Speaker 1: From The Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey.
Speaker 1: It's Friday, February seven. The White House is scrambling to
Speaker 1: deal with the fallout from President Donald Trump's big plan
Speaker 1: to take control of the Gaza Strip. Secretary of State
Speaker 1: Marco Rubio says any relocations of Palestinians would be temporary
Speaker 1: while Gaza is rebuilt. The brother of missing woman Bromwyn
Speaker 1: Winfield has called on a coroner to investigate a Sydney
Speaker 1: home where he says her body may be hidden. A
Speaker 1: new episode of the Australians chart topping investigative podcast Bromwin
Speaker 1: is out now at Bromwyn podcast dot com. Donald Trump
Speaker 1: is on our gender policy blitz. He signed an executive
Speaker 1: order banning transgender athletes from women's competitions. So what does
Speaker 1: it mean for the future of sport?
Speaker 2: That's today's episode.
Speaker 1: At the Paris Olympics, Algerian welterweight boxer Imman Kalif put
Speaker 1: on a phenomenal display of strength and speed.
Speaker 3: The International Olympic Committee is playing defense a day after
Speaker 3: an Algerian boxer deemed a biological male, faced off against
Speaker 3: an Italian opponent who has hit so hard she stopped
Speaker 3: the fight.
Speaker 1: Italian Angela Karini could take no more, feeling unfairly overpowered
Speaker 1: by Imanhalif.
Speaker 4: Remember the crowd is absolutely roaring inside here at Sene
Speaker 4: Court at Roland Garros Stadium, fifteen thousand fans and really
Speaker 4: started the conversation at poured petrol on this issue of
Speaker 4: x Y athletes and trans athletes being able to participate
Speaker 4: at the Olympics.
Speaker 1: That's our chief sports writer Jess Halleran, who was in
Speaker 1: Paris for the Games. Khalif isn't trans. She declared she
Speaker 1: was born a woman and she's recognized as female on
Speaker 1: her passport. But this is twenty twenty five and politics
Speaker 1: is less about the nuance and all about the heat
Speaker 1: and light.
Speaker 5: With this executive order, the war on women's sports is over.
Speaker 1: At the White House, surrounded by a crowd of beaming women,
Speaker 1: Trump invoked that boxing match and demand Khalif's subsequent gold
Speaker 1: medal as one of the reasons he's banning transgender athletes
Speaker 1: from women's sport.
Speaker 5: And who could forget last year's Paris Olympics, where a
Speaker 5: male boxer stole the women's gold medal after brutalizing his
Speaker 5: female opponents so viciously that she had to forfeit just
Speaker 5: after forty six seconds. And she was a championship fighter.
Speaker 5: And actually they had two women or two people that transition,
Speaker 5: and both of them won gold medals, and they won
Speaker 5: them very convincingly.
Speaker 1: Trump signed an executive order stripping federal funding from schools
Speaker 1: and universities that allow transgender women and girls to compete
Speaker 1: in female sports.
Speaker 5: And this doesn't have to be long. It's just all
Speaker 5: about common sense. Doesn't have to be long. In a
Speaker 5: few moments, I'll sign a historic executive order to ban
Speaker 5: men from competing in women's sports.
Speaker 1: It's about that. The order is called keeping Men out
Speaker 1: of Women's Sports, and it's an interpretation of something called
Speaker 1: Title nine, that's a fifty year old federal law banning
Speaker 1: sex discrimination in education.
Speaker 5: Under the Trump administration, we will defend the proud tradition
Speaker 5: of female athletes, and we will not allow men to
Speaker 5: beat up, injure and cheat our women and our girls.
Speaker 5: From now on, women in sports will be only for women.
Speaker 1: As Trump spoke, bureaucrats and officials across government, from health
Speaker 1: care to defense and the criminal justice system, we're adjusting
Speaker 1: to the new mood. They're concerned they'll lose federal funding
Speaker 1: if they continue operating in the ways they have been.
Speaker 1: Public servants have been ordered to remove pronouns from their
Speaker 1: email signatures. In the health system, references to gender diversity,
Speaker 1: and even the acronym LGBT have been scrubbed from government websites.
Speaker 1: The military has halted recruitment of transgender personnel, placed trans
Speaker 1: service members on administrative leave, and limited access to spaces
Speaker 1: like bathrooms on base. Trump says that's led directly to
Speaker 1: an optic in recruitment.
Speaker 5: Every single day, nearly three hundred and fifty new soldiers
Speaker 5: enlisted to defend our nation, and they're very, very happy
Speaker 5: to have done so. They just said there's a spirit
Speaker 5: about our country that they haven't seen in many, many years,
Speaker 5: and I happen to agree with that.
Speaker 1: In hospitals, patients receiving gender related treatment have found their
Speaker 1: prescriptions aren't being filled and their surgery is canceled. Transgender
Speaker 1: inmates held in the nation's prisons are being transferred between
Speaker 1: facilities transgender women to men's prisons and vice versa, and
Speaker 1: the distribution of many millions of dollars in aight. It
Speaker 1: has been stopped following claims it was funding diversity, equity
Speaker 1: and inclusion initiatives abroad. DEI is the Trump administration's forbidden acronym.
