Trump Dissembled When Distancing Himself from Project 2025
Delray Beach, FL — Truth Wins Out reviewed President Donald J. Trump’s virulently anti-transgender Executive Order signed on January 20. Despite Trump feigning little knowledge of Project 2025 during his divisive and dishonest campaign, the new EO is written as if it were pulled directly from the pages of the Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025: Mandate for Leadership the Conservative Promise”.
“Donald Trump was dissembling when he pretended not to have acute awareness of Project 2025,” said Truth Wins Out’s Executive Director Wayne Besen. “Our new reality is that this right-wing totalitarian document is being rolled out and governing citizens of The United States. The outright deception and shameless duplicity by Trump’s campaign was beyond disgraceful. He pulled a bait-and-switch to bamboozle voters into thinking he was moderating, when he was really marinating in the bosom of extremists.”
Truth Wins Out cross-referencing the repellant executive order, “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism And Restoring Biological Truth To The Federal Government”, with Project 2025. We found identical phrases and glaring similarities that strongly suggest it was lifted directly from the anti-gay Project 2025 authors.
The following are Executive Order sections that match either word-for-word, or are strikingly similar to Project 2025:
- Policy of the United States to Recognize Two Sexes:
“It is the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female. These sexes are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality.”
- Definitions:
- Sex:
(a) “Sex” shall refer to an individual’s immutable biological classification as either male or female. “Sex” is not a synonym for and does not include the concept of “gender identity.”
- Women/Woman and Girls/Girl:
(b) “Women” or “woman” and “girls” or “girl” shall mean adult and juvenile human females, respectively.
- Men/Man and Boys/Boy:
(c) “Men” or “man” and “boys” or “boy” shall mean adult and juvenile human males, respectively.
- Female:
(d) “Female” means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell.
- Male:
(e) “Male” means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the small reproductive cell.
- Gender Ideology:
(f) “Gender ideology” replaces the biological category of sex with an ever-shifting concept of self-assessed gender identity, permitting the false claim that males can identify as and thus become women and vice versa, and requiring all institutions of society to regard this false claim as true. Gender ideology includes the idea that there is a vast spectrum of genders that are disconnected from one’s sex. Gender ideology is internally inconsistent, in that it diminishes sex as an identifiable or useful category but nevertheless maintains that it is possible for a person to be born in the wrong sexed body.
- Gender Identity:
(g) “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.
- Recognizing Women Are Biologically Distinct From Men:
(a) Within 30 days of the date of this order, the Secretary of Health and Human Services shall provide to the U.S. Government, external partners, and the public clear guidance expanding on the sex-based definitions set forth in this order.
- Enforcement of Sex-Based Rights:
(b) 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. Each agency should therefore give the terms “sex”, “male”, “female”, “men”, “women”, “boys” and “girls” the meanings set forth in section 2 of this order when interpreting or applying statutes, regulations, or guidance and in all other official agency business, documents, and communications.
- Government-Issued Identification Documents:
(d) The Secretaries of State and Homeland Security, and the Director of the Office of Personnel Management, shall implement changes to require that government-issued identification documents, including passports, visas, and Global Entry cards, accurately reflect the holder’s sex, as defined under section 2 of this order; and the Director of the Office of Personnel Management shall ensure that applicable personnel records accurately report Federal employees’ sex, as defined by section 2 of this order.
- Removal of Gender Ideology:
(e) Agencies shall remove all statements, policies, regulations, forms, communications, or other internal and external messages that promote or otherwise inculcate gender ideology, and shall cease issuing such statements, policies, regulations, forms, communications or other messages. Agency forms that require an individual’s sex shall list male or female, and shall not request gender identity. Agencies shall take all necessary steps, as permitted by law, to end the Federal funding of gender ideology.
- Misapplication of Bostock v. Clayton County:
(f) The prior Administration argued that the Supreme Court’s decision in Bostock v. Clayton County (2020), which addressed Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, requires gender identity-based access to single-sex spaces under, for example, Title IX of the Educational Amendments Act. This position is legally untenable and has harmed women. The Attorney General shall therefore immediately issue guidance to agencies to correct the misapplication of the Supreme Court’s decision in Bostock v. Clayton County (2020) to sex-based distinctions in agency activities. In addition, the Attorney General shall issue guidance and assist agencies in protecting sex-based distinctions, which are explicitly permitted under Constitutional and statutory precedent.
- Federal Funding and Gender Ideology:
(g) Federal funds shall not be used to promote gender ideology. Each agency shall assess grant conditions and grantee preferences and ensure grant funds do not promote gender ideology.
- Privacy in Intimate Spaces:
(a) The Attorney General and Secretary of Homeland Security shall ensure that males are not detained in women’s prisons or housed in women’s detention centers, including through amendment, as necessary, of Part 115.41 of title 28, Code of Federal Regulations and interpretation guidance regarding the Americans with Disabilities Act.
- Single-Sex Rape Shelters:
(b) The Secretary of Housing and Urban Development shall prepare and submit for notice and comment rulemaking a policy to rescind the final rule entitled “Equal Access in Accordance with an Individual’s Gender Identity in Community Planning and Development Programs” of September 21, 2016, 81 FR 64763, and shall submit for public comment a policy protecting women seeking single-sex rape shelters.
- Medical Procedures for Inmates:
*(c) The Attorney General shall ensure that the Bureau of Prisons revises its policies concerning medical care to be consistent with this order
About Truth Wins Out
Truth Wins Out is a nonprofit organization that works to protect LGBTQ people and advance equality by combating the spread of hate, extremism, and misinformation. Through education, advocacy, and public policy work, we strive to build a world where all individuals are free from discrimination and persecution.
