The Claim

Made it the official policy of the U.S. government that there are only two sexes.

The Claim, Unpacked

What is literally being asserted?

That the administration established, as official federal policy, the recognition of only two sexes — male and female. This refers to Executive Order 14168, “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government,” signed January 20, 2025. The claim is factually accurate in the narrow sense that this executive order exists and declares the stated policy.

What is being implied but not asserted?

That prior federal policy recognized more than two sexes — or that the government was confused on the matter — and that this executive order resolved that confusion. That the binary definition of sex is scientifically uncontroversial. That this policy primarily “defends women” rather than restricting the rights of transgender, nonbinary, and intersex Americans. That this is a standalone accomplishment rather than the foundational definitional layer for a suite of other policies already counted separately on this list (items 224 and 225).

What is conspicuously absent?

Any acknowledgment that EO 14168 is the parent executive order from which items 224 (ending gender-affirming care for minors) and 225 (banning transgender women from women’s sports) derive their definitions and legal authority. Any mention of intersex individuals — approximately 1.7% of the population, or roughly 5 million Americans — whose biological sex does not neatly fit a binary classification. Any engagement with the scientific complexity of sex determination, which involves chromosomes, hormones, gonads, and anatomy that do not always align. Any reference to the Bostock v. Clayton County (2020) Supreme Court precedent holding that Title VII prohibits discrimination based on transgender status. Any mention of the practical impact on real people: revoked passport designations, altered personnel records, restricted federal healthcare access, and disrupted data collection on health disparities.

Overlap with Items 224 and 225

EO 14168 is the foundational executive order from which the policies described in items 224 and 225 derive. Item 224 (ending federal funding for gender-affirming care for minors) relies on EO 14168’s definitions and its directive that “federal funds shall not be used to promote gender ideology.” The subsequent EO 14187, which implements item 224’s specific provisions, explicitly builds on EO 14168’s framework. Item 225 (banning transgender women from women’s sports) is implemented through EO 14201, “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports,” which states: “The definitions in Executive Order 14168 … shall apply to this order.” All three items describe components of a single policy architecture. Counting the definitional foundation separately from its two most prominent applications is list padding — three items for what is functionally one policy initiative with multiple application domains. That said, because EO 14168 has scope far beyond sports and minors’ healthcare — encompassing passports, federal personnel records, prison housing, homeless shelters, data collection, and EEOC enforcement — it warrants independent analysis rather than being collapsed into either derivative item.

Evidence Assessment

Established Facts

Executive Order 14168 was signed January 20, 2025, and declares it “the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female.” The order defines sex as “an individual’s immutable biological classification as either male or female,” with “female” meaning “a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell” and “male” meaning “a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the small reproductive cell.” The order revoked five Biden-era executive orders: EO 13988 (preventing discrimination based on gender identity), EO 14004 (enabling transgender military service), EO 14020 (establishing the White House Gender Policy Council), EO 14021 (guaranteeing education free from gender-based discrimination), and EO 14075 (advancing equality for LGBTQI+ individuals). It dissolved the White House Gender Policy Council. ¹

Prior federal policy had been evolving toward broader recognition of gender identity, not toward a statutory definition of more than two sexes. No federal statute has ever defined more than two sexes. What changed incrementally over the Obama and Biden administrations was the recognition of gender identity as a basis for legal protections and document designation. Key milestones: Executive Order 13672 (2014) prohibited discrimination in federal employment based on gender identity; the State Department began issuing X gender markers on passports in October 2021; by April 2022, any passport applicant could select M, F, or X as their sex marker; the Social Security Administration in 2023 allowed self-selected sex designation (though still limited to M or F); Biden’s EO 13988 directed agencies to apply Bostock protections across federal programs. The claim that this administration “made it official policy” that there are only two sexes frames a rollback of gender identity recognition as if the government had previously adopted a multi-sex taxonomy — which it had not. ²

The order has been implemented across federal agencies with sweeping practical consequences. The State Department eliminated the X gender marker and now requires passports to display “biological sex at birth” only as M or F. OPM issued guidance in January 2025 (updated July 2025) requiring all federal personnel records to reflect “sex” as defined by the order, giving agencies until August 11, 2025, to revoke any trans-inclusive policies and demonstrate compliance. EEOC Acting Chair Andrea Lucas removed pronoun display features, eliminated the X gender marker from charge intake forms, and began removing guidance on gender identity-based harassment from the agency’s website. The Department of Defense issued implementation guidance. Federal prisons were directed to house individuals by biological sex rather than gender identity. ³

