The Trump administration has ordered federal agencies to implement a transgender bathroom ban by Friday, a directive that bars trans employees from using single-sex facilities that they identify with, The Hill reported, citing a Wednesday memo.
The ban falls under President Donald Trump’s Jan. 20 executive order that reverts to recognizing two sexes — male and female.
The memo, sent by the Office of Personnel Management, instructs “intimate spaces” such as bathrooms, to be “designated by biological sex and not gender identity,” according to the report. Per Trump’s executive order from Jan. 20, agency heads are to refer to “sex,” not “gender,” in policies, documents and forms.
Wednesday's memo also orders agency heads to fire employees working on “gender ideology” and terminate programs, contracts, et al. that “promote or inculcate gender ideology,” which the administration has defined as “an ever-shifting concept of self-assessed gender identity,” The Hill reported.
All changes are to be completed by end of business on Friday with a deadline of Feb. 7 to give an implementation report, according to The Hill.
In his executive order issued the day of his inauguration, Trump wrote, “'Gender identity’ reflects a fully internal and subjective sense of self, disconnected from biological reality and sex and existing on an infinite continuum, that does not provide a meaningful basis for identification and cannot be recognized as a replacement for sex.”
Trump gave federal agencies 30 days to provide “clear guidance expanding on the sex-based definitions” in the executive order.
“Each agency and all Federal employees shall enforce laws governing sex-based rights, protections, opportunities, and accommodations to protect men and women as biologically distinct sexes,” the executive order read.
Mark Swanson ✉
Mark Swanson, a Newsmax writer and editor, has nearly three decades of experience covering news, culture and politics.
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