Will Trump Expose the Gender Industry?
Laws are temporary. Facts are forever.
I think investigations are how we’ll defeat the forces of gender. When I say that, friends often confidently respond, “I think it will be the malpractice judgments against healthcare providers.”
Yes, General Washington, but how are we going to win those judgments? Our side loses a lot of cases and arguments on other gender topics. The judges seem to have learned about trans identity from the media; the strong briefs in front of them can’t overcome that priming effect. (Juries haven’t been a factor so far but could be in malpractice trials.)
It’s not enough to subpoena interesting emails in one lawsuit or another. It’s not enough that the other side has bad facts. We need to penetrate the public consciousness with the results of a flotilla of investigations into the gender industry. I use the term “investigations” loosely – they can include media exposes and parents FOIA’ing their kids’ school district. But ideally the US government will use its massive resources and authority to lead.
President Donald Trump signed a slew of executive orders on gender. This post takes stock of how his administration has handled the subject since then. First I’ll explain the mechanics: what does it mean to implement an executive order, and who’s doing it? Then I’ll recap the government’s activity, going agency by agency.
I’m judging each government act not by what it changes or bans but by what it exposes. Regulations can be struck down, rescinded, circumvented. But facts are just facts. Once they’re out, they’re out.
And they’re on our side.
How An Executive Order Becomes a TRO
Starting on inauguration day, Jan. 20, Trump signed a string of executive orders related to gender. Now agencies have to implement them.
Many of their provisions have already been challenged in court, so someone also has to defend them.
The Masterminds
The five gender EOs aim to define sex, boot men out of women’s prisons and sports, crack down on secret school transition, defund hospitals that transition youths under 19, de-gender the military, and more. (Check out this tracker from Women’s Liberation Front.)
The EOs were reportedly drafted by different people in Trump’s political orbit. May Mailman, who serves in the White House, was behind the kickoff order that defined “sex” and condemned gender ideology. Candice Jackson, Deputy General Counsel at the Education Department, drafted “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports.”
The EOs are based. They’re feisty and full of ideas for vanquishing gender enemies. But they’re just pieces of paper until agencies put them into action.
The Implementers
Agencies are led by political appointees – people nominated by the president and their entourages – and staffed by career officials, meaning workers hired on merit who stay on from one administration to the next. Career officials include lawyers with esoteric knowledge about their agencies’ powers and limitations. You may know them as the deep state.
The White House is taking a strong hand with agencies. The week 2 funding freeze is one example; another is the Feb. 7 edict that slashed research grants.
Political appointees don’t seem to have consulted career attorneys about these moves. They were both enjoined. But the administration is now persuading the judges who enjoined the funding freeze to let it freeze certain streams one by one, depending on legal intricacies specific to each. Perhaps this reflects the expertise of career attorneys.
The New York Times refers to this as “systematically exploiting loopholes” to get around injunctions. Sounds dastardly. But the administration is just digging up laws and rules that support its position, i.e., engaging in legal research. Quite innocent and wholesome.
Pieces of the gender EOs are caught up in the funding-freeze litigation. Others are not but have followed a similar path. For example, the Bureau of Prisons started removing men from women’s prisons within a day of the EO on point. The trans-identified men sued (twice). Judges have now temporarily blocked the EOs’ prison sections.
The Defenders
When people sue the federal government, the Department of Justice’s Federal Programs Branch defends it. These lawyers are generalists, handling everything from slip-and-falls to Obamacare and vaccine mandate challenges.
Now they’re defending Trump’s gender EOs. You can assume they know everything about the Administrative Procedure Act and Article II of the Constitution – very important – but less about the cotton ceiling. (Though I have met a lot of closet TERFs who work in government…)
While the EOs contain rhetoric that is intellectually clarifying, they don’t come with the mountain of facts – studies, debunkings, history, biology, surreptitious videos of Johanna Olson-Kennedy – that lawyers need to persuade judges everything they think they know about trans is wrong. And these lawsuits are typically filed with a motion for temporary restraining order (TRO), meaning tight deadlines. DOJ lawyers have a hard job.
Elon Musk, senior advisor to the president, has gone to town insulting career officials, threatening their jobs, imposing rigid rules on them (no more remote work), and actually firing them. But at the same time, Trump is leaning very hard on some of them to defend his agenda in court. His political appointees aren’t out in the trenches. He needs the deep state.
In fact, DOJ has posted new jobs in the Federal Programs Branch, apparently having secured an exemption from the government-wide hiring freeze. It will receive high-quality applications. But not as many as it would if Musk were gone.
Health & Human Services Explains Sex
HHS was homebase for the forces of gender woo under President Joe Biden. Now it’s in the hands of Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who opposes transitioning of minors.
