued “transitioning” children. The EOs prohibiting child mutilation in federally-funded programs and the military will protect vulnerable children from ideologues. Conservatives have long lamented the ever-increasing role of the federal government; the upside, however, is the federal power of the purse to compel an end to gender ideology. 

In addition to setting policy and channeling federal funding, the EOs have moral and political force. Federal policy carries weight in courts, media, and cultural institutions. In the past, it gave gender ideology a strong foothold across the culture; today, it has the power to reverse that trend. Further, the EOs direct agencies and the Attorney General to exercise their investigative powers, oversee compliance, and ensure whistleblower protections, preventing the kind of lawfare endured by whistleblower surgeon Eithan Haim. These EOs undoubtedly will motivate members of Congress to act swiftly and boldly in passing legislation that protects children, capitalizing on the language and policy goals set out in the EOs. Finally, the clear policy goals and precise language of the EOs provide a framework for communications and educational efforts to persuade reluctant Americans of the rightness of the new policies on gender ideology, clearing a path toward significant cultural change. 

The rejection of gender ideology across multiple EOs is more than a policy statement. It reflects a broad commitment to put truth at the center of federal policy. The lynchpin of the Trump reforms is the “Day One” executive order. This EO repudiates gender ideology’s core claim, namely that “gender identity” (an “internal, fluid, and subjective sense of self unmoored from biological facts”) overrides “sex” (a biological, immutable characteristic), so a male who believes he is a woman actually “is” a woman and can require others to “honor this falsehood.” 

The “Day One” EO explains that “basing Federal policy on truth is critical to scientific inquiry, public safety, morale, and trust in government itself” (emphasis added). The language conveying the Trump policies reinforces this point, referencing “truth” and “reality,” with descriptors such as “incontrovertible,” “immutable,” and “fundamental.” This language contrasts sharply with the descriptions of gender ideology as “invented,” “inchoate,” “shifting,” “divisive,” “inaccurate,” and “false.”  

Responding to the “erasure of sex in language and policy,” the “Day One” EO defends “women’s rights” and protects “freedom of conscience” by mandating, as a matter of federal policy, the use of “clear and accurate language and policies” that recognize “the biological reality” of “two sexes, male and female.” Reversing Biden policy, the EO requires government documents to reflect the truth that a person is immutably male or female from “conception.” No more “X” labels on passports and government documents. By clearly defining “male” and “female,” “man” and “boy,” “woman” and “girl,” “sex” and “gender identity,” the EO repudiates the fantasy beliefs of gender ideology. And in the EO on military readiness, the Trump policy calls out the dishonesty and deception inherent in “transgender” claims, noting that “adoption of a gender identity inconsistent with an individual’s sex conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle.” The EO eliminating DEI in federal hiring refers to “gender identity” as an “invented concept,” while the EO on military readiness describes chosen pronouns as “invented.” And because “truth” is neither subjective nor variable with time and place, the EOs require government compliance with reality-based language.

Michael Shellenberger, who unmasked WPATH as “morally and scientifically bankrupt,” tweeted that he was “thrilled” to see President Trump’s executive order protecting children, specifically because it uses “accurate language” to describe the barbaric procedures masquerading as “affirmative care.” Shellenberger notes that the use of words such as “mutilation, rather than euphemisms to describe the systematic disabling and disfigurement of vulnerable young people,” exposes the terrible reality of “gender transitions.”

The rapid-fire, “shock and awe” campaign of multiple, well-crafted EOs has likely given the Trump administration some breathing space as agencies sprint to implement them. As excellent as the EOs are, they are only as good as their implementation. 

The impact of these orders is dramatic, marking initial steps in reversing the government’s decade-long promotion of gender ideology. It is critically important to recognize, however, that executive orders alone will not vanquish gender ideology.  These EOs will require painstaking implementation and follow-through. The “Day One” EO alone instructs federal officials to redefine terms in federal laws, draft new proposed legislation, develop guidance for “the U.S. Government, external partners, and the public,” issue legal guidance and memoranda, revise federal policies and documents, rescind contrary policies and statements, change government-issued IDs and passports, review the terms of federal grants, change housing protocols for prisons, and propose new rulemaking. Federal officials will also have to sort out where pressure can be applied, on state and local levels, to ensure compliance across federally funded entities as well as government agencies themselves. Lawsuits already have been filed to derail implementation of the EO concerning transgender identifying soldiers in the military, as well as the order to move biological males out of women’s prisons. Conservatives have learned the hard way that saboteurs in bureaucratic positions can slow progress to a crawl.

Executive orders also don’t address corporate culture, especially in transnational companies. The first week of Trump’s presidency coincided with the World Economic Forum in Davos, where the global elite reaffirmed their commitment to promoting gender ideology with the annual rainbow light-up promenade and with sessions that promoted the business case for LGBTQ inclusion. In the words of Jamie Dimon, when asked about corporate DEI and pro-LGBT policies, “we’re gonna do more of the same.” In the meantime, the downstream consequences of gender ideology could continue to plague our culture and injure the vulnerable for some time.