White House Press Office Won’t Respond to Reporters With ‘Preferred Pronouns’ in Bio

The policy aligns with Trump’s effort to reassert ’the biological reality of sex' across the federal government.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt takes questions from members of the press at the White House in Washington on March 26, 2025. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

Journalists who list preferred gender pronouns in their email signatures won’t be getting a response from the White House to their emails, according to the Trump administration.

“It is official White House policy to IGNORE reporters’ emails with pronouns in the signature,” the Trump War Room account on April 9 announced on social media platform X, confirming anecdotal accounts from journalists who said their inquiries were dismissed or unanswered.

The post included a statement from White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, who said she does not respond to journalists who list pronouns, “as it shows they ignore scientific realities and therefore ignore facts.”

Instances of this communication policy were first reported by The New York Times. In one case, according to the story, a reporter received an email reply from Leavitt saying, “As a matter of policy, we do not respond to reporters with pronouns in their bios.”

Responding to the NY Times report on X, Leavitt wrote, “Fact Check: True.”

“Any reporter who chooses to put their preferred pronouns in their bio clearly does not care about biological reality or truth and therefore cannot be trusted to write an honest story,” Leavitt said in a statement to The Epoch Times.

The White House did not respond to The Epoch Times’ requests for clarification on when the policy was adopted or whether it applies to White House officials outside the official press office as well.

The inclusion of pronouns in email signatures and social media bios has become increasingly common in recent years, often intended as a show of support for people who identify as transgender or who prefer to be addressed as “they/them” or less commonly, “ze/zir.”

The White House’s rejection of this practice in press communications aligns with a broader effort under President Donald Trump, who is committed to reasserting “the biological reality of sex” across the federal government, according to his executive order.

“The erasure of sex in language and policy has a corrosive impact not just on women but on the validity of the entire American system. Basing Federal policy on truth is critical to scientific inquiry, public safety, morale, and trust in government itself,” the president declared in an executive order on the first day of his second term.

“This unhealthy road is paved by an ongoing and purposeful attack against the ordinary and longstanding use and understanding of biological and scientific terms, replacing the immutable biological reality of sex with an internal, fluid, and subjective sense of self unmoored from biological facts.”

In accordance with the Jan. 20 order, references to what Trump calls “gender ideology”—the idea that there is a spectrum of genders existing independently of biological sex—have been removed from several federal government websites. For example, a page on the State Department’s website that had provided information for “LGBTQI Travelers” now addresses only “Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Travelers,” omitting the mention of people identifying as transgender, queer, and intersex.

In Congress, lawmakers are also advancing legislation aimed at restricting federal funding for K–12 schools that promote “gender ideology.”

On Wednesday, the House Education and Workforce Committee passed two bills along party lines. One measure would codify the Jan. 20 executive order that recognizes only two sexes, male and female, into federal education law. The second bill would require parental consent before any changes could be made to “a minor’s gender markers, pronouns, or preferred name on any school form or sex-based accommodations, including locker rooms or bathrooms” in public schools.