The Supreme Court, in Trump v. Orr (November 6, 2025), stayed a lower court injunction and allowed the passport sex marker policy to proceed. In a 6-3 unsigned opinion, the Court stated: “Displaying passport holders’ sex at birth no more offends equal protection principles than displaying their country of birth — in both cases, the government is merely attesting to a historical fact without subjecting anyone to differential treatment.” Justices Jackson, Sotomayor, and Kagan dissented, arguing the challengers faced “concrete injuries” including inability to obtain matching sex markers, psychological harm, and increased risks of violence and discrimination. The underlying litigation (Orr v. Trump) continues. ⁴

Multiple federal courts have blocked other aspects of EO 14168’s implementation, particularly its funding conditions. On March 4, 2025, a Maryland district court (Judge Brendan Hurson) issued a nationwide preliminary injunction blocking HHS, HRSA, NIH, and NSF from conditioning or withholding federal funding based on providers offering gender-affirming care. On February 28, 2025, Judge Lauren King (W.D. Washington) issued a preliminary injunction blocking enforcement of Sections 3(e), 3(g), and 4 of EO 14168 and EO 14187 against Washington, Minnesota, Oregon, and Colorado. On October 31, 2025, the same court halted enforcement of Section 3(g) against the City of Seattle. On February 12, 2026, another court enjoined Sections 4(a) and 4(c) for specific plaintiffs through May 2026. The legal landscape remains fragmented. ⁵

Strong Inferences

The order’s gamete-based definition of sex is scientifically incomplete and fails to account for intersex conditions. The Pediatric Endocrine Society — the professional organization for physicians specializing in the endocrine system in children — issued an October 2025 statement directly responding to EO 14168. The Society stated that “biological sex is not just about whether people can make sperm or eggs” and identified three components: genetic sex (chromosomes and genes), gonadal sex (the glands producing sex hormones), and anatomic sex (reproductive structures). Approximately 1 in 4,500 people are born with a difference of sex development (DSD), totaling over 60,000 Americans currently living with such conditions. The broader estimate of intersex prevalence — including all variations where sex characteristics do not fit typical binary categories — is approximately 1.7% of the population, or roughly 5 million Americans. These individuals may have different numbers of sex chromosomes, gonads that develop incompletely or asymmetrically, genitalia inconsistent with internal reproductive structures, or inability to produce either sperm or eggs. The order’s gamete-at-conception definition literally cannot classify these individuals. ⁶

The order’s claim to represent “biological truth” is a political assertion that selectively invokes science. The scientific consensus on biological sex is more complex than EO 14168 acknowledges. While the gametic definition of sex (large vs. small reproductive cell) is a valid biological framework at the population level, it does not produce a clean binary at the individual level. Chromosomal variations (XXY, XYY, X0, XX males, XY females), differences in hormone production and receptor sensitivity, and anatomical variations all mean that “sex” is a cluster of correlated but separable biological traits. The order’s phrasing — defining sex “at conception” based on which gamete a person’s biology “belongs to the sex that produces” — is circular when applied to individuals who produce neither gamete or who have mixed gonadal tissue. The Endocrine Society, the American Medical Association, and the American Academy of Pediatrics have all issued statements noting the biological complexity that the order’s definitions elide. ⁷

EO 14168 is in tension with the Supreme Court’s holding in Bostock v. Clayton County (2020). In Bostock, the Court held 6-3 that Title VII’s prohibition on sex discrimination encompasses discrimination based on transgender status, reasoning that “it is impossible to discriminate against a person for being … transgender without discriminating against that individual based on sex.” EO 14168 directs agencies to interpret Bostock narrowly — the EEOC’s Acting Chair stated that Bostock “does not demand” protections for bathroom access, pronoun use, or gender identity recognition. But the order cannot overrule a Supreme Court statutory interpretation; it can only direct agencies to test those boundaries, which multiple lawsuits are now doing. The legal tension between EO 14168 and Bostock remains unresolved. ⁸

The Williams Institute at UCLA estimates the order directly affects at least 7.8 million Americans. This includes approximately 1.6 million transgender individuals aged 13 and older, 1.2 million nonbinary adults, and approximately 5 million intersex Americans. Specific affected populations include approximately 1,538 transgender women and 750 transgender men in federal prisons, whose housing is now determined by birth sex rather than gender identity. An estimated 8% of transgender adults experienced homelessness in the past year (compared to 1% of cisgender heterosexual adults), and the order requires federally funded shelters to operate based on birth sex. The order also prohibits federal forms from requesting gender identity information, restricting future research on transgender health disparities. ⁹

What the Evidence Shows

The factual core of this claim is true: the administration signed EO 14168 on its first day in office, and that order declares it “the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female.” The policy is real, is being implemented across federal agencies, and has survived initial Supreme Court review on the passport question.

