Latest news with #DukeLawSchool
The Sun
5 days ago
- Health
- The Sun
Why Imane Khelif is likely to KEEP Olympic gold medal despite leaked document ‘proving boxer is biological male'
IMANE KHEIF is likely to KEEP the Olympic gold medal - despite being hit with fresh accusations of being a biological male. Khelif won gold for Algeria at the Paris Games in 2024 - a year after being banned from International Boxing Association competition. 1 In 2023, the IBA banned Khelif after tests taken in New Delhi allegedly produced the DNA of a 'male'. The IOC - who replaced the IBA as the Olympic's boxing governing body - were warned about the tests and urged to remove Khelif from the competition. But Khelif was allowed to box in Paris because of her female passport status. Since then, the alleged sex-test results from the 2023 World Championships have been published for the first time by 3 Wire Sports. The medical report appears to indicate that the boxer is biologically male. American journalist Alan Abrahamson produced the result of a test said to have been carried out on the boxer in New Delhi in March 2023 - which triggered the boxer's disqualification. The document published summarises the findings on Khelif as 'abnormal', stating: 'Chromosome analysis reveals male karyotype." A karyotype refers to an individual's complete set of chromosomes, which in Khelif's case has been reported by (IBA) as being XY, the male pattern. The leaked medical reports have sparked calls for Khelif to be stripped of the gold medal she won in the women's 66 kg category. However, Doraine Lambelet Coleman - a Thomas L. Perkins Distinguished Professor of Laws at Duke Law School - explained why that is unlikely. Trump rips into boxer Imane Khelif about controversial Olympics win against Angela Carini The legal expert told Newsweek: "The IOC would not revoke medals won by athletes who were eligible according to the rules it set for the boxing competition in Paris. "Unlike the eligibility rules set by the IBA and now World Boxing, those rules did not require competitors to be biologically female." The alleged test results carry the letterhead of Dr Lal PathLabs in New Delhi, accredited by the American College of Pathologists and certified by the Swiss-based International Organisation for Standardisation. This directly challenges what IOC spokesman Mark Adams said in a tense news conference at the Paris Olympics. He described the results that saw Khelif banned as 'ad hoc' and 'not legitimate'. IOC president Thomas Bach even claimed that the results are the product of a Russian-led misinformation campaign. It followed after the IBA - headed by Russia's Umar Kremlev - had been stripped of IOC recognition in a row over ethics and financial management. Khelif has always denied being a biological male and even named JK Rowling and Elon Musk in a cyberbullying lawsuit. And the 26-year-old has vowed to fight on, even eyeing another gold at the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles. 'Silence is no longer an option' But World Boxing has ruled that Khelif is ineligible to enter future events as a woman without first submitting to the same chromosome testing that has already triggered the boxer's disqualification at global level. The governing body - provisionally approved to run Olympic boxing in LA - announced that all athletes in its competitions over 18 years old must undergo a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) genetic test to determine their sex. The test detects chromosomal material through a mouth swab, saliva or blood. Khelif has failed to provide any evidence of having female chromosomes in the nine months since the gender scandal erupted. In February, Khelif spoke out in her defence and wrote: 'For two years, I have taken the high road while my name and image have been used, unauthorised, to further personal and political agendas through the spreading and dissemination of baseless lies and misinformation. But silence is no longer an option. 'The IBA, an organisation that I am no longer associated with and which is no longer recognised by the IOC, have again made baseless accusations that are false and offensive, using them to further their agenda. "This is a matter that concerns not just me but the broader principles of fairness and due process in sport. 'My team is carefully reviewing the situation and will take all necessary legal steps to ensure that my rights and the principles of fair competition are upheld. "Those responsible for these actions must be held accountable, and we will pursue all legal avenues to ensure that justice prevails.' An IOC spokesperson told Sun Sport: "The IOC has always made it clear that eligibility criteria are the responsibility of the respective International Federation. "The factors that matter to sports performance are unique to each sport, discipline, and/or event. "We await the full details how sex testing will be implemented in a safe, fair and legally enforceable way."
