President Donald Trump signed executive orders Monday rolling back protections for transgender people and terminating diversity, equity and inclusion programs within the federal government in what he described in his inauguration speech as a move to end efforts to ''socially engineer race and gender into every aspect of public and private life."
Both are major shifts for the federal policy and are in line with Trump's campaign promises.
One order declares that the federal government would recognize only two immutable sexes: male and female. The definition will be based on whether people are born with eggs or sperm, rather than on their chromosomes. The change is being pitched as a way to protect women from ''gender extremism.''
Conservative groups such as the American Family Association are praising the change as one that acknowledges the truth. But experts including the American Medical Association and American Psychiatric Association hold that gender is a spectrum, not a binary structure consisting only of males and females.
Under the order, federal prisons and shelters for migrants and rape victims are to be segregated by sex as defined by the order.
And federal taxpayer money could not be used to fund ''transition services.'' A small number of federal prison inmates have had gender-affirming surgery and more have had treatments such as hormone therapy paid for with federal funds.
Medicaid in some states covers such treatments, but judges put on hold a Biden administration rule that would have extended that nationally.
The order would also block requirements at government facilities and at workplaces that transgender people be referred to using the pronouns that align with their gender. Trump's team says those requirements violate the First Amendment's freedom of speech and religion.
