Bates College Journal of Political Studies
Abstract
President Trump’s use of executive orders to influence federal policy regarding gender identity has primarily sought to undo existing rights and protections of transgender and gender non-conforming Americans put in place by previous Democratic administrations. These policies have been variably successful in their aims despite widespread resistance from interests supporting those existing policies. Scholars have discussed the role of institutional resistance in cases of policy retrenchment primarily through electoral mechanisms, but such discussions do not consider the role of the executive branch in policy retrenchment and its unique insulation from electoral feedback. This thesis centers those considerations in the case of the second Trump administration’s retrenchment campaign against existing gender identity policy, focusing on the role of blame avoidance as a key desideratum within the theory of retrenchment to identify how and why blame avoidance is less of an imperative in cases where electoral feedback is minimized. This finding is supported by observations that executive orders are uniquely impervious to institutional resistance outside of electoral action and judicial review, mitigating the necessity of limiting visibility to avoid activation of that resistance. These findings expand our understanding of the theory of retrenchment and allow it to be applied to new policy areas and political institutions.
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Recommended Citation
Cropp, Robert H.
(2026)
"Executive Retrenchment: An Exploration of Gender Identity Policy in the Second Trump Administration,"
Bates College Journal of Political Studies: Vol. 3:
Iss.
1, Article 15.
Available at:
https://scarab.bates.edu/bjps/vol3/iss1/15