Donald Trump has signed an executive order banning all transgender athletes from competing in girl’s and women’s sports.

Trump’s order “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports,” aims to grant federal agencies the ability to review funding to high schools, universities and grassroot sporting events. “With this executive order, the war on women’s sports is over,” Trump said at the signing ceremony at the East Room of the White House.

He was surrounded by girls as well as lawmakers and female athletes who were supportive of the ban, including swimmer Riley Gaines. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the order “upholds the promise of Title IX” and will require “immediate action, including enforcement actions, against schools and athletic associations” that do not allow single-sex sports or single-sex locker rooms for women.

Title IX is a federal law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in education programmes that receive federal funding. Trump added: “If you let men take over women’s sports teams or invade your locker rooms, you will be investigated for violations of Title IX and risk your federal funding.”

Read Also: Donald Trump to be sworn in as US president today

He added the order would cover the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles and would deny visas for transgender athletes hoping to take part in the games. White House officials have said the move is popular with Americans and argued the order would ensure “fairness” in women’s sports.

According to a 2023 Gallup poll, 69 per cent of respondents believe transgender athletes should be able to play on teams that match the gender they were assigned to at birth. Only 29 per cent of respondents said transgender athletes should be able to play on teams that match their gender identity.

Enforcing the order will be a priority for the Education Department as it works to penalise schools that allow transgender athletes to compete. The department has already opened an inquiry into public schools in Denver, Colorado, that replaced a girl’s bathroom with an all-gender one despite leaving another exclusive to boys.

But Human Rights Campaign, a US-based LGBTQ advocacy group, president Kelley Robinson said the order “exposes young people to harassment and discrimination.” She added the order would also result in “emboldening people to question the gender of kids who don’t fit a narrow view of how they’re supposed to dress or look.”

According to a 2022 Williams Institute study, only 1.6 million people (or 0.6 per cent) of people in the US aged 13 and over identify as transgender. This also includes 1.4 per cent of youth aged between 13 and 17.

The executive order is one of several signed by Trump since he took office last month. Many of his orders have been challenged in the courts.

Newsnow

US President Donald Trump on Tuesday signed an executive order withdrawing Washington from a number of United Nations bodies, including its Human Rights Council (UNHRC), and setting up a broader review of US funding for the multilateral organization.

The executive order said it withdrew Washington from UNHRC and the main UN relief agency for Palestinians (UNRWA), and would review involvement in the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

The moves were made in protest against what White House staff secretary Will Scharf described as “anti-American bias” at the UN agencies.

The 47 members of the UN Human Rights Council are elected by the General Assembly to three-year terms, with the United States ending its latest term on December 31. It currently has observer status at the body.

Tuesday’s order would appear to end all US participation in the council’s activities, which include reviews of countries’ human rights records and specific allegations of rights abuses.

“More generally, the executive order calls for review of American involvement and funding in the UN in light of the wild disparities and levels of funding among different countries,” said Scharf.

Trump highlighted the “tremendous potential” of the UN but said it is “not being well run.”

Read Also: ‘Trump plans large immigration raid in Chicago on Tuesday’

“It should be funded by everybody, but we’re disproportionate, as we always seem to be,” he said.

Trump has long railed against Washington’s levels of funding of multilateral bodies, calling for other countries to increase their contributions, notably at military alliance NATO.

UNRWA is the chief aid agency for Palestinians, with many of the 1.9 million people displaced by the war in Gaza dependent on its deliveries for survival.

Under Trump, Washington has backed a move by Israel to ban the agency, after the US ally accused UNRWA of spreading hate material.

US funding of UNRWA was halted in January 2024 by the administration of then-president Joe Biden after Israel accused 12 of its employees of involvement in Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack.

A series of probes found some “neutrality related issues” at UNRWA, but found no evidence for Israel’s chief allegations, and most other donors that had similarly suspended funding resumed their financial support.

Earlier in his latest term, Trump also withdrew from the Paris climate accord and began withdrawing from the World Health Organization, of which it is the largest donor.

Each of the withdrawals has been a repeat of the Republican billionaire’s first term in office, which ended in 2021.

AFP