Yahoo
30-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump's Brutal Immigration Agenda Has No Precedent
From the early days of state-based immigration policies to the explicitly racist Chinese exclusion laws of the 19th century, the systematic deportations of Mexican Americans in the mid-20th century to the hypercriminalization of immigration policy in recent decades, the United States has long been preoccupied with who can be included in our national story, who should be expelled from it, and what muscles the federal government should flex to achieve each goal. But after 100 days of Donald Trump's second term in office — a few short weeks marked by an increasingly aggressive authoritarian power grab and the racist dehumanization of migrants — even some experienced academics are struggling to express what has happened. 'The cruelty with which they're pursuing expulsion of immigrants is shocking even to me,' said Mae Ngai, an acclaimed historian at Columbia University who's spent decades studying the origins of America's immigration enforcement regime, including the creation of the concept of 'illegal aliens' itself. 'The principle of checks and balances ... that idea seems to have been thrown out the window,' said Emily Ryo, a scholar of immigration enforcement and the legal system at Duke Law School. She described what she saw as the administration's embrace of 'this view of unfettered executive power that appears to be crossing over onto more blatant disregard for the existing legal system that's in place — in rolling defiance of court rulings and court orders.''We may see a future where Trump decides to back down, so as not to burn the Constitution,' said Jeremy Slack, chair of the sociology and anthropology department at the University of Texas, El Paso, who's spent years surveying migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border about their experiences. 'I'm not super optimistic about that.' In conversations with HuffPost this month, scholars of immigration history and enforcement in the United States — historians, sociologists, legal theorists — rang alarm bells over what many described as generational abuses of power by Trump. They made clear that the tools at Trump's disposal — dehumanization, surveillance, detention, expulsion — have long been a part of presidents' arsenals. But they also distinguished what has made these past 100 days so extraordinary: Trump's aggressive seizure of power, and his disregard for anything that might restrain him. 'It's important to understand that we've never had a president who uses power, and instruments of power, in this way,' said Benny Andrés, a professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte who last year co-edited a special issue of the journal California History marking Border Patrol's 100th anniversary. 'No one has flaunted the traditions or authority like he has. He is purposefully stressing the system.' More than any specific policy, Trump's 'mass deportation' agenda is stressing the very foundations of America's constitutional system. Trump has sent at least 288 people who'd previously been living in the United States — mostly Venezuelans, some Salvadorans — to El Salvador's brutal Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT, despite several federal judges explicitly orderingotherwise. Thousands more could follow, and the administration has similarly used Guantánamo Bay to house migrants, echoing pastuses by presidents of both parties. CECOT is known for brutal conditions and unconditional life sentences. But none of the men sent there by the United States are being detained as the result of any actual conviction in a court of law. Several attorneys and legal scholars have told HuffPost the detainee transfers meet the definition of 'enforced disappearances' — where there's been no official acknowledgement by the Trump administration of who has been sent to CECOT, despite there being no trace of the men left in the United States. The men were hustled to the prison under a rarely used wartime power, the Alien Enemies Act, or after they'd received standard deportation orders from a judge. The Trump administration has argued — almost entirely without any evidence, let alone criminal charges — that the men are gangsters. On this say-so alone, they've disappeared to a foreign black site, perhaps forever. Even after the Supreme Court told the administration that a lower court was right to tell him to facilitate the return of one man in that group who'd had a protection against being deported to El Salvador specifically, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the administration has taken no action to bring him back. Alongside its use of CECOT, the administration has targeted visa holders and permanent residents who've called the United States home for years, seemingly only due to the nature of their politicalopinions. Often, these arrests are carried out with no warning, using masked agents who quickly whisk their subjects several states away, depriving them of ready access to their lawyers. (For many, this recalls the so-called Palmer Raids, when the federal government arrested thousands of Communists, anarchists, labor union members and others, and deported hundreds of them.) Thousands of student visa holders are said to have been impacted by Trump administration records purges, which threw their legal status in question. The administration has said it's paused those purges — for now. Trump has also sought to end birthright citizenship, the longstanding constitutional right that anyone born in America — with rare exceptions like the children of foreign diplomats — is a citizen here. In Trump's reading, this also excludes the children born in the United States to temporary visa holders. 