Trump says transgender athletes will not be permitted entry to 2028 Olympic Games

President Trump signed an executive order Wednesday barring transgender athletes from competing in girls’ and women’s sports, fulfilling a key campaign promise that also could complicate the nation’s role as host of the next Summer Olympics.

At a signing ceremony in Washington on Wednesday, Trump said his administration will not allow transgender athletes to compete in the Summer Games, which are set to take place in Los Angeles in 2028.

“We’re just not going to let it happen,” Trump said Wednesday, flanked by supporters including Riley Gaines, a former collegiate swimmer who has crisscrossed the nation testifying against policies that allow transgender athletes to compete in women’s sports. “It’s ending right now, and nobody’s going to be able to damn thing about it because when I speak, we speak with authority.”

An administration official told reporters earlier Wednesday that Trump’s order would target visas issued to professional and elite transgender athletes traveling to the U.S. to compete in women’s athletics competitions.

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“If you are coming into the country and you are claiming that you are a woman, but you are a male here to compete against women, we’re going to be reviewing that for fraud,” the official said.

Trump on Wednesday repeated the false claim that two female boxers who competed in last year’s Paris Games, Imane Khelif of Algeria, where it is not legal for a person to change their gender, and Lin Yu-ting of Taiwan, are transgender.

“Who could forget last year’s Paris Olympics, where a male boxer stole the woman’s gold medal after brutalizing his female opponent?” Trump said, referring to an Olympic bout between Khelif and Italy’s Angela Carini that ended in less than a minute and helped ignite a firestorm over Khelif’s gender identity.

Wednesday’s order directs the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to review the nation’s visa policies “to address males falsely asserting they are females when entering the United States to compete in women’s sports,” according to a fact sheet. It charges DHS Secretary Kristi Noem with issuing guidance to prevent “such entry to the extent permitted by law.”

The State Department has similarly stopped issuing U.S. passports with “X” gender markers and suspended processing applications from Americans seeking to update their passports with a new gender marker.

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Trump’s executive order charges Secretary of State Marco Rubio with demanding changes within the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to bar transgender athletes from single-sex sports. As a Florida Republican senator, Rubio had said the concept of gender identity is “unscientific, subjective, and political.”

The IOC issued new guidelines for transgender and intersex athletes in 2021, abandoning a prior framework that required competing athletes to undergo hormone treatments and procedures the new policy called “medically unnecessary.” The 2021 guidelines are not legally binding and are meant to help international sporting bodies determine eligibility criteria. 

The IOC, headquartered in Switzerland, did not immediately return a request for comment on Trump’s executive order or his remarks on the Summer Games.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Wednesday that Trump expects the Olympic Committee and the NCAA, which governs intercollegiate athletics at more than 1,000 colleges and universities across the country, to ban transgender athletes from women’s sports.

“The president, with the signing of his pen, starts a very public pressure campaign on these organizations to do the right thing for women and for girls across the country,” she said.

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Testifying before a Senate panel in December, NCAA President Charlie Baker said there are fewer than 10 transgender athletes he is aware of who currently compete in college sports, accounting for .002 percent of NCAA athletes nationwide. Baker said he would be willing to work with Congress to create a “federal standard” for eligibility in college sports.

According to Wednesday’s order, Rubio should also promote “international rules and norms governing sports competition to protect a sex-based female sports category” at the United Nations.

The order also requires the Justice Department (DOJ) to take immediate action, including enforcement actions, against schools and athletic associations that allow transgender girls and women to access sports teams and facilities like locker rooms that match their gender identity. The DOJ should abide by the nationwide vacatur of Title IX rules instituted by the Biden administration, which included protections for gender identity and sexual orientation for the first time.

“We are putting every school receiving taxpayer dollars on notice: 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,” Trump said Wednesday.

The order also calls for major athletic associations and governing bodies to convene at the White House to hear, in person, stories from female athletes who have been harmed or physically injured by a transgender athlete. State attorneys general will also be responsible for highlighting those accounts and identifying best practices to guarantee equal opportunities for women in sports.

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Trump’s order coincides with National Girls and Women in Sports Day, which is recognized annually in February to celebrate the accomplishments of female athletes. The Women’s Sports Foundation, which co-founded National Girls and Women in Sports Day in 1987, has opposed categorical bans on transgender athletes, saying such policies “limit opportunities and harm the development of both cisgender and transgender girls and women.”

The organization, founded by tennis legend and equal rights advocate Billie Jean King, who has also voiced strong opposition to policies barring trans athletes from sports, did not immediately return a request for comment on Trump’s order.

In a statement, Kelly Robinson, president of the Human Rights Campaign, a national LGBTQ advocacy group, said the order is part of a broader administration effort to “distract and divide” the country.

“We all want sports to be fair, students to be safe, and young people to have the opportunity to participate alongside their peers,” Robinson said. “But an attempted blanket ban deprives kids of those things. This order could expose young people to harassment and discrimination, emboldening people to question the gender of kids who don’t fit a narrow view of how they’re supposed to dress or look.”

Arguing against a proposal to ban transgender student-athletes from girls’ and women’s sports in January, House Democrats said such legislation would inevitably fuel speculation about whether female athletes look feminine enough to compete in women’s sports without having their gender questioned.

Since returning to office on Jan. 20, Trump has signed a string of executive orders targeting transgender rights, including one declaring the government recognizes only two sexes, male and female, and broadly preventing federal dollars from being used for what he and his administration call “gender ideology.”

Other orders seek to bar transgender people from serving openly in the military and defund schools that promote “gender ideology,” which the White House has broadly defined as “an ever-shifting concept of self-assessed gender identity.” A Jan. 28 executive order aims to end federal support for gender-affirming care for transgender minors, which the order says includes 19-year-olds.

Updated at 5:57 p.m. EST

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