October 7, 2025

Transparent Hypocrisy, Part Three: The Degradation of All Power But Trump’s

By Laura Trachtman

I started this series because, at first glance, I was irritated and vexed at how nonsensical and idiotic this Executive Order was. Now that I’ve dug in and really spent time thinking about it, I’ve realized that this is an incredibly dangerous EO, as through its issuance, President Trump usurped the power of the Legislative and Judicial Branches, and has declared open war on Americans. Friends, if you aren’t worried, you should be. 

In my previous posts about President Trump’s Executive Order, we discussed his blatant hypocrisy and pandering to bigots in determining that sex is a binary construct. We’re going to continue our examination of the third part of this policy, how it is perverting the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s mission, and how the Executive Branch has failed to respect the Judicial Branch’s authority to interpret laws and set precedent as well as the Legislative Branch’s authority to enact laws and dictate their purpose. 

Section 3 states in pertinent part:

(d)  The Secretaries of State and Homeland Security, and the Director of the Office of Personnel Management, shall implement changes to require that government-issued identification documents, including passports, visas, and Global Entry cards, accurately reflect the holder’s sex, as defined under section 2 of this order; and the Director of the Office of Personnel Management shall ensure that applicable personnel records accurately report Federal employees’ sex, as defined by section 2 of this order.

(e)  Agencies shall 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.  Agency forms that require an individual’s sex shall list male or female, and shall not request gender identity.  Agencies shall take all necessary steps, as permitted by law, to end the Federal funding of gender ideology.

(f)  The prior Administration argued that the Supreme Court’s decision in Bostock v. Clayton County (2020), which addressed Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, requires gender identity-based access to single-sex spaces under, for example, Title IX of the Educational Amendments Act.  This position is legally untenable and has harmed women.  The Attorney General shall therefore immediately issue guidance to agencies to correct the misapplication of the Supreme Court’s decision in Bostock v. Clayton County (2020) to sex-based distinctions in agency activities.  In addition, the Attorney General shall issue guidance and assist agencies in protecting sex-based distinctions, which are explicitly permitted under Constitutional and statutory precedent.

(g)  Federal funds shall not be used to promote gender ideology.  Each agency shall assess grant conditions and grantee preferences and ensure grant funds do not promote gender ideology.

While Section 3(d) isn’t the main thrust of today’s post, I cannot let it pass uncommented upon. What this does is it misgenders those individuals who have already corrected their gender identity. As a brief reminder, Section 2 forces individuals to identify with the gender they had “at conception”; as another brief reminder, this exposes this policy as written by idiots as everyone is female at conception (which is why everyone has nipples). The practical effect of this policy is that individuals who present and identify as female, although assigned the male gender at birth, will be forcibly reclassified as male, and those who present and identify as male, although assigned the female gender at birth, will be forcibly reclassified as female. In an ironic twist, this will force trans men to use female bathrooms – which, as we discussed in an earlier post on this topic, will force men into women’s bathrooms and into women’s domestic violence shelters, which are two issues that this Executive Order allegedly sought to correct. As I said, this was written by idiots. 

However, Sections 3(e) and (g) this Executive Order are significantly more dangerous than I initially anticipated, as they serve to declare war on the trans community. This is eloquently and briefly described in the resignation email of Marc Byron Seawright, former Director of Information Governance and Strategy, which can be found here. In this email, Mr. Seawright noted that: 

As a transgender and queer man, I have experienced direct and escalating harm in the form of open hostility toward LGBTQ+ people along with internal agency actions that undermine my credibility, diminish my role, and isolate me from decision-making. Until now, my accomplishments have been consistently praised and highly rated. Now, I am systematically devalued. I have been excluded from discussions where my expertise was once sought, and my professional recommendations have been disregarded without justification. I endure passive exclusion, professional isolation, and a hostile work environment because who I am does not align with the anti LGBTQ+ rhetoric of this interim [EEOC] administration. 

This is wildly alarming. The EEOC, the executive agency specifically tasked with prosecuting discrimination, has itself become the catspaw of this transphobic Administration. This transformation of the EEOC defeats the purpose of the legislation that created it and fails to accord trans Americans their Constitutionally guaranteed rights to equal protection and thus takes power from Congress, which enacted this legislation. 

But wait, there’s more. President Trump’s directive in Section 3(f) to ignore the decision issued by the Supreme Court of the United States in Bostock v. Clayton County (2020) is nothing less than a usurpation of the power of the Judicial Branch and an affront to our system of government. Critically, this also underscores the Trump Administration’s declaration of war on queer and trans individuals by allowing employers to fire individuals simply for being queer or trans, which SCOTUS in Bostock v. Clayton County determined was a violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, and thus illegal. Now, per President Trump’s Executive Order, that’s actually totally fine. 

So now, where does a trans person turn should they be discriminated against in employment? They have no protections under the EEOC, the federal agency tasked with preventing and remedying illegal discrimination. We can hope that our trans friend lives in a state (or city) which has enacted strict anti-discrimination laws and can turn to that entity for assistance, but with this Administration challenging the foundation blocks of our very government, I am left to wonder how long until the Trump Administration takes aim at the Tenth Amendment. So far, President Trump has issued this Executive Order which has disregarded the powers of the Judicial Branch and the Legislative Branch; how long until President Trump takes aim at the powers reserved to the States?