The White House called transgender people “insane” in an official press release on the last day of Pride Month. Donald Trump did not issue a proclamation celebrating Pride Month this year or last year, breaking from his predecessors.
The press release, intended to celebrate the Supreme Court’s decision in the two trans sports ban cases, bears the headline: “Supreme Court Bolsters President Trump’s Push to Eliminate Transgender Insanity.”
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The Supreme Court ruled in a 6-3 decision that the Equal Protection Clause does not bar states from banning trans girls and women from participating in school sports in the cases, B.J.P. vs. West Virginia and Little v. Hecox, effectively allowing the 27 states that ban trans kids from sports to continue to do so. The Court also ruled unanimously that Title IX does not protect trans students’ rights to play sports.
Trump opposes allowing trans kids to play sports, signing an executive order to that effect shortly after he took office last year.
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The June 30 release praises the Court’s decision as “a landmark victory for common sense, biological reality, and for the millions of women and girls who deserve a level playing field” and says it will embolden the president’s “efforts to restore biological reality throughout the federal government and protect the rights of women and girls.” Conservatives often frame their opposition to trans people’s rights as protecting cis girls and women, even though there is no evidence that trans people pose a threat to them.
The press release then lists some of the Trump administration’s actions against trans people’s rights from the past year, including harassing schools that allow trans people to participate in school sports, issuing an executive order mandating the federal government cease all protections for trans people, banning trans people from getting corrected gender markers on passports, and using federal regulatory authority to coerce hospitals to stop providing legal and best-practice gender affirming care for trans youth.
For the last one, the White House claimed that “more than 40 hospitals and health systems across the country” have stopped “child mutilation programs” as a result of the administration’s use of prosecutorial powers to harass hospitals. Conservatives often refer to gender-affirming care as “child mutilation,” even if it does not involve surgery, as a way of making it sound like a bad thing instead of health care supported by all major professional medical associations in the U.S.
“President Trump and his entire Administration will continue safeguarding women’s sports, shielding children from radical gender ideology, and restoring biological truth throughout the federal government, just as he promised on the campaign trail,” the release concludes.
Trump made opposition to transgender participation in sports a keystone of his 2024 campaign. At his rallies, he repeatedly performed a sketch for his supporters where he played the role of a cisgender woman who struggled to lift any weight at all (conservative opposition to trans sports participation is based on the idea that cis women are inherently bad at all sports) and then a trans woman who easily lifted the weight. Videos of him performing this act were compiled and mocked online, although it may have been an effective way to shore up support from his base.
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