The U.S. Department of Education told employees late Friday that it will end all programs, contracts and policies that “fail to affirm the reality of biological sex,” carrying out President Donald Trump’s vow to restrict transgender rights.
The broad language in the email did not specify which programs or policies would be impacted, or how many schools or students might be affected. But the order appears designed to target programs that in recent years supported transgender students — school-based mental health services and support for homeless students, for example.
“These corrective measures will include thorough review and subsequent termination of Departmental programs, contracts, policies, outward-facing media, regulations, and internal practices,” according to the email sent to department employees and obtained by ProPublica.
A spokesperson for the Education Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The email, which was unsigned and sent from “ED Internal Communications,” also takes aim at employee programs at the Education Department. Employees across the federal government already have been instructed to remove preferred pronouns from their email signatures.
“Employee resource groups that promote gender ideology and do not affirm the reality of biological sex cannot meet on government property or take place during official work hours,” the email said.
It’s not clear what resource groups the email is referencing or whether they exist.
The Trump administration has curbed transgender rights in other federal agencies; it has barred transgender people from serving in the military, reinstating a policy from Trump’s first term, and in federal prisons it has tried to move transgender women to male facilities, an effort a judge has blocked.
The sweeping directive outlined in Friday’s Education Department email follows two recent executive orders targeting “gender ideology.” The first, “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government,” ordered federal agencies to scrub references to transgender people from documents, rules and policies. The department appears to have complied with the order by, for example, removing resources like tips for schools on how to support homeless LGBTQ+ youth.
Another executive order issued this week, “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports,” barred transgender athletes from participating in women’s sports at school. The Education Department on Thursday announced investigations into two universities and an athletic association related to transgender athletes and the institutions’ alleged violations of Title IX, a federal law that is part of the Civil Rights Act and prohibits sex-based discrimination in education. The same day, the NCAA reacted by barring athletes who were identified as male at birth from playing women’s sports.
The email sent to employees Friday afternoon stated: “The deliberate subjugation of women and girls by means of gender ideology — whether in intimate spaces, weaponized language, or American classrooms — negated the civil rights of biological females and fostered distrust of our federal institutions.”
Linda McMahon, Trump’s nominee for secretary of education, is still awaiting confirmation.
She is co-founder with her husband of World Wrestling Entertainment and chair of the America First Policy Institute, a nonprofit that has campaigned against transgender rights in schools.
Even without McMahon, like-minded colleagues already are working in the department, including several staff members from her conservative think tank. The bio of newly appointed Deputy General Counsel Candice Jackson, for instance, touts her experience “challenging the harmful effects of the concept of ‘gender identity’ in laws and policies in schools.”
Schools have experienced whiplash in recent years as presidents imposed — and then removed — protections for transgender youth.
Under President Barack Obama in 2016, the department issued guidance to schools that the federal Title IX law protects the right of transgender students to use restrooms and locker rooms at school that match their gender identities.
Schools “must not treat a transgender student differently from the way it treats other students of the same gender identity,” the letter said.
Trump rescinded that guidance after he came into office in 2017, though the letter remained on the Education Department’s website. The Biden administration took the position in 2021 that transgender students deserved protection from discrimination under Title IX and publicized resources for schools and the LGBTQ+ students they serve.
Now that Trump is back in office again, many of those resource documents appear to have been wiped off the department’s website.
“President Trump is being the bully-in-chief. This administration wants to outlaw kindness and common decency in schools and make it illegal for teachers to call their students by the name they want to be called,” said Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen, the executive director of Advocates for Trans Equality, in a statement about the administration’s “Defending Women” executive order.
Trump’s vision in his second administration includes dismantling the Education Department altogether. It’s unclear if there’s a legal pathway to do so, but already the administration has placed more than 50 department employees on administrative leave who appear to be associated with diversity, equity or inclusion efforts.
Concerns have mounted at the Education Department all week. Members of Elon Musk’s team reportedly have accessed sensitive department data, and some members of Congress went to department headquarters to question the team but were denied access. Responding to the social media posts of one representative who was blocked from the building, Musk posted on X: “No such department exists in the federal government.”
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