|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Wednesday (February 5, 2025) reasserting fundamental constitutional liberties guaranteed to women under Title IX – a landmark 52-year-old women’s rights statute. Trump’s order formally undid efforts by former president Joe Biden to reinvent Title IX as protecting the purported rights of biological men who believe they are women.
As I noted last summer, Biden’s attempted bastardization of this statute would have “ushered in a wave of institutional discrimination against women – allowing biological men to compete in women’s sports and to dress and shower in the same restrooms as their female competitors.”
Thankfully, the U.S. supreme court enjoined Biden and vice president Kamala Harris from enforcing the controversial new mandate – and now Trump has rescinded it for good.
“With this executive order, the war on women’s sports is over!” Trump declared on his Truth Social page. “We are putting every school receiving taxpayer dollars on notice: If you let men take over women’s sports teams or invade your locker rooms, you will be investigated for violations of Title IX and risk your federal funding.”
“Under the Trump Administration, we will defend the proud tradition of female athletes,” the president added. “From now on, women’s sports will be ONLY FOR WOMEN!”
***
Women's sports are for WOMEN. ?? pic.twitter.com/pFQ0g3gLyg
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) February 6, 2025
***
Per the text of the order, “it is the policy of the United States to rescind all funds from educational programs that deprive women and girls of fair athletic opportunities, which results in the endangerment, humiliation, and silencing of women and girls and deprives them of privacy.”
“It shall also be the policy of the United States to oppose male competitive participation in women’s sports more broadly, as a matter of safety, fairness, dignity, and truth,” the order continued.
Adopted in 1972, Title IX (.pdf) prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex at any academic institution or within any education program which receives federal funding. Intended to protect women from discrimination, its original intent had been turned on its ear by the trans movement – which used it to actively discriminate against female competitors.
The trans assault on female sports reached its apex two years ago when Lia Thomas, a biological male athlete at the University of Pennsylvania, was allowed to compete in the NCAA women’s 500-yard freestyle national championship. Thomas had previously competed as a male, ranking No. 462 nationally.
As a “woman,” she ranked No. 1 – and was awarded the NCAA championship.
My media outlet blasted the NCAA in no uncertain terms, encouraging women on the receiving end of such overt discrimination to stand up for their rights.
***
RELATED | SUPREME COURT BLOCKS TITLE IX REWRITE
***
“It is my sincere hope that the female athletes and institutions deprived of their rightful places on the podium by Thomas and other trans athletes will explore their options under Title IX,” I noted at the time.
Sadly, many luminaries in female sports – including University of South Carolina basketball coach Dawn Staley – chose to embrace the prevailing woke orthodoxy eroding the integrity of their athletic endeavors.
Under Trump’s order, his administration will “affirmatively protect all-female athletic opportunities and all-female locker rooms.” It will also prioritize enforcement actions against educational institutions (including athletic associations composed of or governed by such institutions) which “deny female students an equal opportunity to participate in sports and athletic events by requiring them, in the women’s category, to compete with or against or to appear unclothed before males.”
The administration also vowed to “rescind funding to programs that fail to comply with the policy established in this order.”
At a signing ceremony in the East Room of the White House, Trump gave a shoutout to South Carolina’s own Nancy Mace – who has been a leader on this issue.
“Nancy Mace, she’s something,” Trump said. “Nancy takes it on right from the start.”
***
PRES. TRUMP: "Nancy Mace, she IS something!"
— Nancy Mace (@NancyMace) February 5, 2025
Thank you, Mr. President, for recognizing my FIGHT to PROTECT women's rights.
I FOUGHT to protect women’s sports. I took on the woke mob. I was even assaulted for it.
I’ll never stop fighting for America!
Hold the line. pic.twitter.com/NJ8VadvkBG
***
Why have Mace and others fought so hard on this issue? As the case of Lia Thomas demonstrated, males have clear competitive advantages over females in most sports – meaning allowing them to compete against women is inherently unfair.