Gamete’s Delight
The Jan. 20 “Defending Women” EO defined sex along gamete lines and directed HHS to issue a more detailed explanation. Last week HHS came through. (It also stood up an entire website celebrating and supporting female athletes. Dems, you so richly deserve this.)
Sex-based biologists raved about the guidance on X. Carole Hooven gave a thumbs-up in the Boston Globe. Her review patiently engaged with the document’s critics:
“variation in characteristics that are associated with sex does not constitute evidence for additional sexes. Nor does it mean that sex itself is somehow on a spectrum.
“What it instead shows is that sex-associated traits do exist on a spectrum.”
Biologists argue the spectrum theory of sex is wrong. I don’t disagree, but I view the discourse differently. To me, the activists have put forward a different definition of sex. Why not? Language can change. The problem is:
The activists use new-sex to pretend the concept referred to by old-sex – reproduction – doesn’t matter.
The spectrum is useless for explaining why anyone would need gender medicine. If maleness can’t be pinned down, what is a woman aiming for when she tries to look masculine? Activists know this is a problem. It’s why their lawsuits talk about people’s “sex assigned at birth.” That term gives them the binary they need to build their argument.
HHS’ guidance on sex exposed facts to the world. Not only did HHS stick it up on the web in readable prose, but the guidance led to a constructive (if often stupid) debate in the media culminating in Hooven’s masterful essay, which we’ll all be sharing in stupid debates for years to come. The new guidance is also playing a role in litigation, which I’ll get to in a minute.
Define “Paperwork”
The EOs tasked HHS with demolishing its own gender disinformation machine. It obeyed by taking down LGBTQ webpages. But like a woman competing in a mixed-sex track event, its effort has run into a hurtle: The Paperwork Reduction Act. This statute saves trees … and HTML.
The nonprofit Doctors for America, represented by Public Citizen, argue:
“The removal of the webpages and datasets creates a dangerous gap in the scientific data available to monitor and respond to disease outbreaks, deprives physicians of resources that guide clinical practice, and takes away key resources for communicating and engaging with patients.”
It’s possible some of the pages did contain useful information. Biden’s HHS slapped terms like “LGBTQIA” all over the place, and Trump’s HHS seems to have removed every sullied page. (By contrast, the State Department simply removed the “T” from LGBT pages. They now read “LGB.” It had far fewer pages to sort through than HHS did.)
The federal District of DC ordered the administration to put the websites back up while the lawsuit proceeds. HHS complied, adding warnings to pages that they don’t “reflect biological reality.”
Defunding
Two courts have temporarily blocked HHS from starving hospitals that trans kids. Still, providers around the country are skittish about engaging in youth gender med, leading to disruptions in “care.”
I’m hoping the administration is able to show at least some funding restrictions are within its power (e.g., it can add strings to new grants going forward, even if it can’t immediately yank funding for open grants). Would this reveal facts? Yes. If America lost a big chunk of its youth gender clinics it would prove that kids don’t need them. Unfortunately, private clinics that don’t receive research funding from HHS are taking some of that business.
The Inspector General
In December, a congressional committee asked the HHS Inspector General to investigate the agency’s promotion of gender medicine. Trump has now fired that person and many other IGs. They challenged the action.
There’s concern about recasting IGs as a political role. But for the purpose of investigating Admiral Rachel Levine and other historical HHS miscreants, we’re probably better off with a MAGA warrior than a generic DC “nonpartisan” type.
The Department of Taking Maine to School
The Department of Education (Ed) enforces Title IX, which bans sex discrimination by all schools that receive federal funding. If schools violate Title IX, Ed can yank their funding. K-12 public institutions receive about 10% of their funding from the feds; colleges and universities can take in more via student loans, Pell grants, and the like.
Biden issued regulations that redefined sex in Title IX to “include” gender identity. In January a federal court in Kentucky vacated this rule nationwide because redefining “sex” is outside the president’s authority. (The rule never explicitly applied to sports.) In February a federal court in Texas piled on. Several other courts issued preliminary injunctions against the Rule; litigation is ongoing. With no one around to defend gender’s inclusion or appeal its losses, Biden’s regs are dead. Sex means sex.1
Still, two boys in New Hampshire represented by GLAD and NCLR are challenging the EO that directs Ed to keep boys out of girls’ sports. (My X thread.) They already had a lawsuit underway against NH’s law protecting girls’ sports; recently they amended their complaint to add Trump. The case is called Tirrell. Their argument: sex includes gender identity.
The federal judge in NH already enjoined the state law because the boys were likely to win on the argument it discriminated against trans people. We’ll see if she also blocks the EO, applying the same reasoning to Title IX – that it’s unconstitutional if interpreted to protect girls. The argument, while crazy, is not directly in conflict with the decisions vacating Biden’s gender identity rule. And the trans-indulgent First Circuit might affirm that ruling.
