Trump proclaims that ‘wokeness is dead,’ calls to permanently ban sex changes for minors

President Donald Trump proclaimed that “wokeness is gone” during his joint address to Congress Tuesday night.

Speaking to a bipartisan crowd in the U.S. Capitol building, Trump touted his administration’s early efforts to roll back “wokeness” in the U.S., taking aim at “gender-affirming” procedures for minors.

“I want Congress to pass a bill permanently banning and criminalizing sex changes on children, and forever,” Trump said during his speech. “Ending the lie that any child is trapped in the wrong body. This is a big lie. And now a message to every child in America is that you are perfect, exactly the way God made you.”

“Because we’re getting wokeness out of our schools and out of our military, and it’s already out and it’s out of our society,” he continued. “We don’t want it. Wokeness is trouble. Wokeness is bad. It’s gone.”

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President Donald Trump arrives to address a joint session of Congress at the Capitol on March 04, 2025, in Washington. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., and Vice President JD Vance applaud behind him. (Win McNamee/Pool via REUTERS)

Trump’s comments come over a month after he signed an executive order to restrict “chemical and surgical” sex-change procedures for minors. 

“Across the country today, medical professionals are maiming and sterilizing a growing number of impressionable children under the radical and false claim that adults can change a child’s sex through a series of irreversible medical interventions,” the order, entitled “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation,” stated. 

“This dangerous trend will be a stain on our Nation’s history, and it must end.”

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President Donald Trump makes an announcement about an investment from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), in the Roosevelt Room at the White House in Washington, March 3, 2025. (Leah Millis/Reuters)

Though Trump’s order has been resisted by hospitals and medical practitioners in Democratic-run areas, other hospitals have begun to comply with the order.

In February, the University of Virginia Health Hospital announced it would begin to stop providing transgender treatments to new patients as young as 11 years old. 

“Common sense and medical ethics have prevailed,” Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, R-Va., wrote in a post on X at the time.

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U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to reporters upon arrival in West Palm Beach, Florida, U.S., February 16, 2025. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)

“I’m grateful to the University of Virginia Board of Visitors for its action today to stop harmful transgender treatments for minors and to transfer existing patients to other providers,” the governor added.

Fox News Digital’s Aubrie Spady contributed to this report.