'The piece that really jumps out to me is this idea that the law, and the actual legality of your [immigration] status does not matter,' Slack said. He pointed out that Vice President JD Vance has called people 'illegal' who are in fact here legally, and that the Trump administration has referred to anyone here in violation of immigration law — often only a civil offense, not a criminal one — as a criminal. The administration has even targeted people with open asylum cases, which under U.S. law entitle them to their day in court. 'You combine those two pieces, and it's basically giving a carte blanche to say, 'any immigrant is subject to anything we want at any time,'' he said. 'The prima facie assertion that somebody is illegal whenever we want, that's where it gets really scary, because it means that every immigrant is under threat.' Then there's the matter of the administration expelling U.S. citizens from the country. In three recent cases, the administration sent small children — one of them a 4-year-old cancer patient — to Honduras along with their mothers despite the children being U.S. citizens. Historians have estimated that hundreds of thousands of U.S. citizens, mostly of Mexican descent, were similarly sent out of the country during the 20th century. Throughout history, 'we as a country are weirdly comfortable with that sort of functional removal of U.S. citizens, but this looks different,' said Jennifer Chacón, a professor at Stanford Law School who focuses on immigration law, constitutional law and criminal law and procedure. 'If you know this is a citizen, and you know you shouldn't be willy-nilly removing citizens, it seems like you then take the time to figure out if there is in fact a family member in the United States with whom the citizen child can remain.' Chacón argued that the lack of due process rights for people facing expulsion from the country, combined with the lack of investigation or accountability over 'mistakes' made by immigration agents, is a dangerous combination. 'If there's no cost for error, and there's no procedural protection, then it seems to me that anybody is at risk, particularly people who are vocally critical, particularly people who are a thorn in the side, particularly people who fit phenotypically or descriptively into categories that the administration has labeled 'dangerous' and 'poisonous to the blood,'' she said. Alongside the administration's attacks on individual legal rights, it's also gone after the legal process itself, attacking legal aid funding for unaccompanied migrant children, singling out immigration attorneys in an executive order, and pursuing a retribution campaign to target several large law firms whose employees often take on immigration cases pro bono. A key official has threatened a member of Congress with criminal prosecution for merely holding 'know-your-rights' workshops. FBI agents recently arrested a state judge over thin allegations she helped an undocumented man evade arrest. '[Between] trying to block federal funding from sanctuary jurisdictions, and now trying to go after lawyers who are suing them, they're really trying to shut down the points of resistance that worked in the first Trump administration,' said Margot Moinester, a professor of sociology at Washington University in St. Louis who focuses on U.S. immigration enforcement. Referring to attacks on the legal profession, Ryo, of Duke, said she was 'already seeing what kind of trickle-down effect that's having, because we're already seeing law firms pull back on that type of [immigration] work that they have been doing, due to fear of retaliation.' For Andrés, the most notable part of the administration's enforcement agenda has been the near-silence of its co-equal branch: Congress. Other significant enforcement shifts in U.S. history have come through legislation, he said; 1920s legislation was 'discussed, debated, reported' publicly for years. Now, he says, Congress is 'not functioning,' and has not provided any meaningful check against Trump. Chacón similarly described a 'totally dysfunctional, non-functioning, non-entity legislative branch.' 'This is, to me, the most dangerous, the most alarming outcome of the last three months,' Andrés said. To understand Trump's immigration enforcement agenda, it's crucial to understand U.S. immigration history. For decades, politicians of both parties have built up the government's ability to detain and deport people on a massive scale, setting the stage for Trump to push the envelope even further. The federal government was largely uninvolved in immigration enforcement for the country's first 100 years. In the late 19th century, responding to a generation of Chinese immigrants and the nativist reaction that followed, Congress passed a slew of laws meant to exclude Chinese people. The 1924 Johnson-Reed Act, passed during the height of the eugenics movement, later set quotas for immigrants of each nationality based on the 1890 census, disproportionately impacting southern and eastern Europeans. The 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act redefined immigration qualifications, replacing national quotas with family- and skills-based criteria. In 1996, President Bill Clinton signed the law that arguably shaped our current situation more than any other — the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, or IIRIRA. 