A “revolution of common sense”
After four years of extremism, President Trump begins his second term with energy—and executive orders
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In a statement that is a commentary on the times we live in, President Donald Trump declared shortly after his swearing-in for a second term that it will “be the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders, male and female.” Someone observing this statement from the year 2015 might wonder if it was also necessary for the president to clarify grass is green and water is wet. But after the last four years, it was sadly necessary.
In January 2020, President Joe Biden said, “Transgender equality is the civil rights issue of our time.” As a result, his administration placed male sex offenders with female inmates in prison, redefined the terms “male” and “female” to include gender identity, insisted that boys be allowed to compete with girls in sports, and ensured that taxpayers would fund sex-reassignment procedures for members of the military and federal inmates alike.
While all of this was consistent with the left’s understanding of what it meant to end “discrimination,” it was far out of step with the public. A New York Times poll from earlier this month found 79% of Americans believe men identifying as women should not be allowed to compete in women’s sports. This includes 67% of Democrats and 94% of Republicans. Two-thirds of Americans oppose taxpayer-funded sex-change operations generally, much less for federal inmates.
Historians may one day conclude the incongruity between public sentiment and Biden administration policies on the issue of transgenderism was the decisive issue of the 2024 election. President Trump’s campaign spent $20 million on advertising that highlighted Vice President Kamala Harris’ prior support for sex-reassignment surgeries for federal inmates. Those commercials concluded with a devastating line for the Harris campaign: “Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you.”
Progressives tried to take Americans places they did not want to go because they misinterpreted the results of the 2020 election. When Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump, they wanted to believe it was a full-throated endorsement of their worldview when it was more likely an electoral anomaly resulting from a global pandemic and the unique way Trump’s personality impairs the mental capacities of friends and foes alike.
President Barack Obama is famous for saying some version of, “The first rule is, don’t do stupid stuff,” but Democrats didn’t take that advice. Instead, they held protests in support of Hamas after it attacked Israel, tried to abolish the police, opened the border, tried to police pronoun usage, and told all of us that good people agree men can have babies. They badly misread the room, which has allowed President Trump to lead his “revolution of common sense.”
As a result, four years of Biden administration extremism has given President Trump the opportunity to look like a combination of Abraham Lincoln and George Washington for doing the political equivalent of basic arithmetic. The obvious now looks brilliant.
Not only did President Trump declare it to be official U.S. policy that there are only two sexes, but he also signed an executive order titled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.” It mandates that U.S. passports reflect a person’s actual sex, orders the Bureau of Prisons to house inmates according to their actual sex, prevents men from playing sports with women, and clarifies that the federal government will not pay for so-called sex reassignment surgeries for inmates. In a better time, an executive order of this kind would be seen as patronizing and unnecessary. But because it is seen as necessary, the public loves it.
Not only have social conservatives scored a major victory in the culture wars, but President Donald Trump is the unlikely hero and enters his second term with record-high approval ratings. It’s unclear which of these developments is more galling to progressives, but they have no one to blame but themselves.
These daily articles have become part of my steady diet. —Barbara
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