President Donald Trump’s assault on transgender women inched forward late on Tuesday as the University of Pennsylvania has bent the knee to the administration’s demands.
Lia Thomas, a former collegiate swimmer who is transgender, was stripped of her titles and records after months of pressure by Trump and Education Secretary Linda McMahon. In 2022, Thomas was the first openly transgender athlete to win an NCAA Division I title, which sent the right-wing into a downward spiral.
The Ivy League school also issued apologies to female athletes the school claimed were “disadvantaged” by Thomas’ participation on the swim team.
“Competing under eligibility rules in effect at the time, Lia Thomas set program records in the 100, 200, and 500 freestyle during the 2021-22 season,” the note on the website stated.
In his apology, UPenn President J. Larry Jameson said, “While Penn’s policies during the 2021-2022 swim season were in accordance with NCAA eligibility rules at the time, we acknowledge that some student-athletes were disadvantaged by these rules.”
“We recognize this and will apologize to those who experienced a competitive disadvantage or experienced anxiety because of the policies in effect at the time,” he added.
In February, McMahon and the Trump administration launched an investigation aimed at Thomas and UPenn, concluding in April that the university had discriminated against cisgender female athletes.
Naturally, this all falls into Trump and his team’s efforts to remove transgender women from female sports altogether. In early February, Trump signed an executive order aiming to keep transgender girls and women out of sporting events that correspond to their gender identity.
But as other schools followed that order, UPenn apparently didn’t go far enough in the eyes of the Trump administration, which froze $175 million of funding in March. And on Tuesday, in response to UPenn stripping Thomas of her titles and records, the Trump administration planned to unfreeze those funds.
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Freezing federal funds for universities to force them to comply with political agendas has become Trump’s go-to move in his new presidency, with other institutions, such as Harvard University, seeing billions tied up amid Trump’s vendettas. However, what’s also become common this year is transgender people losing their hard-fought rights and feeling forced back into the shadows.
In recent years, strides have been made toward a broader public understanding of what it means to be transgender, and toward destigmatizing the existence of trans people. But with the Trump administration’s efforts, trans people have seen a massive backslide in their civil rights. No longer are trans people welcome to serve in the military, even if they have served for years. To Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, they are classified as mentally unfit.
But the right-wing’s attack on LGBTQ+ people has been relentless as of late. The Trump administration has attacked LGBTQ+ youth by proposing to cut funding to specialized services for the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. The conservative-led Supreme Court ruled that states can ban minors from obtaining gender-affirming medical care. And some right-leaning states, like Iowa, are even eliminating housing and workplace protections for trans people.
When the Trump administration, aided by weak-willed universities, decides to rewrite, erase, or ignore a subset of people, what happens next?