Trump’s Executive Order is Social Eugenics Disguised as Policy
Donald Trump has never been one for subtlety, so why start now? His latest executive order, “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government,” might sound like the title of a particularly bad Heritage Foundation pamphlet, but its goal is simple: make life unbearable for transgender people.
This isn’t just about bathrooms, or pronouns, or the usual manufactured culture war fodder. This is about erasure. The order wipes away legal recognition for trans people, bans gender-affirming care in federal programs, and ensures that transgender Americans will find themselves locked out of essential services.
Some will scoff at the phrase social eugenics, as if eugenics only applies when people are marched off to camps. But it isn’t always done at gunpoint. There’s another, slower kind — the kind that doesn’t require forced sterilization or overt state violence, but instead creates a set of conditions where a group simply cannot function, cannot survive, and ultimately ceases to exist.
And that’s precisely what this order does. It blocks medical care for trans people. It strips them of legal identity. It ensures their basic rights are not recognized under federal law.
For years, Trump has laid the groundwork for this moment. He didn’t start with sweeping executive orders — he started with the small things. First, it was banning trans people from the military, because apparently the world’s most expensive fighting force couldn’t handle a few gender-nonconforming soldiers. Then it was fighting against workplace protections, because the real victims in America are corporations forced to acknowledge civil rights laws. And now, in 2025, we’ve reached the logical endpoint: a government order that denies transgender people exist at all.
And that’s the point, isn’t it?
This isn’t just policy; it’s a message. You are not real. You have no place here. You will not be acknowledged, protected, or tolerated.
Legal definitions may seem like the stuff of dusty law school textbooks, but when you define sex strictly as “male or female at birth,” you’re doing something far more insidious than just playing semantics — you’re deleting people from the law.
The funding cuts make it worse. By banning federal dollars from going toward anything vaguely associated with “gender ideology” (a term that, like “woke,” is intentionally meaningless), this executive order ensures gender-affirming care is effectively defunded. If you can’t ban something outright, make sure it’s impossible to access.
Then there’s the matter of safety. Trans people in prisons and shelters — some of the most vulnerable populations — are now left unprotected. Removing these protections isn’t an accident; it’s a deliberate choice. A message, once again, that violence and suffering are not only acceptable but expected.
For all the conservative pearl-clutching about “protecting the children,” this order also targets trans youth in the most calculated way possible. By reversing Title IX protections, Trump has made it harder — if not impossible — for trans kids to transition safely. No recognition. No support. No future.
The long game has always been elimination. The goal is not just to roll back rights but to ensure that, a generation from now, trans people are barely a footnote. If you can’t exist legally, medically, or socially, you won’t exist at all.
Sound familiar? It should. History has plenty of examples of what happens when a government slowly strips a group of their rights, their legal recognition, their humanity. It never stops at paperwork. It never stops at “policy.”
The only question now is whether the response will match the urgency of the moment. Legal challenges are already in the works. Some states will fight back. But this isn’t just a legal battle — it’s a moral one.
Because if this isn’t the moment to stand up, then what is?