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‘Transgender’ references have been removed from travel advisories published on the US State Department’s website. The changes occurred shortly after President Donald Trump signed dozens of executive orders, including some aimed at rolling back transgender legislation adopted by the previous administration.
The acronym LGBTQI+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex) has been shortened in the website’s International Travel section to ‘LGB’, according to photos from social media taken before the changes. The State Department has not made any official comments about the move so far.
The change in wording is one of the latest steps by the administration to curb initiatives protecting transgender rights and programs promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) at the government level.
On his first day back in the Oval Office, Trump revoked 78 executive orders signed by his predecessor, Joe Biden, including government policies related to transgender people and DEI initiatives. The new orders set a 60-day time frame for federal bodies and departments to cease these practices.
The president has also halted federal funding for medical procedures related to gender transitioning for people under the age of 19, claiming that these practices are “child-abusive” and inflict “blatant harm” on children.
Last week, media reports emerged that federal employees were ordered via internal memos to remove pronouns from their email signatures by Friday afternoon. The websites of several departments temporarily went down, with some displaying a blank page before reappearing later that day.
Trump also signed an executive order titled ‘Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness’, aimed at removing “radical gender ideology” from the military.
Last month, the State Department suspended the processing of passport applications in which ‘X’ is selected as the gender, as part of the push to stop accommodating non-binary, intersex, and gender-nonconforming individuals.
In his inaugural address on January 20, Trump announced that the US would formally recognize only two genders. Later that day, he signed an order titled ‘Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government’, which asserts that “there are only two genders, male and female.” The directive instructs federal agencies to update official documents, including passports and visas, to reflect this policy.
