Donald Trump vows to 'stop transgender lunacy' as a top priority

US President-elect Donald Trump speaks during Turning Point's annual AmericaFest 2024 in Phoenix, Arizona, on December 22, 2024. [AFP] President-elect Donald Trump on Sunday pledged to "stop the transgender lunacy" on day one of his presidency, as Republicans -- set to control both chambers of Congress and the White House -- continue their push against LGBTQ rights. "I will sign executive orders to end child sexual mutilation, get transgender out of the military and out of our elementary schools and middle schools and high schools," the president-elect said at an event for young conservatives in Phoenix, Arizona. He also vowed to "keep men out of women's sports," adding that "it will be the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders, male and female." Speaking to the AmericaFest conference in a border state he easily carried in the November election, Trump further promised immediate measures against "migrant crime," vowed to designate drug cartels as foreign terrorist organisations, and doubled down on his talk of restoring US control of the Panama Canal. Transgender issues have roiled US politics in recent years, as Democratic- and Republican-controlled states have moved in opposite directions on policies such as medical treatment and what books on the topic are allowed in public or school libraries. Last week, when the US Congress approved its annual defence budget, it included a provision to block funding of some gender-affirming care for the transgender children of service members. In his speech Sunday, which amounted to something of a victory lap, Trump made expansive promises for his second term -- and drew a dark picture of the four years preceding it, under President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, the latter of whom he defeated in the 2024 election. "On January 20, the United States will turn the page forever on four long, horrible years of failure, incompetence, national decline, and we will inaugurate a new era of peace, prosperity and national greatness," Trump said, referring to his swearing-in. 'Golden age' "I will end the war in Ukraine. I will stop the chaos in the Middle East, and I will prevent, I promise, World War III." He added: "The golden age of America is upon us." The president-elect has yet to explain publicly how he plans to bring a quick end to the war in Ukraine, or to bring peace to the Middle East. But in the sort of bellicose language he sometimes used even against US allies in the past, Trump said Sunday that Panamanian authorities "haven't treated us fairly" in their operation of the Panama Canal. He had said earlier that fees for use of the canal -- construction of which was begun by France and completed by the United States -- are "ridiculous." And he added Sunday that if the principles behind the 1970s treaty that gave Panama full control of the canal are not followed, "then we will demand" that it be returned to the United States "in full, quickly and without question." Thousands of ships transit the key Central American waterway every year, making it critical to US and international commerce. The president-elect, who regularly blames migrants from Latin America for America's drug problems, renewed his vow to immediately begin "the largest deportation operation in American history" upon taking office, and later went further, saying he would "immediately designate the (drug) cartels as foreign terrorist organisations." "This criminal network operating on American soil will be dismantled, deported and destroyed," Trump said. During his first term in 2019, after the killing in Mexico of nine American citizens from a Mormon community, Trump vowed to apply the terrorist designation to Mexican cartels. But he relented following a plea from then-Mexican president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.

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