Some people’s passports will be impacted by one of the executive orders that Donald Trump signed recently.
Since his historic return to the White House earlier this week, Trump has been in the news. He signed a number of executive orders almost immediately after entering the White House.
Trump signed more than 200 directives on Monday, January 20, according to BBC News. According to the news agency, an executive order is a written directive from the president to the federal government that is not subject to congressional approval.
‘Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government’ is one of the executive orders that the 78-year-old signed.
The notion that there are only two genders—male and female—is one of the major adjustments the measure introduces. Transgender women will no longer be held in female jails in light of this.
The order will also impact the passports of non-binary individuals.
The Biden Administration allowed those who wanted to list ‘X’ as their gender on their passports to do so, and 1.2 million Americans identified as non-binary, according to a 2021 study.
When the first X gender passport was granted in October 2021, envoy Jessica Stern praised it as a “momentous step.”
“The addition of a third gender marker propels the US forward toward ensuring that our administrative systems account for the diversity of gender identity, gender expression and sex characteristics among US citizens,” she told Sky News.
However, in response to Trump’s newly passed executive order, the US State Department is currently freezing X passport applications.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently told staff members in an email that The Guardian was able to get that “the policy of the United States is that an individual’s sex is not changeable.”
‘Sex, and not gender, will be used’ on official documents, such as passports and consular report of birth abroad paperwork, he continued.
Additionally, staff were instructed to “suspend any application where the applicant is seeking to change their sex marker” and “suspend any application requesting an X sex marker.”
The new rule is thought to have an impact on both present and future passport applications.
Passports that have already been issued with the X-sex designation are still valid as of right now, but individuals who need to update their travel credentials soon are likely to face difficulties.
