President Donald Trump said Wednesday the U.S. will not grant visas to transgender women athletes trying to enter the country to participate in the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles.
Trump made the declaration at the White House during a signing ceremony of an executive order aimed at prohibiting transgender women and girls from competing in women's sports and directing agencies to withdraw federal funding for any schools that refuse to comply.
Trump said he will direct Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem "to deny any and all visa applications made by men attempting to fraudulently enter the United States while identifying themselves as women athletes to try and get into the Games."
"In Los Angeles in 2028, my administration will not stand by and watch men beat and batter female athletes, and we're just not going to let it happen," Trump said. "It's going to end and it's ending right now, and nobody is going to be able to do a damn thing about it because when I speak, we speak with authority."
Controversy swirled over the Paris Olympics in 2024, starting with an opening ceremony that featured a scene composed of drag queens sitting at a long table overlooking the Seine River, reminiscent of Leonardo da Vinci's painting of "The Last Supper." In women's boxing, two athletes – Algeria's Imane Khelif and Taiwan's Lin Yu-ting – who were prohibited from competing in the 2023 world championships following a sex-identification test determined they had male XY chromosomes, won gold medals in their respective weight classes.
"But all of that ends today because with this executive order, the war on women's sports is over," Trump said.
A fact sheet from the White House revealed that Trump's executive order directs the Department of Homeland Security to review the nation's visa policies "to address males falsely asserting they are females when entering the United States to compete in women's sports." It also directs the secretary of state to "demand changes within the International Olympic Committee to preserve single-sex sports, a necessity for safety and fairness."
In November 2021, after the Tokyo Olympics, the IOC issued new guidelines for transgender athletes, leaving it up to each sport's international federation to make the final call on who can compete as a woman and who cannot, according to Forbes. The IOC recommended that the individual sports organizations balance inclusivity with fairness. The IOC allowed Khelif and Lin to compete in 2024 because it does not recognize the International Boxing Association as the sport's world governing body.
Trump said Secretary of State Marco Rubio is going to make clear to the IOC "that America categorically rejects transgender lunacy."
"We want them to change everything having to do with the Olympics and having to do with this absolutely ridiculous subject that we even have to talk about," Trump said. "If you went back 10 years or 15 years and you would move forward and listen to this you'd say, What the hell are they talking about? This is impossible.
"But you have people out there, Democrats, that are still totally in favor. They can't win the argument. They can't win a debate.
"They look like fools, and they continue to go on, and it's OK because as long as they do this – and open borders and all of the other things they talk about – transgender, everything. All they want to do is transgender and men playing in women's sports and all of these crazy things and if they continue, I think we're gonna end up ultimately, it's not gonna matter because we're never going to go along with them and we're just going to keep winning elections."
Michael Katz ✉
Michael Katz is a Newsmax reporter with more than 30 years of experience reporting and editing on news, culture, and politics.
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