Trump To Sign Order That Could Bar Trans Women From Us Olympic Participation

President Donald Trump will sign an executive order Wednesday that could prevent female transgender athletes from entering the U.S. to compete in women’s sports during the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.

The order will direct federal officials to launch fraud investigations into transgender women who apply for visas to enter the U.S. to compete in women’s sports, White House officials said Wednesday morning. That appears to include those seeking to participate in the Los Angeles Olympics, with officials adding that the U.S. intends to use all of its authority with the International Olympic Committee to “preserve safe sports for women when it happens on U.S. soil.”

White House officials argue the measures are not aimed at stopping transgender people from athletic participation, but at ensuring that they do not have a biological advantage in sports competitions.

“I know that a lot of headlines are going to use the word transgender, but this has nothing to do with that,” a White House official, granted anonymity to preview the executive order, said. “This has to do with men and women's sports.”

The official suggested that transgender women might instead compete against men, or in co-ed categories.

“There’s a complete openness to how you would manage a situation, whether it is a co-ed open category, whether men should also be more open and willing to having people on their team who might not look like them, might not dress like them. But the burden can’t always fall on women,” the official added. “The idea of men who identify as women competing in women’s sports puts the burden 100 percent on women, and that is not fair.”

Transgender athletes have been allowed to participate on sports teams that align with their gender identity at the Olympics, but in 2021 the International Olympic Committee released new guidelines that left it up to the governing board of each sport to determine participation.

The executive order represents the latest chapter in the secular culture war Trump is championing, focusing on gender treatments for minors, diversity, equity and inclusion, and “critical race theory.” It has those on the left scrambling to catch up as they warn of the dangers of Trump’s orders for the LGBTQ+ community and others and decry what they describe as the “weaponization” of the federal government to target a group of people that already suffers from higher rates of suicide and mental health challenges.

A recent New York Times/Ipsos poll found that 79 percent of respondents said transgender female athletes should not be allowed to participate in women’s sports.

The executive order also underscores that Title IX, the sex-based discrimination statute, only applies to sex — and not gender identity — a point that the administration has already made through previous executive orders and Education Department communications.

It also requires the department to “affirmatively protect women’s opportunities” through guidance, interpretation or regulation, as well as to investigate schools that in the administration’s view are not providing equal opportunity under the law. That could include schools that have, for instance, turned women’s bathrooms into co-ed bathrooms but left in place men’s bathrooms.

Officials emphasized that schools that don’t comply could jeopardize their federal funding.

It also directs the administration to use its bully pulpit to lead on this issue, including by bringing sports governing bodies to the White House to share the stories of female athletes, convening state attorneys general to look at state-based sex discrimination violations — and even asking Secretary of State Marco Rubio to use his position to take this conversation to the United Nations.

Trump’s order follows through on his key campaign promise to keep “men out of women’s sports” and that there are “only two genders.” It is also a direct rebuke to former President Joe Biden’s efforts to bolster discrimination protections for transgender students.

While Biden did not directly address sports participation, the Education Department sought to include gender identity and sexual orientation in the discrimination protections under Title IX, the federal education law that bars sex-based discrimination. Those actions have since been struck down by a federal court.

Last week, the Education Department advised education institutions that it will return to enforcing Title IX on the basis of biological sex. During the first Trump administration, Title IX was used to investigate civil rights complaints against schools over their athletics policies that allowed transgender students to participate on women’s sports teams.

Fairness in K-12 and college sports has also been a target for state legislatures and Congress. More than half of all states have restricted transgender student participation on sports teams that align with their gender identity, and the House passed a bill last month to bar them from women’s sports. A companion bill was introduced in the Senate, but it’s unclear when either measure will be taken up on the floor.

Several lawsuits are pending in the courts over transgender women and girls’ participation on sports teams that align with their gender identity. The National Collegiate Athletic Association is being sued by cisgender female athletes, some of whom are expected to be at Trump’s signing, over its policies that allow transgender women to compete on some sports teams that align with their gender identity. And a lawsuit challenging West Virginia’s sports law is awaiting a decision from the Supreme Court on whether it will take up the case.

Similar to the Olympics, the NCAA has adopted a sport-by-sport approach to transgender participation. Meanwhile, the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics has barred transgender women from competing in women’s sports competitions.