Trump’s recent executive order banning biological males from female sports (“Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports,” issued on Feb. 5) will have an enormous positive effect on female safety and privacy, especially in high schools and universities. Yet it faces a major battle from the Left that values the fake femininity of “trans women” more than the safety and honor of real women. The Trump administration presents as justification for its actions the rightful contention that allowing “men to compete in women’s sports” is “demeaning, unfair, and dangerous to women and girls,” denying them “the equal opportunity to participate and excel in competitive sports” and the privacy afforded by “all-female locker rooms.” The Two-Pronged Declaration of Trump’s EO Banning Males From Female Sports The EO declares: It is the policy of the United States to rescind all funds from educational programs 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. There are two parts to this declaration. The first part, the most important part, establishes that the Executive Branch of the U.S. government will “rescind all funds” from schools and universities that allow males to participate in female sports. This includes a mandate to “prioritize Title IX enforcement actions against educational institutions (including athletic associations composed of or governed by such institutions) that [require] female students … to compete with or against or to appear unclothed before males.” The EO appeals to Title IX’s requirement that schools receiving federal funds provide female students with an equal opportunity to participate in sports. Does the Executive Order Affect All Schools? The threat of loss of federal funds should send shudders through the vast majority of colleges and universities that have permitted males in female sports, nearly all of whom are heavily dependent on federal funding (i.e., student loans, work-study, and scholarships; research and project grants; and contracts where the government purchases a good or service). Federal funding accounts for about 14 percent of all college revenue. It is a little more complicated for primary and secondary schools. Not all primary and secondary schools receive federal funds. The federal funding goes to school breakfast and lunch programs, education expenses for low-income students, special education funds, and Head Start. On average, federal funding accounts for 7-14 percent of total public school funding in any given year. But for any given school district the percentage can vary between 0 and 75 percent. So, some schools might continue abusing females by permitting biological males in their sports. But it would be difficult for the vast majority to continue their assault on female sports. The Impact of the EO on Athletics The EO doesn’t apply just to athletes from primary school to college. Per the second part of this EO, the Executive Branch will take measures “to oppose male competitive participation in women’s sports” beyond collegiate competition. This includes prohibiting “admission to the United States of males seeking to participate in women’s sports” (note that the 2028 Olympics will be held in Los Angeles). It also entails the intent to “promote, including at the United Nations, international rules and norms governing sports competition to protect a sex-based female sports category.” Finally, it involves “promoting” by “all appropriate and available measures” standards in “international athletic organizations and governing bodies,” including the International Olympic Committee, that ensure “participation in women’s sporting events is determined according to sex and not gender identity or testosterone reduction.” It is unclear from the EO what precisely is meant by “promoting” by “all appropriate and available measures,” beyond attempts by the federal government to “educate.” It remains to be seen how the Executive Branch can eliminate female-identifying males from U.S. professional sports or from international competition when U.S. athletes participate outside the U.S. Popular Move Trump’s action should be a wildly popular move. Although the leadership of the Democratic Party strongly supports female-identifying males in female sports, the vast majority of the American population does not. According to a January 2025 New York Times/Ipsos survey, 79 percent of respondents (including 67 percent of Democrat/Lean Democrat) think that female-identifying males “should not be allowed to compete in women’s sports.” On a related topic, 71 percent of respondents (including 54 percent of Democrat/Lean Democrat) think that “no one under age 18 should have access to puberty-blocking drugs or hormone therapy.” (RELATED: Trump Protects Children From Woke Abuse: New Executive Order Bans Chemical and Surgical Mutilation) Science and Safety Confirm the Correctness of the EO This should have been a no-brainer from the start. Real females can’t compete at the highest levels with real males in virtually every sport. “Males have inherent biological advantages, such as taller body height, … more muscle mass, greater muscle strength, larger hearts and lungs, higher maximal oxygen consumption, and stronger bones than similarly aged, gifted, and trained females.” A 2022 study on “Transwoman Elite Athletes” showed that “male physiology cannot be reformatted by estrogen therapy in transwoman athletes because testosterone has driven permanent effects through early life exposure.” Even in ultra-endurance events (well beyond, say, marathons), where females are most competitive with males, males still dominate. Thus, allowing males in female sports is simply unfair to female athletes. It is a form of cheating: Males who can’t compete at the highest level with other males find themselves applauded by the Left for taking awards away from real females (you can find examples here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here). A report cited in a 2024 United Nations study found that “by 30 March 2024, over 600 female athletes in more than 400 competitions have lost more than 890 medals in 29 different sports.” In June 2022 the Washington Stand found that “there have been over 30 separate girls’ and women’s sports titles that have been won by biological males (or have included biological men as part of a winning women’s team) in the last 19 years, with the trend accelerating exponentially in the past three years. There is now an online site cataloging male victories in female sports, appropriately called He Cheated. Yet having males in female sports is not only unfair but also unsafe. It increases injuries to females because of the differential in male strength over female strength (find examples here, here, here, here, here, and here). It also humiliates and embarrasses