But the claim’s framing is misleading in several dimensions. First, it implies the government previously recognized more than two sexes. It did not. What the Biden administration did was recognize gender identity as a basis for protections and document designations — an entirely different matter from declaring the existence of additional sexes. The policy change was not from “many sexes” to “two sexes” but from “sex plus gender identity” to “sex only, defined by gametes at conception.” Framing this as establishing a basic biological fact obscures the actual policy change, which was the systematic removal of gender identity from federal recognition, protection, and data collection.

Second, the claim deploys “biological truth” as a shield while the order’s actual definition is scientifically incomplete. Defining sex solely by gamete production at conception cannot account for the documented reality of intersex conditions. The Pediatric Endocrine Society — the relevant medical authority — has directly stated that the order’s definition is inadequate. The order simply ignores these individuals, offering no guidance on how federal agencies should classify someone with complete androgen insensitivity syndrome (XY chromosomes, female external anatomy, no gamete production) or other DSDs. This is not a fringe concern: at minimum 60,000 Americans have clinically diagnosed DSDs, and the broader intersex population may number in the millions.

Third, this item is the definitional backbone of items 224 (gender-affirming care for minors) and 225 (women’s sports), both of which are counted separately on the “365 wins” list. EO 14168 is the parent order; the others are its children. Counting the foundation and its applications as three separate wins is list inflation.

The Bottom Line

The claim is factually accurate: EO 14168 does establish it as official U.S. government policy that there are only two sexes, and the order is being implemented with real consequences across federal agencies. The steel-man case is that the executive branch has a legitimate interest in maintaining consistent definitions across federal operations, that the gametic definition of sex is a recognized biological framework, and that the policy provides clarity for sex-segregated spaces and programs.

But the claim is misleading because it frames a sweeping rollback of gender identity recognition as the establishment of a basic biological fact. The prior federal government did not recognize more than two sexes; it recognized gender identity alongside sex. The order’s definition of sex is scientifically incomplete — rejected by the relevant medical professional societies as inadequate for the documented reality of intersex conditions. The policy has real and measurable consequences for millions of Americans, including the inability to obtain identity documents that match their lived identity, restricted access to federal healthcare, and the erasure of gender identity from federal data collection. And as a “win” on the list, it is the foundational layer of a policy architecture that is also counted as items 224 and 225 — three entries for one initiative.

Footnotes

1. Executive Order 14168, “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government,” 90 Fed. Reg. 4,005 (January 30, 2025). https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/01/30/2025-02090/defending-women-from-gender-ideology-extremism-and-restoring-biological-truth-to-the-federal ↩

2. Executive Order 13672 (Obama, 2014), 79 Fed. Reg. 42971; State Department X gender marker policy (2021-2022); Social Security Administration sex marker policy update (2023); Executive Order 13988 (Biden, 2021). https://www.cbsnews.com/news/social-security-sex-markers-gender-changes-records/ ↩

3. EEOC, “Removing Gender Ideology and Restoring the EEOC’s Role of Protecting Women in the Workplace,” January 28, 2025. https://www.eeoc.gov/newsroom/removing-gender-ideology-and-restoring-eeocs-role-protecting-women-workplace; OPM Updated Guidance Regarding EO 14168 (July 10, 2025). ↩

4. Trump v. Orr, 607 U.S. ___ (2025). SCOTUSblog coverage, November 6, 2025. https://www.scotusblog.com/2025/11/supreme-court-sides-with-trump-administration-on-sex-designations-on-passports/ ↩

5. State of Washington et al. v. U.S. Department of Justice et al. (W.D. Wash., February 28, 2025); unnamed Maryland case (D. Md., March 4, 2025); City of Seattle v. Trump (W.D. Wash., October 31, 2025). ↩

6. Pediatric Endocrine Society, “The Biological Reality of Sex and Intersex: A Response to the Executive Order,” October 23, 2025. https://pedsendo.org/patient-resource/the-biological-reality-of-sex-and-intersex/ ↩

7. Pediatric Endocrine Society (2025); 2006 Consensus Statement on Management of Intersex Disorders (Pediatric Endocrine Society and European Society for Paediatric Endocrinology); The Hill, “The messy reality of biological sex can’t be defined by executive order,” 2025. https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/5149125-trump-executive-order-biological-sex-definition/ ↩

8. Bostock v. Clayton County, 590 U.S. 644 (2020); EEOC Acting Chair Andrea Lucas statement, January 28, 2025. ↩

9. Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law, “Impact of the Executive Order Redefining Sex on Transgender, Nonbinary, and Intersex People,” 2025. https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/publications/impact-eo-redefine-sex-tbi/ ↩