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The U.S. Olympic Committee acquiesced this week to Donald Trump’s bigoted, anti-scientific demands with a new ban on transgender women competing in events.
As NBC News reported:
The U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee updated its policies to say it will comply with President Donald Trump’s executive order banning transgender women from competing in women’s sports. The committee made the change in an updated ‘Athlete Safety Policy,’ which does not mention the word ‘transgender’ in any of its 27 pages. However, the document, dated June 18 but posted quietly on the USOPC’s website Monday, includes language saying the committee will comply with Trump’ s order.
Officials with the organization said in a letter, obtained by NBC News, that “As a federally chartered organization, we have an obligation to comply with federal expectations,” and that “The guidance we’ve received aligns with the Ted Stevens Act, reinforcing our mandated responsibility to promote athlete safety and competitive fairness.”
No trans women — and, in fact, no trans people in general — participated in last year’s Olympic games, despite Trump’s repeated lies claiming some did. Aside from that, reputable scientists have disputed claims that transgender women have an inherent athletic advantage over cisgender women. A recent report, sponsored in part by the International Olympic Committee and released last year, reached similar conclusions.
But Trump has framed his crusade against trans athletes as a defense of women and women’s sports, even as his policies — not trans women — are putting women’s athletics in the U.S. under threat.
In placating Trump’s bigoted demands, the U.S. Olympic Committee has signed on to what CNN aptly described as the administration’s “all-of-government approach” to targeting trans people — and has allowed itself to become conscripted into an broader right-wing assault on the trans community that has long been a hallmark of anti-democratic regimes, including Nazi Germany.