females by allowing males in female private spaces (locker rooms and shower facilities), where females are forced to both expose themselves to males and to witness male exposure to them. Swimmer Riley Gaines’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee in June 2023 expresses well the humiliation and injustice she had to endure in connection with female-identifying male “Lia” Thomas at the NCAA swimming championships. When Thomas’s female teammates at Cornell complained about his presence in their locker room and team, they were told by administrators to shut up or face athletic ruin. Immediate Positive Benefits of Trump’s EO A day after Trump’s EO was signed, it had the positive effect of the NCAA banning female-identifying males from competing in female sports. The regulating body for high school sports in Virginia also changed its policies to ban female-identifying males from female sports. Then three UPenn swimmers announced a lawsuit against UPenn and the Ivy League generally for allowing “Lia” Thomas to compete against them and win four first-place medals and set multiple records at the 2022 Ivy League women’s championships. On Feb. 11, Trump’s Department of Education wrote the NCAA and its counterpart for high schools (National Federation of High Schools), ordering them, in accord with Title IX’s protection of real female student-athletes, to strip female-identifying male athletes of their female awards and records and return them to the females who were deprived of these honors. All of this is great news. Backlash Against Trump’s EO Already a battle is shaping up between Democrat-controlled states and cities on the one hand and the Executive Branch on the other. For example, various school sports governing bodies have already indicated that, at least for the time being, they will continue to base participation in high school female sports on “gender identity,” in agreement with state anti-discrimination laws. This is the case with high school sports in Maine, Minnesota, California, and New Mexico; awaiting further guidance are Illinois and Michigan. We have the odd historical situation here where leftists are appealing to states’ rights. On Feb. 6, the U.S. Department of Education announced Title IX investigations at San Jose State University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association. On Feb. 12, it added the high school sports governing bodies in California and Minnesota. Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Craig Trainor warned these entities that they “are free to engage in all the meaningless virtue-signaling that they want, but at the end of the day they must abide by federal law.” All of this is heading for a battle in the courts. Three states (Arizona, Idaho, and West Virginia) have already appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn lower-court decisions that blocked new state laws banning “trans females” from participating in female sports. There is speculation that the Court is delaying these appeals until its ruling in United States v. Skrmetti is issued in May-June. This case involves the Biden administration’s challenge of a Tennessee law that banned the dispensing of puberty blockers and cross-gender hormones to minors. The Trump administration filed a statement with the Court saying it no longer regards the Tennessee law as unconstitutional but still wants the Court to rule on the case (assuming it will rule the Tennessee law to be constitutional). (RELATED: In Transgender Case, Can SCOTUS Cut to the Moral Heart of the Issue?) Added to the mix is a New Hampshire lawsuit filed by the families of two transgender high school athletes in a federal court, at first challenging a New Hampshire law banning eligibility based on “gender identity” rather than biological sex, but now, since Feb. 12, also suing the Trump administration over Trump’s Executive Order banning males in female sports and his Executive Order recognizing only two sexes based on capacity to produce sperm cells or egg cells. (RELATED: 3 Major New Developments in Trump’s Battle Against Transgender Tyranny) The Supreme Court’s “Bostock Problem” If the U.S. Supreme Court is to side with Trump’s “gender identity” executive orders, it will have to shift from its decision in Bostock v. Clayton County (2020) where Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for the majority, treated “sex” in Title VII employment non-discrimination law as including “gender identity” and “sexual orientation.” Gorsuch developed a nonsensical, anti-reproductive-reality “swap-sexes rule” (my term) about “sex” that takes no account of the biological differences between male and female: Whatever is allowed to one sex has to be permitted to the other otherwise, it is sex discrimination. Gorsuch adopted that very principle in Bostock: “An employer who fires an individual … for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex” is making “sex play a … role in the decision, exactly what Title VII forbids.” As an example, he argued that if a woman could have a male sex partner, so too a man must be allowed to have a male sex partner. If a woman was allowed to dress in women’s clothes, so too a man must be allowed to dress in women’s clothes. Yet, by this “reasoning,” all men (not just “trans females”) would have to be permitted in female restrooms, locker rooms, and sports, just as biological women are so permitted. Otherwise, per Gorsuch’s logic, a male is being discriminated against for doing something that is permitted of a female. It is an elementary logical misstep, but Gorsuch committed it because he took no account of objective, biological differences between the sexes. Will the two half-conservatives on the Court, Gorsuch and Chief Justice John Roberts (who joined Gorsuch’s Bostock majority opinion), have the humility and courage to step back from such ridiculous reasoning? One can hope, but other trans-supportive decisions of Gorsuch undermine that hope. If Trump’s ban on males in female sports ultimately prevails, it will do so only after obstacles set up by leftist District Court judges (for one such example go here) are overcome. Victory can only come, if at all, with the kind of determination and grit exhibited thus far by the Trump administration. READ MORE from Robert Gagnon: 3 Major New Developments in Trump’s Battle Against Transgender Tyranny Leftist Bishop Gets Her Bible Wrong: Falsely Attacked Trump at Inauguration Interfaith Service Trump Protects Children From Woke Abuse: New Executive Order Bans Chemical and Surgical Mutilation Trump’s Executive Order Ends ‘Trans’ Tyranny and Protects Females The post Trump’s Ban on Males in Female Sports: What It Does, Why It’s Justified, and the Left’s Outrage. appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.