Donald Trump promises to ‘just ban’ transgender people from participating in sports if he’s reelected

Former President Donald Trump promised to single-handedly ban transgender athletes from participating in high school, college, and professional sports if reelected. During a Fox News town hall with Harris Faulkner in Georgia on Tuesday, which aired Wednesday, Trump made clear that he would take executive action to prevent transgender women from competing in women’s sports.

In response to a question from a voter who expressed concern for her granddaughters’ safety on sports teams and in locker rooms, Trump said, “It’s such an easy question, and everybody in the room knows the answer.” He referenced a video from a California volleyball match, where a player spiked the ball and hit an opponent in the face. Although rumors suggested the player was transgender, this has not been confirmed. The athlete hit was uninjured, and her team won the game, but Trump used the incident to argue transgender athletes pose a physical danger to women.

“I never saw a ball hit so hard,” Trump said. “Other people, even in volleyball, they’ve been really hurt badly. Women playing men… but we stop it. We absolutely stop it.”

Trump continued to assert that transgender athletes have an unfair advantage, even with medical interventions like hormone therapy. “Physically, from a muscular standpoint, even if it was a little bit less… look at what’s happened in swimming. Look at the records that are being broken.”

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When Faulkner asked how he would enforce such a ban, Trump replied, “You just ban it. The president bans it. You just don’t let it happen. Not a big deal.”

Data from the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law highlights how exaggerated these concerns about transgender participation in sports often are. According to a 2022 report, the percentage of transgender people in the United States remains small—less than 1 percent of the adult population. Additionally, transgender athletes make up a tiny fraction of competitive sports participants, yet the issue is frequently used as a political flashpoint by Republicans seeking to rally their base.

Organizations such as the National Collegiate Athletic Association, the International Olympic Committee, and state high school athletic associations have established guidelines for transgender athlete participation. The NCAA, for example, has allowed transgender athletes to compete according to their gender identity, provided they meet specific hormone treatment requirements. The IOC oversees global sports participation and recently updated its framework to encourage inclusion while allowing individual sports federations to set criteria that balance inclusivity and fair competition.