While a newly elected president should prioritize unity, Trump began his presidency by signing executive orders that deepened division. Most recently, Trump has attacked the transgender community, as he aims to prohibit transgender girls from using women’s restrooms and participating in girls’ sports. 

The signing ceremony of this executive order created a dangerously false narrative of the threat transgender athletes pose to women’s sports. President Trump, surrounded by young girls, framed this order as protecting women and instilling fairness in women’s sports. The order claims to reverse the “Biden Administration’s war on women,” which created rules that were “demeaning, unfair, and dangerous to women and girls.” As the girls and their families clapped and cheered upon Trump signing the order, he proclaimed,  “Now you’re going to go out there and win those events.” 

The idea that transgender athletes pose a threat to cisgender women in sports is completely false. However, Trump and his allies consistently reinforce false claims to generate public outrage over this topic. He has repeatedly lied that Algerian boxer Imane Khelif is transgender, claiming that Khelif “brutaliz[ed] his female opponent so viciously that she had to forfeit just after 46 seconds.” In reality, Khelif was born female and has always competed in women’s sports; however, Trump relies on this inflammatory rhetoric to justify his discriminatory policies against the transgender community. 

Furthermore, less than ten out of 510,000 college athletes are transgender, and 3% of students nationwide identify as transgender. However, Trump made this issue the forefront of his campaign and now his administration. In his campaign closing arguments, he vowed to keep “transgender insanity the hell out of our schools,” and “men out of women’s sports.” While small issues matter, this is a non issue. Transgender athletes are simply the victim of Trump’s political movement to invalidate those in the LGBTQ+ community. 

By excluding transgender students from participating in sports, Trump is not only discriminating against those who identify as transgender but is directly harming those students’ lives. Students in the LGBTQ+ community are more likely to be bullied than cisgender youth. In 2020, the Human Rights Campaign found that 29% of transgender youth have been threatened or injured with a weapon on school property. However, youth sports offer benefits to transgender students. Transgender student-athletes experience higher academic performance, lower depression rates, and greater feelings of safety when they are allowed to participate in a sport aligned with their gender identity. If Trump genuinely cared about the safety of the youth, he wouldn’t aim to bar students from participating in extracurricular activities that have health and academic benefits.

Furthermore, the impact of such discriminatory policies  does not make cisgender girls safer, as Trump claims. State bans in the past have led to the harassment of cisgendered girls who do not conform to traditional gender norms. In Florida, for example, a girl was harassed at a lacrosse game because she had short hair. In Utah, a school board member falsely claimed that a girl on the basketball team was transgender, triggering hateful comments. This claim that somehow banning transgender kids from participating in school sports benefits the safety of any student could not be more inaccurate. Trump is using that as a guise behind his real motive: excluding and delegitimizing the transgender community as members of our society. This goes beyond simply prohibiting transgender students from sports; other initiatives include the State Department’s web page only addressing LGB people, whereas previously, it was LGBTQI+. 

Studies demonstrate that after transitioning, transgender women’s performance aligns more closely with cisgender women than cisgender men. Information available does not suggest that transgender men and trans women have much, if any, athletic advantage post-transition. An individual's sex does not determine their success or failure at any athletic event despite the high level of competition. Furthermore, transgender students have been participating in sports without any issues. The idea that transgender students automatically have an athletic advantage is not evidence-based. Michigan has two high school transgender women student athletes who have had no issues competing. All to say, transgender athletes are not the threat to cisgender female student athletes they are made out to be. 

Interestingly, Trump and his administration have made no efforts to actually fix issues in women’s sports. If Trump wants to stand up for women athletes, he would address funding disparities, resource allocation, facility disparities, or any of the other issues that truly affect women’s sports, instead of using transgender athletes as a scapegoat. 

Transgender youth deserve the opportunity to play sports. They deserve the same opportunities as all students, and they deserve to do so without having to hide their identity. Attacks on their participation, like this executive order, do not serve to protect anyone. They function solely to exclude, stigmatize, and undermine an already marginalized community in our society. No student should ever have to feel that their legitimacy as a human being is in question, regardless of anyone's political beliefs.