President Donald Trump‘s staff is refusing to answer questions from reporters who have pronouns listed in their email signatures. 

On Tuesday, The New York Times‘ media reporter Michael Grynbaum penned a piece saying that on at least three recent occasions, senior Trump press aides have stated they would not be responding to a journalist’s query due to the presence of pronouns.

Pronouns started being used regularly in email signatures so recipients would know a person’s gender preference – but they were also seen as a way to show allyship to the trans and non-binary community.

‘As a matter of policy, we do not respond to reporters with pronouns in their bios,’ White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt wrote back to a Times reporter. 

A few weeks later, Grynbaum wrote, Katie Miller – the wife of top Trump adviser Stephen Miller who’s a spokeperson for DOGE – gave a similar response to one of the newspaper’s journalists. 

‘As a matter of policy, I don’t respond to people who use pronouns in their signatures as it shows they ignore scientific realities and therefore ignore fact,’ Miller said. 

‘This applies to all reporters who have pronouns in their signature,’ she added in a separate message. 

Asked for comment by The Times, Leavitt reiterated the policy. 

‘Any reporter who chooses to put their preferred pronouns in their bio clearly does not care about biological reality or truth and therefore cannot be trusted to write an honest story,’ she said. 

When Fox News picked up the Times’ story, Leavitt shared it to X on Wednesday. 

‘Fact Check: True,’ she wrote. 

Less than two weeks after Trump took office in January, federal workers were informed they needed to take their pronouns out of their work emails. 

It was part of a broader move to remove ‘gender ideology’ from the federal government. 

During the 2024 campaign, Trump was able to use Democrats’ support for transgender rights as a way to show that their ‘wokeism’ was out of hand. 

At his rallies, Trump would often riff about transgender women playing in women’s sports. 

In early February Trump made good on a campaign promise to bar trans women from playing in women’s sports, signing an executive order on the subject. 

The order used Title IX, a law against sex discrimination in taxpayer-funded education programs, to ban transgender girls and women from participating in female school sports activities.

The president also vowed to take it further and move to exclude trans women from the 2028 summer Olympics, which will be held in Los Angeles. 

Trump said Secretary of State Marco Rubio ‘is going to make clear to the International Olympic Committee’ that ‘America categorically rejects transgender lunacy.’

‘We want them to change everything having to do with the Olympics and having to do with this absolutely ridiculous subject,’ Trump said at the time. 

Historically transgender athletes have participated in the Olympic Games and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has released guidelines for their inclusion.