'Ira Ira,' as it's called, expanded the grounds on which longstanding U.S. residents could be deported, and made it much harder for people to 'legalize' their U.S. presence. Deportations spiked dramatically. The most recent immigration enforcement legislation to become law is the Laken Riley Act, which adds even more grounds for the mandatory detention of undocumented people. Now, even someone simply accused of shoplifting must be detained. The bill received the votes of 12 Senate Democrats in former President Joe Biden's final days, and was signed into law a week into Trump's second term. 'The No. 1 thing that's been driving deportations [in recent history] is the expansion of who lives in the United States who's vulnerable to it, and also, how the federal government has expanded its capacity to find and apprehend people,' said Moinester, who has written about a 'control boom' – the process of American immigration enforcement growing more punitive, expanding 'the specter of deportability and, in turn, social control.' As the rules changed, so did their enforcers. Initially, immigration matters were handled by the states, then the Treasury Department and then the Department of Labor. Eventually, the Justice Department took over. After Sept. 11, 2001, immigration enforcement was consolidated in the Department of Homeland Security, and funding went up massively, as did the use of for-profit prisons. What was once a local economic and labor concern had now 'come to be seen as a matter of national defense,' said Jonathan Cortez, a professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin. In the early 20th century, 'the United States, for the most part, saw immigration as an act of good faith — as an act of coming to the United States mostly for economic promise,' Cortez said. As the decades progressed, 'policies against immigrants became harsher' Trump's immediate predecessors played key roles expanding what some call the U.S. 'deportation machine.' President Barack Obama still holds the single-term record for most interior deportations in modern U.S. history, which he achieved largely through extensive cooperation with local police departments. (Opposition to that record gave rise to the modern swell in so-called 'sanctuary cities,' where local policy restricts cooperation with immigration agents.) Biden, for his part, set onerous new restrictions on pursuing asylum at the southern border, which did dramatically cut down on unauthorized border crossings — but also provided legal precedent for Trump's even-more-extreme crackdown on asylum. Notably, a recent DHS memo explained that immigration agents would not affirmatively ask people whether they were afraid of being deported to a given 'third country,' or a country other than that of their original citizenship. Critics have said this practice, which also occurred during the Biden administration, means that migrants who are unaware of their ability to express a fear of being deported could be deported to dangerous situations. The Trump policy cited a June 2024 regulation – one that was issued pursuant to Biden's asylum crackdown. Trump's second term expands on the inheritance he's received from past presidents and legislators. For example, Trump has demanded that every undocumented person in the country register with the government, information that will almost certainly be used to target people for deportation, while threatening criminal charges against those who don't sign up. It may be a Trumpian ploy to pursue criminal charges against vast numbers of people, but it also relies on a seldom-used portion of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952. (President Harry Truman vetoed that legislation, but Congress overrode him with a two-thirds majority.) Trump's effort to further deputize local law enforcement to do ICE's bidding is part of what's known as the 287(g) program, which was signed into law by Bill Clinton, in 1996's IIRIRA. And Trump's 'border czar' Tom Homan is an Obama administration alumni. Trump has also exploited existing weaknesses in protections against deportation for migrants. In particular, the Biden administration offered temporary parole protections for hundreds of thousands of people who sought to come into the country legally — protections Trump is now working to strip away. For example, the Biden administration used a phone app, CBP One, to allow migrants to schedule appointments at ports of entry and enter the United States under a temporary parole program. Biden also offered temporary parole for migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela — 'CHNV,' as the program is short-handed — if they arranged for their own travel, arranged for a U.S. sponsor and passed background checks. Trump has sought to reverse both programs, though like many other initiatives he's faced court battles. He eliminated CBP One on his first day — anyone with the app still on their phone will find that it was transformed last month into a platform to schedule 'self-deportation.' More broadly, Trump began his second term with a flood of executive actions, all but shutting down the U.S. refugee program — except, eventually, for white South Africans — and reversing Biden-era