今日吃瓜

President Donald Trump has signed a new executive order restricting transgender Americans from participating in sport.

Executive orders are not laws, but directives issue by the president to federal agencies.

The order, named 鈥淣o Men in Women鈥檚 Sports”, was signed on Wednesday 5 February, timed to coincide with the .

Trump spoke for 30 minutes prior to signing the order, where he made several false claims, including saying that transgender athletes had won “more than 3,500 victories” and “invaded more than 11,000 competitions”.

He also seemed to cite Algerian boxer Imane Khelif, telling audiences that “a male boxer stole the women鈥檚 gold medal” at the Paris Olympics after supposedly “brutalising his female opponent so viciously that she had to forfeit.”

“In a few moments, I鈥檒l sign a historic executive order to ban men from competing in women鈥檚 sports. It鈥檚 about time,” Trump said, surrounded by dozens of girls and young women brought in for the signing.

“Under the Trump administration, we will defend the proud tradition of female athletes, and we will not allow men to beat up, injure, and cheat our women and our girls.”

With this order, Trump intends to fulfil his election promise to “end transgender lunacy” and “keep men out of women’s sports”.

The order allows the Department of Justice to ban transgender girls and women from participating in female school sports, with schools and colleges risking federal funding if they don’t comply.

The Trump administration is believed to have reinterpreted Title IX, a piece of civil rights legislation introduced in 1972 that protects people from sex-based discrimination in education programs or activities that receive federal funding.

The president of the National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA), Charlie Baker, told a Senate panel in December that they would comply with federal law. Of the 520,000 athletes currently competing across 1,100 member schools, Baker said he was aware of less than 10 transgender athletes.

鈥淏anning transgender athletes was a campaign promise, and I knew it was coming, but my heart still breaks for the young people who are being targeted for political gain,鈥� said Chris Mosier, a transgender athlete and activist, 听The Advocate. 鈥淭his Executive Order piles on to the harmful, dangerous, and sometimes deadly rhetoric and misinformation about transgender people. The truth is, we play sports for the same reasons as everyone else鈥攖o be a part of a team, to challenge ourselves, and to have fun.鈥�

In the last month, Trump has made more than 227 against LGBTQIA+ Americans across policy and rhetoric. These include the rolling back of DEI programs, the deletion of LGBTQIA+ content across government websites, and the erasure of trans and non-binary people at a federal level, with the US government now only recognising two genders, assigned at birth and unchanging, male and female.

It’s not yet known how the executive order will be enforced, with current options including checking birth certificates, and inspecting childrens’ bodies.