Trump signs executive order banning transgender athletes from women's sports, threatens to cut federal funding

US President Donald Trump on Wednesday issued an executive order to prevent transgender athletes from participating in girls' and women's sports unless they were assigned female at birth, The New York Times reported. He also vowed to withhold federal funding from high schools and colleges that fail to comply with the directive. 

"From now on, women's sports will be only for women," Trump said in his address from the White House East Room. "The war on women's sports is over."

The White House in an executive order titled 'Keeping Men Out of Women's Sports,' stated that in recent years, many educational institutions and athletic associations have allowed men to compete in women's sports.

It further said that "ignoring fundamental biological truths" between the two sexes deprives women and girls of "meaningful access to educational facilities."

"This is demeaning, unfair, and dangerous to women and girls, and denies women and girls the equal opportunity to participate and excel in competitive sports.

Moreover, under Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972 (Title IX), educational institutions receiving Federal funds cannot deny women an equal opportunity to participate in sports. As some Federal courts have recognised, ignoring fundamental biological truths between the two sexes deprives women and girls of meaningful access to educational facilities," the statement read.

It added, "Therefore, it is the policy of the United States to rescind all funds from educational programmes that deprive women and girls of fair athletic opportunities, which results in the endangerment, humiliation, and silencing of women and girls and deprives them of privacy. It shall also be the policy of the United States to oppose male competitive participation in women's sports more broadly, as a matter of safety, fairness, dignity, and truth."

This new order follows on one Trump signed on January 20, which ordered the federal government to define sex as only male or female and to change federal policies and government-issued IDs to reflect that.

Trump, along with other conservative politicians, have often hit on transgender athletes competing in women's sports as an election-cycle issue. And 25 states have passed laws banning transgender athletes from girls' sports at the high school and youth levels, The New York Times reported.

A few days back, the White House had issued an executive order prohibiting federal funding, support, or promotion of medical procedures intended to transition a child's sex, citing concerns over their long-term consequences.

The order stated that medical professionals are engaging in "chemical and surgical mutilation" of children under the "radical and false claim that adults can change a child's sex through a series of irreversible medical interventions."

The administration described these procedures as dangerous, and asserted that affected children may suffer from permanent sterilisation and lifelong medical complications, the report added.