President Trump on Monday ordered his administration to gut policies instituted under the Biden administration to prevent sex discrimination and protect transgender Americans, and dismantle federal programs that promote diversity, equity and inclusion.
Mr. Trump’s actions, part of a blitz of orders that he signed on his first day in office, assert that the government will now defend women against “gender ideology extremism” by reversing “efforts to eradicate the biological reality of sex.” They also call for ending D.E.I. programs and the “termination of all discriminatory programs” in the government, including in federal employment practices.
The executive orders included a mix of administrative measures, such as changing government forms to include only two genders, as well as assertions dismissing the validity of gender identity entirely. A gender identity other than the one assigned at birth, an order said, “reflects a fully internal and subjective sense of self” and “does not provide a meaningful basis for identification.”
The actions also effectively shut down an array of programs and practices aimed at reversing decades of systemic inequities and discriminatory practices that have disproportionately affected Black people and other underserved communities.
Under the orders, the Office of Management and Budget and the Office of Performance and Personnel Management will coordinate on changing hiring practices, ending equity-focused programs and grants and terminating “chief diversity officer” positions designated during the Biden administration.
The orders deliver on Mr. Trump’s promise to eradicate what his allies consider to be “wokeism” in the federal government, a term that conservatives use to describe racial justice and civil rights advocacy. They are part of an effort that he took up in his first term by rolling back policies boosting affirmative action and transgender rights.
In his Inaugural Address on Monday, Mr. Trump vowed to stop efforts to “socially engineer race and gender into every aspect of public and private life.”
He acknowledged that he was being inaugurated on Martin Luther King Jr.’s Birthday and said he would “not forget” that he had gained support among Hispanic and Black voters in the November election.
“We will forge a society that is colorblind and merit-based,” Mr. Trump said.
His actions on Monday are also aimed at bringing back “biological truth” to the federal government, according to a Trump official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the orders before they were signed.
Mr. Trump ordered federal agencies to recognize a biological, binary definition of sex — male or female and not interchangeable. The government will also eliminate references to gender identity in policy documents, and will order that government-issued documents, including passports and visas, accurately reflect one’s biological sex.
On the first day of his presidency in 2021, Mr. Biden took an essentially opposite position, directing agencies to include sexual orientation and gender identity in any regulations and policies covering workplace discrimination, formalizing protections for L.G.B.T.Q. workers. He extended those directions to schools and students last year.
The order also prohibits the use of federal funds for any use promoting gender ideology through grants or other government programming, as well as the use of public funding for transition-related medical procedures in prisons.
Perhaps the most pointed part of the directive instructs agencies to protect “intimate single-sex spaces,” such as prisons and rape shelters, by denying access to transgender women.
The Trump official said the changes were all aimed at promoting the privacy and safety of women, who the official said had suffered under attempts to cater to transgender workers and students.
Elements of Mr. Trump’s orders were written to explicitly target education institutions, rolling back actions taken during the Biden administration that extended protections under the Civil Rights Act of 1964, incoming officials told reporters on Monday.
The Biden administration had instructed schools that Title IX of the Civil Rights Act, which protects students against discrimination based on sex, afforded the same protections to transgender students against discrimination based on their gender identity.
Mr. Trump’s executive actions will undo that policy. The order directs his attorney general to release guidance stating that a Supreme Court decision in 2020 that cemented stronger civil rights protections to transgender workers does not apply to schools and their students, echoing a ruling by a federal judge earlier this month.
At a rally on Sunday, Mr. Trump reiterated his intent to minimize the role of the federal government in steering education policy, saying that he instructed his pick for education secretary, Linda McMahon, to return much authority over the nation’s schools to state legislatures.
“If you do a great job, you will put yourself out of a job, because you’ll be sending it back to the states,” he said he had told Ms. McMahon.
But the executive orders issued on Monday demonstrated the extent to which the Trump administration intends to use the power of the executive branch to compel schools and educators to conform to its vision for social policy.
In his previous administration, Mr. Trump railed against efforts to teach children about slavery and his conservative allies supported the movement to remove books about race and gender from school libraries. He indicated on Monday that the enforcement power of the Education Department would be critical to bringing change to the nation’s schools.
“We have an education system that teaches our children to be ashamed of themselves in many cases, to hate our country despite the love that we try so desperately to provide to them,” Mr. Trump said during his Inaugural Address. “All of this will change starting today, and it will change very quickly.”
On his first day of office, Mr. Biden unveiled a racial equity agenda after vowing during his inauguration speech to defeat “white supremacy.”
Mr. Biden ordered agencies to take sweeping steps to address inequity in housing, criminal justice, voting rights, health care, education and economic mobility. His administration also created new offices, like one dedicated to civil rights and environmental justice at the Environmental Protection Agency. Mr. Trump’s order specifically targets Mr. Biden’s “environmental justice” office and personnel for review.
Mr. Trump’s first act in office was to rescind executive orders issued by Mr. Biden including ones he signed on his first day in office in 2021, “advancing racial equity and supporting underserved communities” and “preventing discrimination on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation.”
The orders were widely seen as cornerstones of Mr. Biden’s civil rights legacy, and infused policy efforts across his administration.
But some of Mr. Biden’s efforts, including the Title IX rules and an Agriculture Department program designed to provide disaster relief to minority farmers, ran into legal roadblocks after critics contended that by aiding one group of people, they inherently harmed others.
The Trump official said that it was fitting that the administration was taking measures on the King holiday to reinstitute equal treatment by eliminating racial “preferences” and diversity programming.
The orders on diversity and gender fit within Mr. Trump’s larger goal of bringing back “American values,” as laid out in a White House statement on Monday on the president’s early priorities.
Mr. Trump touched on the theme in his address, again raising a recent promise to rename the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America” and proposing to officially rename North America’s tallest peak Mount McKinley after its name had been changed to Denali — its Alaska Native name — under President Barack Obama in 2015.