Speaker 1: It's prompted a wave of legal action from trans military
Speaker 1: recruits and prisoner advocates who say vulnerable people are being
Speaker 1: discriminated against and put at risk.
Speaker 5: So in recent years, the radical left has waged an
Speaker 5: all out campaign to erase the very concept of biological
Speaker 5: sex and replace it with a militant transgender ideology. You've
Speaker 5: heard a little bit about this, haven't you anna just
Speaker 5: a little bit? Does anybody agree with them?
Speaker 4: It would be not a good.
Speaker 5: Thing to say yes. Radio female athletes have been forced
Speaker 5: onto the front lines, and men claiming to be girls
Speaker 5: have stolen more than three thousand, five hundred victories that's
Speaker 5: a lot, and invaded more than eleven thousand competitions designed
Speaker 5: for women.
Speaker 1: Coming on what now for women's sport? Don't forget. We're
Speaker 1: hosting a very special live event at the Art Gallery
Speaker 1: of New South Wales in Sydney later this month. Join
Speaker 1: Broman creator Headley Thomas, as well as National Crime correspondent
Speaker 1: David Murray, senior writer Matthew Condon and me on February
Speaker 1: twenty seven for an exciting live discussion of all things
Speaker 1: true crime podcasting. It's open to the public and you
Speaker 1: can get your tickets right now at the Australian Plus
Speaker 1: dot com dot a U. That's the Australian p l
Speaker 1: US dot com dot a U. The other case that
Speaker 1: many people would remember is the swimmer Leah Thomas, someone
Speaker 1: who has gone through mal puberty but who is a
Speaker 1: trans woman.
Speaker 3: Thomas wins the NCAA Championship.
Speaker 1: Hated a very tell me about the Lea Thomas case.
Speaker 1: Why was that so controversial?
Speaker 4: It was controversial because Leah Thomas was actually a member
Speaker 4: of the University of Pennsylvania's men's swim team for a
Speaker 4: long time, and she then went on to transition to
Speaker 4: become a woman, and in March twenty twenty two she
Speaker 4: won an nc double A first division title in freestyle,
Speaker 4: and she also did this incredible interview with Sports Illustrated
Speaker 4: where she said she wanted to swim at the parents'
Speaker 4: Olympic Games and from that it triggered change. It really
Speaker 4: set world aquatics into a bit of a spin about
Speaker 4: what to do around their policies and what happened in
Speaker 4: the end that World Aquatics made the decision to effectively
Speaker 4: ban trans women from competing in female categories at an
Speaker 4: Olympic and world level.
Speaker 1: That's at World swimming at odds with the International Olympic Committee,
Speaker 1: which was more open to including trans athletes in women's competitions.
Speaker 1: You cover a lot of sports, Jess, from athletics to
Speaker 1: rugby league to sports like swimming. What do you hear
Speaker 1: from athletes female athletes about what they want to happen
Speaker 1: in relation to this issue.
Speaker 4: I think they want a fair playing field. I think
Speaker 4: women have had to fight very hard for attention in
Speaker 4: this space, to be treated fairly, to get adequate training facilities.
Speaker 4: Even to this day, you look at say female football clubs,
Speaker 4: women are using the gym after the men have done
Speaker 4: their time in the gym. They're always second to the
Speaker 4: men's teams. It's never really even because it hasn't been
Speaker 4: a level playing field yet. What they're saying privately is
Speaker 4: that many female athletes are outraged that this has been allowed.
Speaker 4: It's created a huge debate and a lot of stress
Speaker 4: for women at times. But they've also been very afraid
Speaker 4: of publicly saying so, like it is deemed to be
Speaker 4: stepping out of line or not being seen as being
Speaker 4: accepting of all people if you push back against elite
Speaker 4: female trans athletes. A lot of.
Speaker 1: Institutions have had to deal with the the idea that
Speaker 1: people want to change gender, the military, the criminal justice system, education,
Speaker 1: But it's really sport where it's the most visible and
Speaker 1: where some people like Martina and Evradelover have spoken out
Speaker 1: very publicly. How do you think sport has handled it
Speaker 1: and what difference will it make that Donald Trump is
Speaker 1: now being so very clear and forceful about imposing his view.
Speaker 4: I think hopefully it will bring sporting bodies into line
Speaker 4: with what should be, especially at an elite level, just
Speaker 4: really fair. I think once you get to that elite level,
Speaker 4: it's not about feelings anymore. You're seeing a new generation
Speaker 4: of leaders rise. The people lighting up to replace Olympic
Speaker 4: President Thomas Bark. The likes of Christi Coventry and Sebastian
Speaker 4: co are two figures in world sport who are really
Speaker 4: making it clear that they're going to push back against
Speaker 4: trans women competing in the elite female sports.
Speaker 1: Jessica Hallerin is The Australian's chief sports writer. You can
Speaker 1: get your head around the first weeks of the new
Speaker 1: Trump administration. Anytime at the Australian dot com dot au