guidelines that prioritized immigration enforcement against people deemed public safety threats. On top of his attacks on parole recipients, Trump has also gone after thousands of Venezuelans, Haitians and Afghans who've received 'temporary protected status,' which covers countries with extreme political or environmental instability. And he's pulled scores of federal agents — from the IRS, DEA, even State Department diplomatic special agents — off of other jobs and onto immigration enforcement, empowering them to enter schools and churches to make arrests. And, like in his first term, he's pushed to use so-called 'expedited removal' to quickly deport people who've been in the country for any less than two years, without a hearing — rather than the old standard of 14 days. In Trump's first 100 days, he's stuffed U.S. immigration jails full. As of earlier this month, nearly 48,000 people were in ICE detention, a six-year high, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. Many of these moves recall Trump's first term, which also included a policy of systematically separating children from their parents at the border, and a U.S. travel ban for people from several Muslim-majority countries. (A similar travel ban policy is in the works again.) And there's no doubt that Trump came to power on Jan. 20, 2025, with a mandate from voters to focus on immigration. Trump ran on a 'mass deportation' platform inspired by a similar program during President Dwight D. Eisenhower's tenure, which was named after a slur and marked by blatant cruelty and violations of rights. And Trump won, securing not only the Electoral College, but also the plurality of the popular vote. But this is another point that concerns historians. Trump's mandate is based on the persistent, racist dehumanization of immigrants, who he said were 'poisoning the blood' of the nation with 'bad genes' and diseases. In an effort to deprive immigrants of public benefits, he's even literally dehumanized them — digitally 'killing' them off of Social Security rolls, even though immigrants without status still pay taxes. Like prior anti-immigrant movements, Trump has blamed migrants for the economic displacement of U.S. workers affected by broader market forces, Ngai said. 'It's very frightening and sad that you have some section of the population who likes this, and like Trump because he's extreme, outrageous,' she said, likening images of CECOT detainees having their heads shaved after being sent there by the United States to Nazi propaganda. 'It's totally chilling.' On Monday night, Trump showed some of the CECOT imagery at a rally, as thousands of his supporters cheered on. What is there to do in the face of a racist, authoritarian government seemingly dead set on pursuing 'mass deportation' without protecting the legal rights of its residents, regardless of their legal status? Ngai and others said history showed a way forward. 'I do believe that any time we've had reform in immigration policy, it's because the immigrants themselves, and their communities, are organized,' she said, noting the success of activists to achieve immigration reform in the 1960s. 'We shouldn't discount the organizing capacity of immigrant communities.' Chacón, of Stanford Law School, said that given the administration's apparent disregard for the courts, public pressure was crucial. 'I think they've already indicated that it is not the law that holds them, it is the public response that holds them accountable,' she said. 'I guess I'm already past the point where I'm wondering, 'Is the administration going to comply with the law or not?'' Instead, she said, it appears that 'this is an administration that will respond to public pressure, and maybe won't respond to much else.' A Federal Judge Paused A Florida Immigration Law. The Arrests Continued Anyway. Appeals Court Calls Trump's Defiance 'Shocking' In Scathing Ruling Judge Opens Criminal Contempt Proceedings Against Trump Officials A Venezuelan Man Said He Would 'Go Home.' The Trump Administration Sent Him To CECOT. Lawyers Are Sounding The Alarm About Trump Disappearing People
Los Angeles Times
05-02-2025
- Politics
- Los Angeles Times
Trump plans to bar transgender female athletes from competing in women's or girls' sporting events
President Trump will sign an executive order on Wednesday designed to prevent people who were biologically assigned male at birth from participating in women's or girls' sporting events. The order, which Trump is expected to sign at an afternoon ceremony, marks another aggressive shift by the Republican president's second administration in the way the federal government deals with transgender people and their rights. The president put out a sweeping order on his first day in office last month that called for the federal government to define sex as only male or female and for that to be reflected on official documents such as passports and in policies such as federal prison assignments. Trump found during the campaign that his pledge to 'keep men out of women's sports' resonated beyond the usual party lines. More than half the voters surveyed by AP VoteCast said support for transgender rights in government and society has gone too far. He leaned into the rhetoric before the election, pledging to get rid of the 'transgender insanity,' though his campaign offered little in the way of details. Wednesday's order — which coincides with National Girls and Women in Sports Day — will involve how his administration will interpret Title IX, the law best known for its role in pursuing gender equity in athletics and preventing sexual harassment on campuses. 