Soon after the swearing-in, US President Donald Trump signed two executive orders rolling back the protections for transgender rights and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programmes initiated during the Biden regime.
The move, announced by Trump on his first day in office, has drawn widespread backlash from civil rights groups.
One of the orders signed by the president, titled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government,” directs US federal agencies to remove the structure of all existing policies supporting gender identity protections.
The order states, “There are only two genders, male and female,” and mandates agencies to update official documents like passports and visas accordingly.
Subsequently, the order also prohibits taxpayer funding for gender transition services in prisons. Trump highlighted the order during his inaugural address, according to the administration.
The executive order further claims, “Efforts to eradicate the biological reality of sex fundamentally attack women by depriving them of their dignity, safety, and well-being. The erasure of sex in language and policy has a corrosive impact not just on women but on the validity of the entire American federal system.”
The second order overturns Biden’s 2021 executive action, which required federal agencies to review policies that could negatively affect transgender individuals.
Shortly after signing the order, civil rights groups swiftly condemned the measures. “We refuse to back down or be intimidated... We will fight back against these harmful provisions with everything we’ve got,” Kelley Robinson, president of the Human Rights Campaign, said in a statement.
According to the Trump administration, they framed policy changes as an initiative to restore the “biological truth” to remove the perceived bias in government initiatives.
However, the rights organisations have said that they will fight the case in the country’s top court.
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