Rubio Brings State Department in Line With Trumps Day One Order

AMERICA FIRST — POLICY & CULTURE

April 25, 2026  ·  Republican Column Staff

Common sense just made another comeback in the federal government. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has moved to enforce President Trump’s executive order on biological sex at the State Department, issuing a memo making clear that private spaces — bathrooms, locker rooms, and similar facilities — will be designated by biological sex, full stop.

It shouldn’t be controversial. But after years of the Obama and Biden administrations pushing gender ideology into every corner of the federal workplace, stating the obvious now requires a formal policy memo. That’s where we are. And at least now, the Trump administration is doing something about it.

“The Administration affirms that there are two sexes — male and female — and that federal facilities should operate on this objective and longstanding basis to ensure consistency, privacy, and safety in shared spaces.”

State Department Principal Deputy Spokesman Tommy Piggott

The State Department’s new memo, titled “Updates Regarding Biological Sex and Intimate Spaces, Including Restrooms,” was obtained by The Daily Signal. It directs all posts to abide by Trump’s executive order — signed on Day One of his second term — which established that federal facilities must designate private spaces by biological sex rather than gender identity. The policy is clear, the language is plain, and the reasoning is exactly what most Americans already believe: women deserve private spaces that are actually private.

This didn’t happen in a vacuum. Trump signed the executive order back in January 2025. The Office of Personnel Management followed with agency-wide guidance last summer. Then in February 2026, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ruled — along party lines — that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act actually permits federal agencies to maintain single-sex bathrooms and exclude employees from opposite-sex facilities. In other words, the law, the executive order, and the EEOC are all pointing in the same direction. The State Department is simply the latest agency to get in line.

The EEOC ruling was a significant moment that didn’t get nearly enough coverage. Chair Andrea Lucas said it plainly: “When it comes to bathrooms, male and female employees are not similarly situated.” The ruling reversed an Obama-era EEOC decision from 2015 that had required federal agencies to allow employees to use facilities matching their “gender identity” rather than their biological sex. That eleven-year experiment in federal gender ideology is now over.

The left will call this cruel. They always do. But what’s actually cruel is telling women — employees at the State Department and every other federal agency — that their privacy and safety in intimate spaces is less important than someone else’s feelings about their identity. The Trump administration has chosen women. That’s the right call, and it’s one that the overwhelming majority of Americans quietly agree with even if they’re afraid to say so out loud.

This is exactly what elections are for. Trump ran on restoring common sense to government. He’s delivering on it, agency by agency, policy by policy. Rubio’s State Department is the latest proof that this administration means what it says.