(The Washington Stand) — President Donald Trump’s Justice Department is axing a transgender-themed training program for police officers, as the administration suppresses gender ideology throughout the executive branch of the federal government.
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and its Community Relations Service (CRS) recently retired a training program which instructed police officers to apologize for “misgendering” people who identify as transgender, as well as prohibited the use of “unacceptable terms” such as “tranny” and “shemale,” according to a report from the Daily Caller News Foundation.
The program, initiated under former President Joe Biden and entitled “Engaging and Building Relationships with Transgender Communities,” was removed from the CRS website on February 1. Designed to “help officers develop relationships and improve their interactions with transgender communities and individuals,” the program consisted of two 90-minute video sessions in addition to in-person training and coursework.
Training materials instructed police officers who do not identify as transgender to use terms like “transgender” and “trans” when referring to people who do identify as transgender and to apologize for “misgendering” individuals who identify as transgender. “If you happen to misgender an individual, apologize and do not repeat the same mistake,” the training material stated.
Additionally, officers were instructed not to use “unacceptable terms” to refer to people who identify as transgender, including “tranny,” “shemale,” “he-she,” “shim,” and “transvestite.” Officers were also trained to ask people who identify as transgender how they would “like to be addressed” and to use those individuals’ “preferred pronouns.”
The training program also suggested that police officers should “be careful” not to share information about teenagers’ transgender identities with family members. “It is important for law enforcement to be careful when engaging with what could be a transgender teen, as they may not have shared their current transition with family, friends, or other community members,” the course materials state.
In comments to The Washington Stand, Family Research Council Senior Fellow Meg Kilgannon explained, “Children are not protected or kept safer because adults keep secrets about them from their parents. This is a simple truth.” She added, “When individuals or governmental institutions insist on keeping secrets with and about children from parents, an important boundary has been not just crossed but violated.”
Although the program formally debuted in 2022, CRS stated that it has been implementing such training since 2016. The training materials told officers that the program “does not try to change your values,” but also warned officers, “Know your own biases.” Additional training told officers to attend Pride events in uniform and to encourage civilians to fill out “hate crime reports.”
Since his return to the White House in January, Trump has led the federal government in eliminating gender ideology from most policy and training. In one of the first executive orders he issued, the president declared that sex is a “biological reality” that cannot be altered by “gender identity” and instructed federal agencies to “remove all statements, policies, regulations, forms, communications, or other internal and external messages that promote or otherwise inculcate gender ideology, and shall cease issuing such statements, policies, regulations, forms, communications or other messages.”
“Across the country, ideologues who deny the biological reality of sex have increasingly used legal and other socially coercive means to permit men to self-identify as women,” Trump wrote in his executive order. He stated, simply, “This is wrong.” He continued, “The erasure of sex in language and policy has a corrosive impact not just on women but on the validity of the entire American system. Basing Federal policy on truth is critical to scientific inquiry, public safety, morale, and trust in government itself.”
“This unhealthy road is paved by an ongoing and purposeful attack against the ordinary and longstanding use and understanding of biological and scientific terms, replacing the immutable biological reality of sex with an internal, fluid, and subjective sense of self unmoored from biological facts,” Trump wrote. He concluded, “Accordingly, my Administration will defend women’s rights and protect freedom of conscience by using clear and accurate language and policies that recognize women are biologically female, and men are biologically male”
His administration has thus far followed through on executing this order, notably striking down gender ideology rules, programs, guidance, and messaging promoted by the prior presidential administration.
The Department of Defense (DOD) revised its standards for hiring and promotions to ensure that individuals identifying as transgender were no longer admitted to the U.S. military or promoted and halted any “unscheduled, scheduled, or planned medical procedures associated with affirming or facilitating a gender transition for Service members.” Shortly afterwards, the DOD made the decision to fire all military service members who identify as transgender.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Centers for Disease Control, and Food and Drug Administration also removed online guidance regarding gender transition procedures, although a federal judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration from deleting the relevant websites. HHS subsequently released federal guidance defining “woman” as “an adult human female” and “man” as “an adult human male.”
The guidance added that a female “is a person of the sex characterized by a reproductive system with the biological function of producing eggs (ova)” and a male “is a person of the sex characterized by a reproductive system with the biological function of producing sperm.”
This article is reprinted with permission from the Family Research Council, publishers of The Washington Stand, at washingtonstand.com.
