Donald Trump’s lawyers are ‘flailing’ as a judge calmly explains why his anti-trans executive order doesn’t make a lick of sense

Donald Trump has been stumbling his way through the first month of his second presidential term, but that’s not to say he’s gotten nothing done. The man and his team have fumbled nearly every announcement, policy change, and even executive order announced so far, but a few of their ill-considered machinations are still managing to stick. We’re not actually set to freeze federal grants, despite Trump’s initial efforts, but we’re very likely to see his attacks on the transgender community persist.

Trump and his far-right fan club have made anti-trans rhetoric a cornerstone of their new-age politics. The right seemingly has so little substance to offer that hate has become its pillar, and hate against trans people has perhaps never been so “in.” As a result, Trump is facing exceedingly little pushback on his rampant anti-trans efforts, but there still hurdles in his efforts to invalidate and threaten trans people across the nation.

Over his first month in office, Trump signed multiple anti-trans executive orders, as he attempted to bar trans people — particularly trans women — from playing sports, serving in the military, or receiving gender-affirming care. Across his attacks on the nation’s trans citizens, Trump has referenced the language of his first anti-trans executive order, which defined “sex” as “an individual’s immutable biological classification as either male or female,” before expanding to note that “‘Sex’ is not a synonym for and does not include the concept of ‘gender identity.'”

That same executive order also outlined that “female” identifies “a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell,” while “male” identifies “a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the small reproductive cell.” Which, in case you missed those old biology classes, technically classifies every American, everywhere, as female. Congrats, I guess?

The blatant lack of understanding, both of biology and the law, have really been hampering Trump’s anti-trans train, and things just hit yet another snag when Judge Ana C. Reyes pushed back on the Trump team’s misunderstanding of its own orders. In a terse exchange during a hearing on Trump’s transgender military ban, Reyes gave Trump’s Justice Department attorney Jason C. Lynch a free lesson in gender and military readiness.

After explaining that “any common sense rational human being” understands that pronoun usage doesn’t impact military readiness, Reyes pivoted to educate the DOJ attorney on grade-school biology. Referencing executive order 14183, which specifically references the same “all Americans are ladies now” language of EO14168, Reyes asked Lynch if he — and the Trump team as a whole — “understand, as a matter of biology,” that any assertion that “there are only two sexes” is simply incorrect.

Trump's lawyers are absolutely flailing in the courts right now pic.twitter.com/3wbofVxmHn

— Ari Drennen (@AriDrennen) February 19, 2025

Lynch responded that he doesn’t understand, which opened up the floor for Reyes to slap some knowledge on the attorney. As the judge outlined, there are plenty of biological examples of people who do not have the precise qualifications to fall into Trump’s definition of “female” or “male.” That includes a good “30 different intersex examples,” all of whom have varied numbers of x and y chromosomes.

“We have people with xxx chromosomes,” Reyes explained. “We have androgen insensitivity, xy genetically, that may have female external sex characteristics and internally have testes. There’s a five alpha reductase deficiency that causes changes in testosterone metabolism, xy that may have female external genitalia or ambiguous genitalia.”

The informative smack-down prompted instant praise from Americans, one of whom shared a transcript of the exchange to social media with a note that “Trump’s lawyers are absolutely flailing in the courts right now.” It’s not an inaccurate assessment, since these tools don’t even understand basic biology — now if only it could stop their hare-brained schemes from becoming law.