'This executive order restores fairness, upholds Title IX's original intent, and defends the rights of female athletes who have worked their whole lives to compete at the highest levels,' said U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.). Every administration has the authority to issue its own interpretations of the landmark legislation. The last two presidential administrations — including Trump's first — offer a glimpse at the push-pull involved. Betsy DeVos, the education secretary during Trump's first term, issued a Title IX policy in 2020 that narrowed the definition of sexual harassment and required colleges to investigate claims only if they're reported to certain officials. The Biden administration rolled back that policy last April with one of its own that stipulated the rights of LGBTQ+ students would be protected by federal law and provided new safeguards for victims of campus sexual assault. The policy stopped short of explicitly addressing transgender athletes. Still, more than a half-dozen Republican-led states immediately challenged the new rule in court. 'All Trump has to say is, 'We are going to read the regulation traditionally,'' said Doriane Lambelet Coleman, a professor at Duke Law School. How this order could affect the transgender athlete population — a number that is incredibly difficult to pin down — is uncertain. The Associated Press reported in 2021 that in many cases, the states introducing a ban on transgender athletes could not cite instances where their participation was an issue. When Utah state legislators overrode a veto by Gov. Spencer Cox in 2022, the state had only one transgender girl playing in K-12 sports who would be affected by the ban. It did not regulate participation for transgender boys. 'This is a solution looking for a problem,' Cheryl Cooky, a professor at Purdue University who studies the intersection of gender, sports, media and culture, told the AP after Trump was elected. Yet the actual number of transgender athletes seems to be almost immaterial. Any case of a transgender female athlete competing — or even believed to be competing — draws outsized attention, from Lia Thomas swimming for the University of Pennsylvania to the recently completed season of the San José State volleyball team. Graves writes for the Associated Press.
Yahoo
05-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump will sign an executive order barring transgender female athletes from competing
President Donald Trump will sign an executive order on Wednesday designed to prevent people who were biologically assigned male at birth from participating in women's or girls' sporting events. The order, which Trump is expected to sign at an afternoon ceremony, marks another aggressive shift by the Republican president's second administration in the way the federal government deals with transgender people and their rights. The president put out a sweeping order on his first day in office last month that called for the federal government to define sex as only male or female and for that to be reflected on official documents such as passports and in policies such as federal prison assignments. Trump found during the campaign that his pledge to 'keep men out of women's sports' resonated beyond the usual party lines. More than half the voters surveyed by AP VoteCast said support for transgender rights in government and society has gone too far. He leaned into the rhetoric before the election, pledging to get rid of the 'transgender insanity,' though his campaign offered little in the way of details. Wednesday's order — which coincides with National Girls and Women in Sports Day — will involve how his administration will interpret Title IX, the law best known for its role in pursuing gender equity in athletics and preventing sexual harassment on campuses. 'This executive order restores fairness, upholds Title IX's original intent, and defends the rights of female athletes who have worked their whole lives to compete at the highest levels,' said U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace, a Republican from South Carolina. Every administration has the authority to issue its own interpretations of the landmark legislation. The last two presidential administrations — including Trump's first — offer a glimpse at the push-pull involved. Betsy DeVos, the education secretary during Trump's first term, issued a Title IX policy in 2020 that narrowed the definition of sexual harassment and required colleges to investigate claims only if they're reported to certain officials. The Biden administration rolled back that policy last April with one of its own that stipulated the rights of LGBTQ+ students would be protected by federal law and provided new safeguards for victims of campus sexual assault. The policy stopped short of explicitly addressing transgender athletes. Still, more than a half-dozen Republican-led states immediately challenged the new rule in court. 