President Donald Trump mounted an offensive against gender ideology as soon as he took office in January, and his administration shows no signs of letting up as it hits the 100-day mark.
Gender ideology became a hot-button issue in the years leading up to the November election. Parents across the country became outraged over transgender indoctrination by public school teachers, while female students protested being forced to let males use their bathrooms and play on their sports teams, and detransitioners raised the alarm about doctors pushing children toward puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and transgender surgeries.
During his campaign, Trump promised to take an axe to gender ideology, and he has followed through on multiple fronts.
In a day one executive order, Trump officially recognized “sex” as biological, either “male” or “female.” This initial order, “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism,” laid the groundwork for his administration’s other actions.
“Efforts to eradicate the biological reality of sex fundamentally attack women by depriving them of their dignity, safety, and well-being,” the order stated.
Child Sex Change Drugs And Surgeries
In January, Trump signed another executive order, “Protecting Children From Chemical And Surgical Mutilation,” committing that the United States will not fund or support the “so-called ‘transition’ of a child from one sex to another and that it will rigorously enforce all laws that prohibit or limit these destructive and life-altering procedures.”
“This dangerous trend will be a stain on our Nation’s history, and it must end,” the order stated.
This prompted a slew of hospitals to pump the brakes on transgender medicalization for children, including hospitals in New York City, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, Colorado, and Virginia.
On Monday, the White House published a fact sheet that said during the first three years of the Biden administration, more than 7,000 children were put on puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, and more than 4,000 children got transgender surgeries like double mastectomies.
The Department of Health and Human Services and the Justice Department are leading the crackdown on transgender medical interventions for children.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services also warned hospitals in March to comply with Trump’s executive orders on the “dangerous chemical and surgical mutilation of children,” or transgender surgeries and hormones.
The administration also ordered the National Institutes of Health to research “regret” and “detransition” among children and adults who undergo transgender “social transition and/or chemical and surgical mutilation.”
Trump’s day one order also bans federal funds from promoting gender ideology, which includes paying for medical gender transitions for prison inmates, the subject of his most effective campaign ad last year.
The campaign ad highlighted Harris’s support for taxpayer-funded transgender medical services for prisoners.
“Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you,” the ad said.
The ad aired across the nation, including during football games. Trump advisors said the message reached suburban women, who were also being hammered with Democrats’ aggressive abortion ads.
Education
In his second week, Trump turned his attention to education, signing an executive order titled “Ending Radical Indoctrination In K-12 Schooling” prohibiting federal funds from going to schools teaching “radical, anti-American ideologies,” including gender ideology.
Gender ideology includes the “false claim that males can identify as and thus become women and vice versa,” his day one order previously clarified.
In response, the Education Department scrapped former President Joe Biden’s reinterpretation of Title IX to include trans-identifying men as women, calling it an “unlawful abuse of regulatory power and an egregious slight to women and girls.” Title IX is the federal civil rights law that prohibits sex-based discrimination in public schools.
Trump’s order also prohibits teachers or school counselors from encouraging the “social transition” of a trans-identifying child, which includes using a new name and pronouns or allowing them to use the bathrooms and play on the sports team of the opposite sex.
The administration is investigating multiple school districts, including five in Virginia that may be violating Trump’s orders on promoting gender ideology.
The Education Department also tossed out a slew of complaints about “book bans,” or school districts removing sexually explicit materials.
The department has canceled hundreds of millions of dollars in grants to recipients who promote gender ideology, DEI, and Critical Race Theory.
Women’s Sports
Trump signed an order, “Keeping Men Out Of Women’s Sports,” banning trans-identifying males in girls’ sports by threatening to rescind funds from schools that allow this, saying it “results in the endangerment, humiliation, and silencing of women and girls and deprives them of privacy.”
In response to Trump’s order, the NCAA changed its policy to read that a “student-athlete assigned male at birth may not compete on a women’s team.”
The Education Department also opened investigations into several universities for allowing trans-identifying males in women’s sports, including San Jose State University and the University of Pennsylvania, where trans-identifying male swimmer Lia Thomas won races on the women’s team.
On Monday, the administration said it had found that the University of Pennsylvania violated Title IX and gave the school 10 days to resolve the sports violations or face enforcement from the Justice Department. In March, the administration froze $175 million in taxpayer funding to the school.
In February, Trump stunned a room full of governors when he told Maine’s governor to her face that her state would not get any federal funding if it continued to buck the president’s executive order on males in women’s sports.
Stunning moment Trump goes back and forth with Maine governor on women’s sports
TRUMP: “You better do it because you’re not gonna get any federal funding … your population doesn’t want men playing in women’s sports.”pic.twitter.com/UrqDl65nLx
— Mairead Elordi (@JohnsonHildy) February 21, 2025
“Your population doesn’t want men playing in women’s sports. So you better comply because otherwise you’re not getting any federal funding,” Trump told Governor Janet Mills, a Democrat.
The administration ultimately moved to strip Maine of the $358.4 million it gets in federal education funding, although that action is blocked in federal court for now. The Agriculture Department also suspended some of Maine’s federal funds for school food programs. The Education Department has also referred Maine’s education department to the Justice Department for “further enforcement action.”
The Education Department is also eyeing California, which also allows trans-identifying males in girls’ high school sports.
The department opened an investigation into the California Interscholastic Federation, which governs sports at more than 1,500 high schools. The administration has threatened California’s federal funding, but has not yet moved to cut it.
California also prohibits schools from automatically notifying parents when a student announces a new gender identity, another threat to its federal funding.
Other Moves
Trump prohibited public schools from allowing a trans-identifying child to use the bathroom or locker room of the opposite sex.
Trump’s day-one order also protects women and girls from trans-identifying men in women’s prisons, rape shelters, and other “intimate spaces.”
Trump also issued an order banning trans-identifying members from the military.
“A man’s assertion that he is a woman, and his requirement that others honor this falsehood, is not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member,” the order read.
Federal employees were also instructed to remove pronouns from their email signatures, and, in a surprise move, Trump targeted the Kennedy Center over “Drag Shows specifically targeting our youth.” He fired the center’s president and several board members, and the board voted to install Trump as president. He promised that “the best is yet to come” for the center.
Trump also signed an order aimed at eradicating the “anti-Christian weaponization of government,” which cites the Biden Department of Health and Human Services’ attempts to shut out Christians from the foster care system if they did not affirm gender ideology for children.
Also on his first day, Trump revoked nearly 100 of Biden’s executive actions, including one preventing discrimination over “gender identity.”
His day one order also reverses a policy that allowed individuals to change the gender marker on their passports.
During his remarks to Congress, Trump highlighted some of the eye-popping waste the Department of Government Efficiency is targeting, including transgender experiments on mice.
Trump also recognized Women’s History Month, saying, “No longer will our Government promote radical ideologies that replace women with men …”
Federal judges have blocked many of Trump’s actions, including the bans on child sex change procedures and trans-identifying troops, but the administration plans to continue fighting those decisions in court.
