Today U.S. president Donald Trump made one of his first actions decimating the rights of trans people, following an inauguration speech where he also called for “the complete restoration of America and the revolution of common sense.”
On Monday, Trump signed an executive order focusing on “defending women from gender ideology extremism and restoring biological truth to the federal government.”
The order will erase federal legal recognition of trans people and establish binary definitions of sex as “male” and “female.” It also states that government ID, including passports and personnel records, must reflect “biological reality”—whatever that means—rather than what the order calls “self-assessed gender identity.” Trans women will explicitly no longer be housed in women’s prisons, and the order will cut federal funding for gender-affirming care for incarcerated trans people.
Senior editor Mel Woods breaks down the degree to which Trump has created this divide between his “revolution of common sense” and LGBTQ2S+ people.
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