Donald Trump has signed another executive order banning transgender athletes in women’s sport. It comes after what’s been described as a “massive row back” on the president’s plans for Gaza. Listen to the Sky News Daily podcast as you scroll.
Wednesday 5 February 2025 21:12, UK
Donald Trump has just signed an executive order banning trans athletes from participating in women’s and girls’ sport.
“We will defend the proud tradition of female athletes,” he says.
“Women’s sports will only be for women.”
He says the order is putting every school receiving taxpayer dollars on notice that “if you let men take over women’s sports teams or invade your locker rooms”, they will be investigated and risk losing federal funding.
“There will be no federal funding. So this will effectively end the attack on female athletes,” he adds.
What does the order do?
Speaking to our US partner network NBC this morning, White House Officials said they expected headlines about today’s executive order to use the word transgender, “but this has nothing to do with that.”
The order, they said, aims to protect women’s access to safe and fair athletic opportunities, and it will do that in two ways.
First, officials said, the order rolls back the Biden administration’s guidance on a civil rights law that prevents sex-based discrimination in education programs and activities that receive federal funding.
Under that guidance, schools were required to allow trans students’ to access school sports teams and sex-segregated facilities that align with their gender identities.
Trump’s order will, instead, bar students assigned male at birth from participating in girls’ and women’s sports and using women’s restrooms.
Second, officials said, the administration will work with sports governing bodies, like the International Olympic Committee, to ensure the guidance is followed in non-educational settings.
Donald Trump is outlining how his executive order will be felt across the US in the coming years.
Turning to the 2028 Olympics, which will be hosted in Los Angeles, Trump says his administration “will not stand by and watch men beat and batter female athletes”.
“It’s going to end and it’s ending right now,” he adds.
“Nobody’s going to be able to do a damn thing about it. Because when I speak, I speak with authority.”
He also says the US “will deny all visa applications made by men attempting to fraudulently enter while identifying themselves as women athletes”.
Donald Trump has arrived and is speaking to the crowd.
“In a few moments, I’ll sign a historic executive order to ban men from competing in women’s sports,” he says.
“This is about common sense”, he adds.
“With this executive order, the war on women’s sports is over.
Trump claims transgender people “invaded more than 11,000 competitions designed for women” last year.
“In recent years, the radical left has waged an all out campaign to erase the very concept of biological sex and replace it with a militant transgender ideology.”
“All of this ends today,” he says.
A little later than originally scheduled, we should be seeing Donald Trump appear shortly.
A small table on a makeshift stage has been set up for the US president to sign his executive order banning trans athletes from participating in women’s and girls’ sport.
A group of women and girls of all ages are assembled behind the lectern.
We’re still waiting for Donald Trump to appear and sign an executive order. Before then, some other news concerning the US president and his comments on Gaza…
Displacing Palestinians would be a “moral abomination”, the Israel and Palestinian director of Human Rights Watch has warned.
Following Donald Trump’s comments last night, Omar Shakir told Reuters that the forced displacement can amount to a war crime.
“International humanitarian law forbids the forced displacement of the population of an occupied territory,” he said.
“When such forced displacement is widespread, it can amount to a war crime or a crime against humanity.”
Whilst Donald Trump signs his latest executive order, Benjamin Netanyahu is continuing his meetings with various US officials.
The Israeli prime minister met with Trump at the White House yesterday.
This afternoon he met with vice president JD Vance and national security advisor Mike Waltz, having also earlier spoken with Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff.
And, right now, he’s scheduled to be meeting with defence secretary Pete Hegseth at the Pentagon.
We’ll bring you any updates we receive from that meeting.
We’re expecting to see Donald Trump again shortly as the US president signs his latest executive order.
Trump is due to sign an executive order banning transgender athletes in women’s sport.
The issue of transgender women participating in women’s sports was a consistent and divisive topic leading up to the election.
On the campaign trail – and even after he won the election – Trump referred to trans women as men and pledged to “keep men out of women’s sports.”
The timing of the order does not appear to be coincidental. Today is the 39th annual National Girls & Women in Sports Day in America.
In keeping with his own traditions, Trump will likely provide comments on the executive order as he signs it.
You can watch the process in the video below or in the livestream at the top of this page. We’ll also be providing text updates in this blog.
By Diana Magnay, international correspondent
Stand on the riverbank in Windsor, Ontario, and Detroit is directly in front of you. It’s not quite spitting distance but it’s swimmable.
Canada’s auto capital and America’s motor city are divided by the Detroit River, tied by the Ambassador’s Bridge which transports $323m (£260m) worth of goods between Canada and the US every day.
Donald Trump’s threatened 25% tariff on all Canadian exports – with a carve-out for energy at 10% – would have weighed heavy here, and that’s putting it mildly.
Car parts can criss-cross the border multiple times before they roll off the finish line in either Detroit or Windsor.
The tariff would have put tens of thousands of jobs on the line in Ontario – in the auto industry, in agriculture, and in the energy sector too.
So the one-month pause – announced on Monday after last-minute talks between Mr Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau – is a huge relief.
Our Middle East correspondent Alistair Bunkall says Donald Trump’s comments on Gaza are “part of the Trump playbook”.
He tells our chief presenter Mark Austin how we’ve already seen Trump row back on tariffs with Mexico and Canada this week.
“He does throw these outrageous ideas out there and leaves everybody gasping and wondering how to deal with it,” he says.
“Then, often, some sort of resolution on middle ground is found.”
Bunkall continues by saying people in the Middle East have been left “astonished” by Trump’s comments, but adds it could be part of his plan.
“It could be a Trumpian negotiation technique, but that is dangerous with negotiations now going on to extend the ceasefire,” he explains.
“It’s going to wrap all of his policy advisers in the State Department and officials up trying to pursue a plan that he’s put forward, which might be totally unworkable and to some degree, remove any credibility the US has in this.”
It’s fair to say that Donald Trump’s comments on the future of Gaza haven’t gone down well around the globe, but they’ve been met with particular consternation in the Middle East.
In a statement, the political advisor to the secretary-general of Lebanon-based, Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah says the world is witnessing “unprecedented tyrannical behaviour” by American officials.
The Houthis militant group also commented, saying that Yemen “stands beside Palestine in confronting all forms of aggression against the Palestinian cause”.
The group, which controls most of western Yemen including the capital Sanaa, issued the comment, attributed to its political bureau, in a statement reported by the Houthi-affiliated al-Masirah TV.
Be the first to get Breaking News
Install the Sky News app for free