Eventually Trump will win girls' sports before the Supreme Court. He’s already won the issue in the court of public opinion – only 18% of Americans want trans-identified boys to compete against girls.
Tirrell is the first Title IX lawsuit of the biology era but other leagues and public officials have vowed to continue fielding boys in girls’ sports – most famously the governor of Maine, Janet Mills (she’s spinning it as a stand against federal overreach, not against girls). Ed is now investigating these civil rights citadels.
You may think you’ve heard it all about boys in girls’ sports. But I bet these investigations will turn up behind-the-scenes remarks and machinations so repulsive they shock even the band geeks still cheering for co-ed basketball today. This issue could be polling 95/5 by the 2026 midterms.
One snag. Trump wants to abolish Ed. Apparently he plans to ask Congress to spin off its important parts to other agencies. The Office of Civil Rights would go to the Department of Justice – and arguably wield more power from that perch (once it recovers from the journey).
Will Congress actually go for this? Only if Trump is riding high. Right now his approval ratings are low, perhaps because most Americans know someone he recently fired.
EEOC Drops Gender Lawsuits
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed four lawsuits under Biden that could have set precedents on “gender identity discrimination.” Trump is seeking to drop them all. Of course that has to happen, but I was actually feeling bullish on these cases and curious to see them through.
State Department Corrects the Record
The Defending Women EO directs the State Department to clean up America’s passports. The sex marker on that document now must reflect our actual sex, not gender identity. The nonbinary “X” option is out.
Trans-identifying Americans sued. The ACLU represents them. The case is called Orr v. Trump. (Here’s my X thread on the complaint.)
For years the ACLU – which seemed to architect the trans legal movement beginning in 2005 – drafted austere lawsuits that, over time, explained less and less what they thought sex was. Nonetheless they coaxed the reader toward the conclusion that sex must be replaced with gender identity. They also hid the existence of nonbinary gender; eschewed talk of passing; and claimed gender identity had nothing to do with gender stereotypes but didn’t explain what else it could possibly be. I analogized this slick choreography to a magic trick.
Since inauguration 2025, all that carefully constructed artifice is out the window. The ACLU and other trans advocates are now presenting their movement more candidly.
Orr exemplifies the shift. Instead of pretending all trans people identify as men or women, the lawsuit showcases a man who identifies as a “nonbinary femme person.” Another plaintiff is a “nonbinary” woman who views the word female as “an identity projected on them solely based on their sex assigned at birth.”
And the lawyers have coughed up a key definition:
“The concept of ‘sex’ refers to multiple physiologic attributes, such as chromosomes, gonads (glands that produce hormones and gametes), and anatomy (internal and external reproductive parts), secondary sex characteristics that usually develop puberty, and gender identity.”
This hodgepodge view of sex (a jumble of spectrums) is almost exactly how Harry Benjamin, the endocrinologist who popularized transsexuality, defined sex in 1966, though he used the term “psychological sex” instead of gender identity. The ACLU even squishes gametes into one subpart of an attribute of sex just like Benjamin did.
Given that today’s trans activists seem to have discovered their view of sex on a decaying parchment scroll in the Johns Hopkins humanities library, it’s amusing when the media implies it’s cutting edge. (Guardian: “Most scientists now reject the idea that sex is strictly binary. … a lot of academics have moved away from a sex-classification system based primarily on gametes …”) If experts have changed the way they view sex, it’s not due to scientific advancements but rather social trends.
One more point about sex:
“For purposes of identity documents, including passports, a person’s gender identity is the most important and accurate characteristic for determining what their sex is[.]”
If sex is different depending on what area of law we’re talking about (!) then how can the ACLU insist on gender-absolutist positions in sports and prisons? The “most important and accurate characteristic” in those contexts is quite obviously not gender identity.
I think there are three reasons for the ACLU’s 2025 intellectual makeover:
WPATH was the spine of the ACLU’s case for almost 20 years. When its credibility took a hit last summer – and took down some expert witnesses with it – the ACLU was left with a gutted playbook. It needed to build a new narrative.
Last summer the ACLU promoted Chase Strangio (he/they) to be Co-director of its LGBTQ practice. In December she became the first trans-identified lawyer to argue before the US Supreme Court. This makes her the queen bee of American trans activism. Her agenda: abolish the binary.
Trump defined sex. The ACLU’s adversaries had rarely pressed that point before. (Texas did in a gender med lawsuit that’s still ongoing, as did feminist amici in various cases.) That January 20 EO grabbed the rabbit out of the magician’s hat.
The government’s definition of sex forced the ACLU to reveal its own idea of sex. And it’s nuts! Both antediluvian and postmodern. A bad fact for the trans movement.
Will the Justice Department Reveal Gender Is in Your Head?
Gender identity is not based in biology. The ACLU won’t admit that. Instead it dances around the subject. Other trans activists have followed suit.
