On National Girls & Women in Sports Day, Trump moves to ban trans athletes

While marking the 39th annual National Girls & Women in Sports Day, President Donald Trump chose a controversial way to recognize it. Since returning to office, Trump has signed a series of executive orders, his latest one taking direct aim at the transgender community and women’s sports.

On Wednesday afternoon at the White House, Trump signed an executive order titled “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports.”

“The radical left has waged an all-out campaign to erase the very concept of biological sex and replace it with a militant transgender ideology,” said Trump, according to NBC News. “With this executive order, the war on women’s sports is over.”

Trump’s order specifically targets Title IX, the federal law designed to protect against sex discrimination in schools. Overruling the Biden administration’s stance, the new mandate reinterprets the law to prohibit transgender girls and women from competing in female sports. Reportedly putting every school receiving taxpayer dollars “on notice,” the president warned that institutions failing to comply could lose federal funding.

Trump administration officials defended the policy in a statement to CNN: “If you’re going to have women’s sports, if you’re going to provide opportunities for women, then they have to be equally safe, equally fair, and equally private opportunities, and so that means that you’re going to preserve women’s sports for women.”

Claiming to be a measure to protect fairness in women’s sports, the order will also impact international athletes traveling to compete in the U.S. With the country set to host the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, Trump reportedly expects the Olympic Committee and the NCAA to bar transgender women from competing. While he lacks direct authority over these organizations, his administration plans to scrutinize the visas of trans athletes competing in women’s events.

“If you are coming into the country and you are claiming that you are a woman, but you are a male here to compete against women, we’re going to be reviewing that for fraud,” an administration official added.

In recent years, transgender athletes have become a major point of contention in sports. While various states and sports organizations have attempted to impose restrictions on trans athletes, influential sports figures like Dawn Staley have spoken out in defense of inclusivity.

“I’m of the opinion that if you’re a woman, you should play,” Staley said, as previously reported by theGrio. “If you consider yourself a woman and you want to play sports, or vice versa, you should be able to play.”

For Black trans athletes like Cece Telfer, policies like this present significant challenges, affecting their ability to compete at the highest levels. Telfer, a former NCAA champion, has faced scrutiny throughout her career, highlighting the broader debate over inclusion in sports. As discussions on transgender participation continue, the impact of such policies will shape the future of athletics and the opportunities available to all athletes.