This week, President Trump signed an executive order titled “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports.” The order instructs the Departments of Justice and Education to undo Obama- and Biden-era policies that explicitly or implicitly require educational institutions to accommodate students in sports according to their “gender identity.” Indeed, it goes further: allowing male students to participate in female sports will now be grounds for revocation of federal funds and could expose educational institutions to legal liability.
The executive order instructs the assistant to the president for domestic policy to convene “representatives of major athletic organizations and governing bodies,” “female athletes harmed by [gender identity] policies,” and state attorneys general within 60 days to devise “best practices.”
It also instructs the Secretary of State and other relevant government bodies to ensure that U.S. support for and participation in international sports are consistent with the administration’s priorities. Last summer, an Algerian male with a disorder of sex development triggered international outcry after winning gold in women’s boxing at the Olympics. The phenomenon of men and boys competing in female sports, outperforming women and girls—and even placing them at physical risk of harm—has become all too familiar in recent years.
A day after Trump’s executive order, the NCAA, led by former Massachusetts governor Charlie Baker, issued a statement: “We strongly believe that clear, consistent, and uniform eligibility standards would best serve today’s student-athletes instead of a patchwork of conflicting state laws and court decisions. To that end, President Trump’s order provides a clear, national standard.”
The irony that Title IX, a law closely associated with female sports, was used to let boys and men compete against girls and women has not been lost on the American public. The Obama administration was the first to mobilize the federal government in this direction.
Of all the policy areas affected by gender ideology, sports may strike some as the least consequential. Forcing women to share homeless shelters or prison cells with men poses more obvious dangers, especially considering that male inmates identifying as women are more likely to have convictions for sexual offenses. Subjecting vulnerable teens to sex “change” procedures is one of the worst scandals in the history of modern medicine. Schools that indoctrinate young children to believe that their gender confusion or non-conformity is evidence of being “born in the wrong body” are putting students in harm’s way and massively exceeding their authority. All three of these policy areas are crucial.
But sports are important, too—not only because they are a vital human activity, but also because, for better or worse, the U.S. higher-education system showers so much attention and so many resources on male and female athletics. For many girls, excellence in high school sports punches their ticket to prestigious universities and lucrative scholarships.
As athletes like collegiate swimmer-turned-political activist Riley Gaines have shown us, the problem of men in women’s sports is not just about competitive fairness or safety. Gaines was forced to share a locker room with Lia Thomas, an intact, six-foot-one male. Due to the nature of competitive swimming, Gaines and her female teammates had no choice but to undress in Thomas’s presence—no doubt a humiliating and psychologically distressing experience.
Sports is the policy area where public opinion shifted earliest and most clearly against gender ideology. A 2022 Pew poll, for example, found that while only 46 percent of American adults agreed that it should be illegal for kids to receive “gender-affirming care,” and 41 percent agreed that schools should not “teach about gender identity in elementary schools,” 58 percent said that athletes should compete in the category of their sex. A 2023 Gallup poll found that public support for sex-based athletics had risen to 69 percent.
By January 2025, a New York Times/Ipsos poll reported, 79 percent of Americans agreed that “athletes who were male at birth but who currently identify as female” should not be eligible for female sports. That includes 94 percent of Republican or Republican-leaning respondents, 67 percent of Democrat or Democrat-leaning respondents, and 64 percent of Independents. (For unclear reasons, 26 percent of Independents refused to answer this question.)
Democrats seeking an off-ramp from gender ideology understandably cling to sports. Following the Democrats’ defeat on November 5 and emerging evidence that Trump’s campaign ads on trans issues shifted voters in some states 2.7 points toward him, Massachusetts representative Seth Moulton decided to break the silence. “I have two little girls,” he told the New York Times. “I don’t want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete. But as a Democrat, I’m supposed to be afraid to say that.”
Moulton faced immediate backlash within his own state, but virtually every elected Democrat in the country knows that he’s right. Gender ideology is a major liability for the Democratic Party, which, if it wishes to become competitive again, will have to figure out a way to shake loose of the influence of activist NGOs. These groups are run by ideologues, who, unlike elected representatives, have no incentive to moderate their position.
It’s hard to think of another issue in contemporary American politics where the American public is split 80-20. President Trump’s directive on women’s sports may be one of the most popular executive orders of the twenty-first century.
Photo by Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images
