Former U.S. President Donald Trump on stage before delivering remarks at Windham High School – politics coverage from STAT
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Megan Molteni reports on discoveries from the frontiers of genomic medicine, neuroscience, and reproductive tech. She joined STAT in 2021 after covering health and science at WIRED. You can reach Megan on Signal at mmolteni.13.

During his inauguration speech Monday, President Trump promised to make America binary again. 

“It will henceforth be the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders, male and female,” he said. Within hours, he had signed an executive order to that effect, asserting a new legal definition of sex that strips federal recognition of the gender identity of some 1.6 million trans and nonbinary Americans.  

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The order directly contradicts a number of existing laws and recent court rulings and is likely to face legal challenges. It also defies decades of research into how human bodies grow and develop. 

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