Trump signs executive order banning transgender athletes from women's sports

US President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Wednesday banning transgender athletes from participating in women’s sports.

“With this executive order, the war on women’s sports is over,” Trump said. He signed the order at the White House, surrounded by dozens of children and female athletes.

US House Speaker Mike Johnson and Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene also attended the signing ceremony.

“We will defend the proud tradition of female athletes, and we will not allow men to beat up, injure, and cheat our women and girls. From now on, women’s sports will be only for women,” Trump said.

With the order now in effect, government agencies can withhold federal funds from schools that allow transgender athletes to compete in women’s teams.

“It is the policy of the United States to rescind all funds from educational programmes that deprive women and girls of fair athletic opportunities, resulting in their endangerment, humiliation, and silencing, and depriving them of privacy,” the executive order stated.

Trump to push IOC

Trump also emphasised that he would push the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to change its rules on transgender athletes before the 2028 Los Angeles Games.

He said he had instructed Secretary of State Marco Rubio to “make it clear” to the IOC that “we want them to change everything related to the Olympics and this absolutely ridiculous subject.”

Republican Trump is targeting transgender people in a blitz of orders pushing his radical right-wing agenda at the start of his second term.

Trump changes policies on Transgenders

In a bizarre move, at his inauguration, Trump declared that the U.S. government would recognise only two genders, that is, male and female.

He later signed orders banning transgender troops from the military to rid the military of what he called “transgender ideology.”

He also singed order restricting gender transition procedures for those under 19.