Donald Trump effectively named himself head of the 2028 Los Angeles Olympic Summer Games on Tuesday, with the creation of a federal task force to “oversee” the XXXIV Olympiad.  

At the top of his agenda: barring transgender athletes from the event.

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“The United States will not let men steal trophies from women at the 2028 Olympics,” said Trump, who was disappointed with the reaction to his declaration from the officials and reporters assembled in the room. Only a few people then clapped, according to LeMonde.

The president said there will be a “very strong form of testing” to determine the sex of athletes, adding, “and if the test doesn’t come out appropriately, then they won’t be in the Olympics.”

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In one of many questions that seemed designed to curry favor with Trump and advance his anti-trans crusade, he was asked by another reporter — variously identified by different media outlets as a “correspondent” from MAGA mouthpiece LindellTV or One America News — “Will the DOJ [Department of Justice] consider pressing charges against any man that tries to masquerade as a woman coming into this country to beat up American athletes?”

Trump replied, “I would have to ask the attorney general about that.”

Sex testing at the Olympics was discontinued at the Sydney 2000 games after decades of use that proved problematic.

Gender screenings for a major sporting event were first used in 1966 at the European Track and Field Championships. They required women athletes to walk nude or almost nude before judges. Over the years, the gender testing evolved to physical/medical examinations and then chromosome tests.

“In reality, gender verification tests are difficult, expensive, and potentially inaccurate,” Myron Genel, M.D., a pediatric endocrinologist at the Yale School of Medicine told The Journal of the American Medical Association after the practice was discontinued in Sydney.

The endocrinologist said the tests routinely misidentified women athletes born with relatively rare genetic abnormalities that affect the development of testes and ovaries, or the expression of secondary sexual characteristics. In short, the tests will likely prove that many of the cisgender female athletes have biological features that make them intersex.

Some women, who usually have XX chromosomes, might have X and Y chromosomes, like men, yet their bodies are resistant to testosterone. “They have testes, but usually they do not descend, and their external genitalia is entirely female,” he explained. “They are women,” he said, but a chromosome test would reflect their genetic makeup as male.

Ironically, men with a rare sex variation called Klinefelter’s Syndrome, who have two X chromosomes and one Y chromosome rather than the usual XY combination, would reflect a female genetic makeup because of their extra X chromosome.

At the Summer Olympic Games in Atlanta in 1996, eight of 3,387 female athletes tested positive as men. Most were found to have testosterone resistance, and all were ultimately permitted to compete.

“Gender verification certificates” came with the privilege. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) voted to discontinue sex testing soon after.

At the “task force” signing event, Trump praised Gene Sykes, chair of the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee (USOPC) board of directors, for the USOPC’s move to effectively bar trans women from competing in women’s sports. 

The committee recently amended its athlete safety policy to suggest compliance with Trump’s “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports” directive issued in February.

“USOPC will continue to collaborate with various stakeholders with oversight responsibilities… to ensure that women have a fair and safe competition environment consistent with Executive Order 14201,” the policy reads.

Following Trump’s Olympic takeover, Fox News checked in with women’s fencer Stephanie Turner, who made headlines earlier this year when she took a knee to protest an opponent she already knew was trans.  

“Enforcement of this policy is going to be essential,” Turner said. “You can’t rely on documentation anymore. You can’t rely on a driver’s license, you can’t rely on birth certificates, because those can all be edited.” 

During the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, Trump bullied cisgender Algerian boxer Imane Khelif, falsely claiming that she’s transgender, even though no legitimate tests have proven the claim. His and other right-wing commentators’ claims of her trans identity led to worldwide online bullying and harassment against the boxer.

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