Former President Donald Trump has vowed to reverse the Biden administration’s expansion of Title IX protections for transgender students on “day one” of his administration—if he wins the election in November.
President Joe Biden has set a pro-transgender course for his administration, advancing various policies that promote gender ideology and special protections for individuals who identify as something different from their birth sex.
In a move that sparked widespread controversy and a bevy of lawsuits, the Department of Education (DOE) expanded the decades-old Title IX law that prohibits sex discrimination in schools to now include sexual orientation and “gender identity.” The changes, which stop short of prohibiting schools from banning female-identifying male athletes from competing against females, are slated to go into effect on Aug. 1.
President Trump, who earlier waded into the transgender debate by pledging to punish doctors who provide so-called “gender-affirming” care to children, on Friday promised to undo the Biden administration’s Title IX changes.
“We’re gonna end it on day one,” President Trump said during a May 10 appearance on a conservative talk radio show in Philadelphia. “Don’t forget, that was done as an order from the president. That came down as an executive order. And we’re gonna change it—on day one it’s gonna be changed.”
The changes give female-identifying males the right to use female restrooms and locker rooms, and to join female-only organizations, while construing “harassment” as including the use of pronouns that conform to one’s biological sex rather than one’s chosen gender identity.
President Biden’s move sparked a torrent of conservative backlash, with over a dozen Republican-led states suing the administration and advising schools to ignore the transgender provisions of the new rules.
During his appearance on the talk show, President Trump said that conservatives concerned about the implications of the Title IX changes on women’s spaces, safety, and privacy, need not worry.
“It‘ll be signed on day one,” he said of an executive order that would roll back the Title IX transgender provisions. “It’ll be terminated.”
Transgender Agenda in Focus
Transgenderism has become a prominent issue in America’s social and political landscape in recent years, with those on the left tending to support “gender-affirming care” laws that in some cases block parents from having a say in their children’s decisions to get gender-change surgeries and other risky medical procedures.Conservatives, by contrast, have backed laws that give parents more authority to prevent their children from undergoing transgender procedures or impose penalties on doctors who perform them without parental consent.
While some advocates of “gender-affirming” therapies and surgeries claim that they can help people suffering from gender dysphoria, there is little evidence for this.
A national organization of pediatricians recently put out a policy statement saying that gender-transition procedures such as puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones provide no mental health benefit to youth with gender dysphoria.
“There is no long-term evidence that mental health concerns are decreased or alleviated after ‘gender-affirming therapy,’” they wrote.
Many individuals who have undergone it “later regret those interventions and seek to align their gender identity with their sex,” they said.
“Because of the risks of social, medical, and surgical interventions, many European countries are now cautioning against these interventions while encouraging mental health therapy,” the group added.
