Rep. Sarah McBride, D-Del., the first openly transgender member of Congress, called President Donald Trump’s executive order proclaiming there are only two sexes that are not changeable “red meat for his extreme base.”
“This is red meat for the online trolls who are doing his bidding every single day, but this is not what the American people want,” McBride told NBC Philadelphia on Tuesday. “They want a federal government that, one, respects everyone across all of our differences, but also a federal government that’s focused like a laser on lowering costs for workers, and that is not what this executive action does. And frankly, it’s really not what any of the executive actions that this president has put forward will do.”
Trump signed dozens of executive orders Monday, just hours after his inauguration, including one titled “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.” The order declares that the U.S. government will recognize only two sexes, male and female, and that “these sexes are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality.”
The order directs the secretaries of state and homeland security to “implement changes to require that government-issued identification documents, including passports, visas, and Global Entry cards, accurately reflect the holder’s sex,” as defined by the order.
The action also broadly bars federal funds from being used “to promote gender ideology,” which it says “replaces the biological category of sex with an ever-shifting concept of self-assessed gender identity, permitting the false claim that males can identify as and thus become women and vice versa, and requiring all institutions of society to regard this false claim as true.”
The order also prohibits the Bureau of Prisons from providing transition-related medical care to trans inmates — a policy that runs contrary to some court decisions within the last few years.
During a call with reporters Monday morning, incoming White House officials said the order will ensure that taxpayer funds “are not being used to have so-called transition services,” and that women’s prisons, migrant shelters and rape shelters will be separated based on sex assigned at birth, barring trans women from women’s prisons and shelters.
McBride conceded that the actions taken as a result of Trump’s executive order related to gender could “have real consequences for people.” She said they could harm LGBTQ people’s privacy and access to accurate identity documents, and that federal programs could be affected.
However, she said that the Supreme Court has “made clear that LGBTQ people are protected under federal civil rights laws, and an executive action can’t undo that Supreme Court precedent.”
“As much as this president seeks to protest to the contrary, he can’t, with a single stroke of his pen, undo Supreme Court precedent or undo the Constitution,” she said.
McBride appeared to be referring to the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia, in 2020, which granted LGBTQ people protection from employment discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Trump’s executive order pertaining to gender also referenced that high court precedent, noting that the Biden administration applied its logic to Title IX — a federal law that prohibits sex discrimination in federally funded schools and education programs — to ensure that trans students could use the restrooms of their gender identity.
“This position is legally untenable and has harmed women,” the order says. “The Attorney General shall therefore immediately issue guidance to agencies to correct the misapplication of the Supreme Court’s decision in Bostock v. Clayton County (2020) to sex-based distinctions in agency activities.”
Though Trump’s order will have effects on trans people, McBride said no policy “can erase the reality of diversity across gender in our society” and “no executive action can erase the LGBTQ community.”