“If you know sport, you know this beyond a reasonable doubt: There is an average 10-12 percent performance gap between elite males and elite females,” Duke law professor Doriane Lambelet Coleman and senior lecturing fellow Wickliffe Shreve observed in a recent report which broke down the differences between male and female athletic performance. “This differential isn’t the result of boys and men having a male identity, more resources, better training, or superior discipline. It’s because they have an androgenized body.”
In other words, they have more muscle mass. Longer, larger bones. More aerobic capacity.
“(This explains) why competitive sport has traditionally separated biological males (people with male bodies) from biological females (people with female bodies), and also why legal measures like Title IX in the United States require institutions to set aside and protect separate and equal funding, facilities, and opportunities for women and girls,” Coleman and Shreve continued.
Trump made safeguarding women’s sports one of the centerpieces of his 2024 candidacy – spending heavily on campaign ads which accurately portrayed his Democrat rivals as out-of-touch with mainstream Americans on this issue.
While my media outlet welcomes all intelligent views on this debate – and any debate – my position on this issue has been clear from the beginning: Only women should be allowed to compete in women’s sports.
“The hill I will die on every time is this absurd notion that inherent unfairness can somehow promote equality – that aspirational inclusion can somehow justify actual exclusion,” I noted in a post five years ago.
Let’s just hope this insanity has finally been relegated to the dustbin of history once and for all…
***
ABOUT THE AUTHOR …
Will Folks is the founding editor of the news outlet you are currently reading. Prior to founding FITSNews, he served as press secretary to the governor of South Carolina. He lives in the Midlands region of the state with his wife and eight children.
***
WANNA SOUND OFF?
Got something you’d like to say in response to one of our articles? Or an issue you’d like to address proactively? We have an open microphone policy! Submit your letter to the editor (or guest column) via email HERE. Got a tip for a story? CLICK HERE. Got a technical question or a glitch to report? CLICK HERE.
15 comments
Woohoo, something that affects all of 10 people.
Meantime where are my lower prices? A settlement to the Russia invasion of Ukraine? A settlement to the Israel -Hamas situation? You know, all his day 1 promises.
What are you doing for your country?
Tell that to Payton McNabb, Collegiate Charter School who had three players injured by a single trans player so severely that they forfeited at half time, all of the girls in the New Jersey Athletic league who were beaten by a literal guy in a girl’s bathing suit named Meghan Cortez-Fields who broke the state record in the 200 IM by more than 2 seconds (a lifetime in that event), or all the women beaten by RIT track athlete Sadie Schreiner, who (yes, you guessed it) shattered a 200 meter, 300 meter and a 4×400 meter track record in one meet.
I could go on but you don’t really care who was hurt by this stupidity you are just trying to downplay the offense. Last I looked, Hama had stopped shooting at Israel, and it’s been really quiet in Ukraine oh and Politico is now broke!
What a stupid waste of time
This is outstanding. It’s just common sense that men should not play in women’s sports.
Trump is always the showman, always the modern P.T. Barnum, and as usual there are plenty of suckers, born every minute.
In a hearing in late December, Sen. Durbin, asked the President of the NCAA how many athletes were in NCAA Schools nationwide. He said there were approximately 510,000. He then asked how many transgender athletes. He said there were TEN. Not ten thousand, ten. In all 1000+- NCAA schools there were ten transgender athletes. This is all a made-up crisis, just like all the other made-up crises Trump dangles before his cult, to pretend he is doing something for them.
Hundreds of thousands of children in America go hungry every day. Millions of children around the world are dying from lack of food, clean water, and health care; and this is what the fake Christians of America focus on. Do they even know that a significant portion of the money spent by USAID, which the autistic neo-nazi billionaire has shut down, went to Christian ministries to feed hungry people in foreign countries? Do they even care that USAID has saved the lives of millions of people from starvation and disease? Do they even care that government aid from the US was integral part in our wining the Cold War against the Soviet Union, and spreading goodwill for Americans around the world? And this is what you are concerned about? How pathetic.
It’s not about the 10. It’s about every female athlete that had to compete against the 10 and whether female athletes have a fundamental right to protection. Title IX asserts that they do have that right.
Spot on!
