Only two sexes, Trump says in new executive order

Among President Trump’s first actions on Monday was an order for the United States to recognize only two unchangeable sexes—male and female. The sexes are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality, according to Trump’s order. For too long, ideologues have permitted men to define themselves as women and invade single-sex spaces intended to protect women, Trump said. That was wrong, he added. Attacks on the reality of biological sex threatened not only women, but all of the country, according to the order.

So what is in Monday’s executive order?

• The order defined the words men, women, boys, girls, males, and females in a fashion that seemed to agree with Scripture. It ordered the government to recognize that women were biologically different from men.

• Within 30 days, the secretary of health must provide to the U.S. government, and organizations that work with the government, clear guidance on how to enforce sex-based distinctions embedded in federal law following the newly set definitions. All federal agencies would use the term sex, and not gender, in federal documents. Federal agencies also must remove any policies or statements promoting the idea that gender is changeable or detached from sex, according to the order.

• No federal funding would support the teaching of so-called transgender ideology, according to the order.

• The federal government would no longer enforce what Trump described as the Biden administration’s misapplication of the Supreme Court’s 2020 decision in Bostock v. Clayton County. The attorney general would work with federal agencies to clear up how to enforce the decision going forward, according to the order.

• Males shall no longer be detained in women’s prisons. Also, neither male nor female prisoners shall be provided transgender treatments, according to the order.

• Any portions of previous executive orders, presidential memoranda, and White House documents that contradicted this new executive order were either overridden or rescinded, according to the order.

How long before this all goes into effect? The order commanded that Trump’s assistant for legislative affairs would present him with a bill text within 30 days to propose codifying the changes into federal law. Federal agencies had 120 days to bring about all the changes that applied to them, Trump said.

Dig deeper: Read my report in The Sift about Trump’s first executive orders from Monday.