This point matters under anti-discrimination law. One element of achieving “suspect class” status for trans people is showing that they share an immutable characteristic. Without ceding that gender identity isn’t immutable, the ACLU argues the law only requires they share a “distinguishing characteristic.” Either way, it would really help to show that transgender status is rooted in biology as opposed to a belief system, cultural affinity, fetish, or mental illness.
Judges haven’t thoroughly probed this question. Until now.
One of the gender EOs relates to military service. It banishes pronoun trainings, requires sex-based bunk assignments, and rolls back Biden-era rules that let troops take months of leave for the sake of undergoing gender surgeries. This may sound relatively mild. But the EO also contains certain rhetoric:
“Beyond the hormonal and surgical medical interventions involved, adoption of a gender identity inconsistent with an individual’s sex conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life. A man’s assertion that he is a woman, and his requirement that others honor this falsehood, is not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member.”
Rhetoric matters because courts can consider the government’s “animus” toward a group in deciding whether a policy unconstitutionally discriminates against them. Plus, even many gender-critical people find it offensive. So this is a hard EO to defend in court.
It was challenged in the federal District of DC by trans-identified servicemembers represented by GLAD and NCLR. The case was assigned to Ana Reyes – a judge known for intemperate conduct. Just a few weeks ago she made news for chewing out lawyers for the fired Inspectors General.
The DOJ Federal Programs lawyer tasked with defending the military EO before Judge Reyes was Jason Lynch, a 2012 graduate of UVA Law.
Lynch went terf-viral on X because a partial transcript showed he didn’t correct Reyes when she ranted against the sex binary and berated him about chromosomes (the EO refers to gametes, not chromosomes). The full transcript isn’t out, but everything I’ve found suggests he generally did a good job.
Reyes grilled Lynch for hours over the course of two days, making it an abnormally long and arduous appearance. Some of his answers that might seem diffident out of context were actually strategic or neutral. For example, in stating he didn’t know the president’s intentions, he was making a point – I suspect he’d made it more fully earlier – that the court didn’t have enough evidence to judge Trump’s level of “animus.” At other times, I think he was just letting the judge gnaw on her bone because the subject wasn’t relevant to the hearing’s outcome. Indeed, Lynch won. He wanted Reyes to defer a decision until March, after the Defense Department issues trans guidance and the lawyers can argue about that. Reyes agreed.
Through her dudgeon, Reyes hit on a key issue: immutability. She told the parties she wanted more info.
Plaintiffs filed their brief on Friday, Feb. 21. It argues that “being transgender has a biological basis.” (Here’s my X thread.) In doing so, it relies on the four cons of gender:
Consensus of medical associations
Confuse by citing a multitude of flawed studies
Conflate with sexual orientation
Conversion therapy bogeyman
It’s great that a judge is digging into immutability. It’s not so great that the judge is Reyes (about whom the DOJ just filed a judicial misconduct complaint with the DC Circuit because of how she treated Lynch).2
If DOJ doesn’t catch the plaintiffs’ many sleights of hands and sketchy cites, the “biological basis” of gender identity could lodge itself in a ruling, get affirmed on appeal, and become precedent that’s hard for gender-critical lawyers in all sorts of cases to wriggle out of later.
Will DOJ expose one of the biggest lies about gender identity?
Its brief is due Friday.
What would happen if one court upholds the regs that others vacated nationwide? I’m not researching it because it seems very unlikely. The judge would first have to appoint someone to defend Biden’s rule, which I haven’t heard any noise about. I believe the only judge who sided with Biden at the preliminary injunction phase was Annemarie Axon in Alabama, and the 11th Circuit overruled her.
It’s unusual for a law office to complain about a judge because judges never face real consequences. The fear is, you just anger the judge and perhaps their judge friends as well. Maybe DOJ leaders figure Reyes and other Democratic appointees hate them anyway.
Thank you for this very informative article! As a former biology teacher , and a 96 year old woman, I still can’t get my head around the fact that we are arguing about such a basic concept as the binary of sex .Why has a false ideology taken such hold over biological truth? Is it another “ Extraordinary popular delusion and madness of crowds” all over again? Though it’s not by any means the belief of the majority but a tiny minority ruling the roost. To think that in the modern age we have sunk to such ridiculous cultist “ thinking” is disturbing!
I can only hope that Trump’s rational EO on this will be upheld.
Thank you for this wonderful, enjoyable and informative essay! I guess I am one of the very gender critical people who are a bit uneasy with the military ban rhetoric ("A man’s assertion that he is a woman, and his requirement that others honor this falsehood, is not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member"). I am just wondering if it opens the gate to reject people from the military based on their personal beliefs. Would , say, atheists be next since many consider atheist views amoral? (I still think the ban makes sense , I am just not sure about this framework)