'All Trump has to say is, 'We are going to read the regulation traditionally,'' said Doriane Lambelet Coleman, a professor at Duke Law School. How this order could affect the transgender athlete population — a number that is incredibly difficult to pin down — is uncertain. The Associated Press reported in 2021 that in many cases, the states introducing a ban on transgender athletes could not cite instances where their participation was an issue. When Utah state legislators overrode a veto by Gov. Spencer Cox in 2022, the state had only one transgender girl playing in K-12 sports who would be affected by the ban. It did not regulate participation for transgender boys. 'This is a solution looking for a problem,' Cheryl Cooky, a professor at Purdue University who studies the intersection of gender, sports, media and culture, told the AP after Trump was elected. Yet the actual number of transgender athletes seems to be almost immaterial. Any case of a transgender female athlete competing — or even believed to be competing — draws outsized attention, from Lia Thomas swimming for the University of Pennsylvania to the recently completed season of the San Jose State volleyball team. Download the FREE Boston 25 News app for breaking news alerts. Follow Boston 25 News on Facebook and Twitter. | Watch Boston 25 News NOW
CBC
05-02-2025
- Politics
- CBC
Trump will ban transgender female athletes from women's sports in new executive order
Social Sharing U.S. President Donald Trump will sign an executive order on Wednesday designed to prevent people who were biologically assigned male at birth from participating in women's or girls' sporting events. The order, which Trump is expected to sign at an afternoon ceremony, marks another aggressive shift by the Republican president's second administration in the way that the federal government deals with transgender people and their rights. The president put out a sweeping order on his first day in office last month that called for the federal government to define sex as only male or female, and for that to be reflected on official documents, such as passports and in policies such as federal prison assignments. Trump found during the campaign that his pledge to "keep men out of women's sports" resonated beyond the usual party lines. More than half the voters surveyed by AP VoteCast said support for transgender rights in government and society has gone too far. He leaned into the rhetoric before the election, pledging to get rid of the "transgender insanity," though his campaign offered little in the way of details. WATCH | Breaking down Trump's executive order that there are only '2 genders': Breaking down Trump's 'two genders' executive order 12 days ago Duration 3:20 Wednesday's order — which coincides with National Girls and Women in Sports Day — will involve how his administration will interpret Title IX, the law best known for its role in pursuing gender equity in athletics and preventing sexual harassment on campuses. "This executive order restores fairness, upholds Title IX's original intent, and defends the rights of female athletes who have worked their whole lives to compete at the highest levels," said U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace, a Republican from South Carolina. 'A solution looking for a problem' Every administration has the authority to issue its own interpretations of the landmark legislation. The last two presidential administrations — including Trump's first — offer a glimpse at the push-pull involved. Betsy DeVos, the education secretary during Trump's first term, issued a Title IX policy in 2020 that narrowed the definition of sexual harassment and required colleges to investigate claims only if they're reported to certain officials. The Biden administration rolled back that policy last April with one of its own that stipulated the rights of 2SLGBTQ+ students would be protected by federal law and provided new safeguards for victims of campus sexual assault. The policy stopped short of explicitly addressing transgender athletes. Still, more than a half-dozen Republican-led states immediately challenged the new rule in court. "All Trump has to say is, 'We are going to read the regulation traditionally,'" said Doriane Lambelet Coleman, a professor at Duke Law School. How this order could affect the transgender athlete population — a number that is incredibly difficult to pin down — is uncertain. WATCH | What does Trump's order mean for trans rights? U.S. government will only recognize two sexes, Trump says. What does that mean for trans rights? 15 days ago Duration 5:46 U.S. President Donald Trump has announced his intention to roll back transgender rights and diversity, equity and inclusion policies. Queer rights lawyer barbara findlay, a member of the group Lawyers Against Transphobia, explains what the impact might be in Canada. The Associated Press reported in 2021 that in many cases, the states introducing a ban on transgender athletes could not cite instances where their participation was an issue. When Utah state legislators overrode a veto by Gov. Spencer Cox in 2022, the state had only one transgender girl playing in K-12 sports who would be affected by the ban. It did not regulate participation for transgender boys. "This is a solution looking for a problem," Cheryl Cooky, a professor at Purdue University who studies the intersection of gender, sports, media and culture, told the AP after Trump was elected. Yet the actual number of transgender athletes seems to be almost immaterial. Any case of a transgender female athlete competing — or even believed to be competing — draws outsized attention, from Lia Thomas swimming for the University of Pennsylvania to the recently completed season of the San Jose State volleyball team.
