Elana Redfield & Ishani Chokshi

On January 20, 2025, President Trump signed an executive order titled, “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.”1 Although the executive order sweeps broadly across many areas affecting transgender, nonbinary and intersex people, a central tenet of the directive is the redefinition of the word “sex” as applied across federal programs and services to refer only to biological characteristics “at conception,” and as unchangeable.2 Redefining “sex” is something the president attempted to do in his previous term,3 particularly in the context of sex discrimination in education under Title IX,4 and had committed to doing in his second term.5 As […]