On Feb. 5, President Donald Trump passed an executive order to ban transgender athletes assigned male at birth to compete in women’s sports. 

The president claimed that “the war on women’s sports is over.” My original angle for this column was just that. As a female athlete, I was in complete agreement with President Trump that biological males did not belong in female sports. However, as I conducted my research on the topic, the facts started to speak for themselves.

As Trump was signing the executive order, he was surrounded by young female U.S athletes. He talked about Lia Thomas, a trangender female and NCAA Division 1 swimmer who won a national title in the 500-yard freestyle. Trump claimed that she had stolen the title from a biologically female athlete. He then slandered Imane Khelif, a female boxer who won a gold medal in boxing at the Olympics this summer, and was accused of being transgender. However, Khelif has openly said that she was born a female and identifies as a female despite Trump’s accusations. His speech, allegedly meant to “protect” and “empower” female athletes, seemed more like an attack on the transgender community than anything.

In January, NCAA president Charlie Baker released a statement that out of the 510,000 athletes competing at the collegiate level, there are fewer than 10 who publicly identify as transgender. Less than .005 percent of NCAA athletes fall under the category of transgender. Additionally, out of these athletes, only one has ever made it onto a podium at a national level meet. 

Now, I agree as much as the next person that it is not fair; however, this seems like a problem that could have been handled by the NCAA. Meanwhile, in the past twenty years, 128 NCAA athletes have died by suicide. Mental health remains a critical and ongoing crisis in college sports, yet it has not received the same urgent attention. So why is a statistically insignificant number of transgender athletes being prioritized as a national issue? Did .005 percent of the NCAA really warrant an executive order at the forefront of Trump’s presidency?

This is where I fell down the rabbit hole of statistics and facts surrounding the topic.  According to Time Magazine, Trump’s campaign spent at least $215 million on anti-trans advertisements. Transgender people are not criminals, and their decision to transition and live as the gender they identify with does not harm anyone. Additionally, in the U.S, there are fewer than 2 million adults who openly identify as transgender, and these adults only make up a whopping .6 percent of the population. An even more alarming statistic is that 77 million people in the U.S have criminal records and that the leading cause of death in children ages 1-17 is gun violence.

So, as I scrolled, clicked, and researched, I was starting to question why this topic has warranted so much of Trump’s attention and energy. Trump’s main concern at the beginning of his presidency has not been to eliminate crime rates or tackle the gun safety problem or even to fix the economy. His main concern, rather, was to target a group of individuals that goes against his personal rhetoric. His focus on trans athletes is not about protecting women in sports; it is driven by pure hatred.

The ban on transgender athletes is just one of many executive orders President Trump has signed targeting the LGBTQ community. Since taking office just over a month ago, he has issued 60 executive orders, seven of which specifically impact the rights of transgender and LGBTQ individuals. These orders include measures such as limiting federal recognition to only two genders, banning transgender people from serving in the military, restricting minors’ access to gender-affirming care, reinstating the global gag rule to limit abortion access, and prohibiting the use of terms like “pregnant person” or “assigned male at birth” in CDC scientific journals. In addition, he has prevented educators from discussing LGBTQ topics and banned transgender athletes from participating in women’s sports. 

Beyond these new restrictions, Trump has also rescinded protections for LGBTQ individuals, such as the “Advancing Equality for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and Intersex Individuals” order.

After reading through the long list of orders that Trump issued aimed directly at the LGBTQ community, it became clear what this was about. Trump’s mission was never to save female athletes or protect women’s sports, it was to single out and target a vulnerable group to feed into his personal agenda. If this were truly about fairness in women’s sports, where is the executive order addressing the wage gap between male and female professional athletes? Where is the order for improving mental health resources for women’s sports? Where is the plan to hold abusive coaches accountable or ensure female athletes are protected from sexual harassment?

Instead, Trump has chosen to put his energy into a statistically insignificant issue, weaponizing women’s sports as an attack on a group that does not fit within the constraints of his personal values rather than addressing the real problems facing the nation. If his concern were truly about fairness, he would be fighting for solutions that actually benefit female athletes, not using them as a political pawn to justify exclusion in the name of protecting women.

The heart of this column asks: why? Why, in a nation that celebrates diversity and freedom of expression, do we feel the need to take away rights from a group of people who have done no harm, but fail to address gun violence, crime and the rising cost of living?