“…the autistic neo-nazi billionaire…”? I guess it’s okay to pick on the autistic now? If Trump had said it, you’d be offended.
US Aid to “Millions of children around the world” is all good but despite the claims to the contrary, we really did pay Politico multiple millions of dollars (potentially as high as $30,000,000) for subscriptions to their “Professional” level services. Don’t believe me? Go to USASPENDING .gov and search for Politico yourself. In the last 5 years USDA has spent more than $6,000,000 on subscriptions, NSF and DOE combined for more than $8,000,000.
I don’t care which side did it, it’s criminal.
Did I pick on Elon? I don’t think so. I am incapable of picking on the biggest bully in the world, next to Trump. I note his autism because some types of autism can result in an inability to understand or express empathy and/or can cause the sufferer, to be extremely self-centered. That seems to describe Elon very well to me, along with potential megalomania, which is also a mental illness.
But what does Politico have to do with anything we are talking about? The allegation that USAID paid significant money to Politico has been debunked. The claim was just another distraction for an easily duped cult. The only payments received by Politico from USAID were for two subscriptions to E&E—an energy and environment publication it produces.
The subscription totaled $44,000 over two years. In September 2023, the Center for Environment, Energy, and Infrastructure—part of USAID’s Bureau for Development, Democracy, and Innovation—purchased a subscription to E&E for $20,000. Another subscription to E&E was purchased in September 2024 for $24,000 by the Center for Climate Positive Development—an office within USAID’s Bureau for Resilience and Food Security.
Was that a good use of funds? I don’t know. According to E&E, prices for its professional subscription packages typically start in the upper four-figure range and vary based on how many users have access to a subscription. Was this subscription necessary? It depends on what information was being sought and what was provided. Do you know? I certainly can see how someone trying to provide energy to people in a third-world country or helping a country dealing with drought or famine could need the information such a company would provide. But as usual with Trumpers it’s the sound bite, not the substance.
You took an article on defense of Title IX to the USAID conversation, not me. I’m just illustrating what the autistic nonfeeling, megalomaniac, bully was really going after. All funds were cut off in order to get a handle on where the money was going. Legitimate aid will eventually restart. The Politico thing is real if somewhat misstated by the uber right. I provided you with a way to confirm it for yourself. What they were supposedly buying was access to a gossip website that included an “address book” for other subscribers – what they were really buying was propaganda via Politico. In the world of the “world wide web”, there ain’t no subscription service worth $10,000 much less $1,000,000 a year.
Actually, I took the conversation from Title IX to Christian principals. The deafening silence around the shuttering of aid to the poor and needy and the loud demands for the government to go after ten athletes who consider themselves trans is just one example of how so-called Christians have a truly bizarre priority system when our religion is based on compassion, kindness, and a command to care for the poor, the sick, the stranger and the sinner. That is why I called them fake Christians.
And do I believe “legitimate” aid will be restarted? No. They are firing everyone. There is no plan for that. They need the budget savings to cut taxes for Elon, Trump, and the other billionaires.
Deport all liberal Democrats. F… Sleepy Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and all those other POS!
I keep hearing the “…ten athlete line…” The order protects ALL sports, including where the real problem is right now, high school sports. As a, now retired, high school and college level sports official, I know for a fact that the transgender issue is there and it’s a LOT bigger than 10 athletes.
If you’d get off the “orange man bad band wagon”, you’d be able to see it was the right thing to do.
How much bigger? Approximately 1% of the population identifies as Transgender—55% of those you would classify as female. I live in a school district with approximately 6500 high school students in three high schools. Statistically, that means there are 30+- males who would identify as Transgender in the entire school district. So what percentage of these kids participate in sports? We have none in our school district. I suspect a very small percentage of the very small percentage would subject themselves to the ridicule, hate, and slurs they would encounter from the good “Christian” people of South Carolina. So, how many Transgender males have you come in contact with as a “sports official?” This sounds like a made-up crisis to me. This is why there are only 10 trans athletes in the NCAA.
As always with Trump and his supporters, cruelty is the point. Go after the powerless people. That is what MAGA Jesus would do?