Caitlyn Jenner, the former Olympic athlete who began identifying as a woman in 2015, is lobbying President Trump to carve out an exception to his executive order requiring biological sex on U.S. passports, claiming the policy has made international travel impossible for transgender-identifying Americans.
Jenner made the comments on the Tomi Lahren is Fearless podcast and has sent a letter directly to the president asking him to revisit the passport rule, as Breitbart reported. The former athlete said a recently ordered passport arrived marked "M", male, despite a request to change the designation to "F."
The appeal puts an unusual face on the issue. Jenner has been one of the most prominent Trump supporters in the transgender community, and the request amounts to asking the president to soften one of the signature policy moves of his second term, one the U.S. Supreme Court has already allowed to stand.
Trump signed the executive order on January 20 of last year, the first day of his second term. It directed the State Department to list only a person's birth sex on U.S. passports, reversing a Biden-era change that had allowed transgender-identifying individuals to choose their own gender marker or select an "X" option in the sex category.
The order was part of a broader push. During his inaugural address, Trump declared that "there are only two genders, male and female," as the New York Post reported. Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman praised the move at the time, saying it would "restore sanity after four years of attacks on women's sports, safety and privacy." The order requires federal agencies to use an immutable male-or-female sex designation on government forms and IDs.
Months after the order took effect, the Supreme Court ruled that Trump could carry on and enforce it. That ruling removed the last major legal obstacle.
The president has shown a willingness to use executive authority to force institutional change on related fronts. Trump has drawn firm lines on legislative priorities when he believes the stakes warrant it, and the passport order fits the same pattern of direct presidential action on contested cultural ground.
On the podcast, Jenner framed the issue as a practical travel problem rather than an ideological grievance. The former Olympian told Lahren:
"I can't travel internationally anymore."
Jenner added that the policy "creates a big problem" and said the administration had not fully thought it through. But the appeal came wrapped in loyalty. Jenner was careful to keep the tone supportive of the president personally:
"I don't blame President Trump. I love him, but for a lot of people, this is a huge issue."
The claim that transgender-identifying Americans literally cannot travel abroad deserves scrutiny. A passport marked with a person's biological sex is still a valid travel document. What Jenner appears to mean is that a mismatch between physical presentation and the sex listed on a passport may create friction at border checkpoints. That is a real inconvenience. Whether it constitutes an inability to travel is a different question.
Jenner is not alone in objecting. Euphoria star Hunter Schafer uploaded a lengthy video complaining about a passport updated to reflect biological sex, declaring, in language unfit for print, "F*** this administration." The contrast between Jenner's measured tone and Schafer's outburst illustrates the range of reaction, but neither changes the underlying policy math.
The executive order rests on a straightforward premise: a government identification document should reflect biological reality because that is the most reliable, verifiable standard available. Passports exist for security. They are meant to confirm identity at borders, not affirm personal belief.
Under Biden, the Department of State allowed individuals to self-select a gender marker, including an "X" category, on passports. That policy introduced subjectivity into a document whose entire purpose is objective verification. Trump's order reversed it. The Supreme Court backed the reversal.
Jenner's request, however sympathetically framed, asks the president to reopen a door the courts have already closed and the administration deliberately shut. It asks for a carve-out based on personal hardship, a familiar pattern in policy debates where exceptions, once granted, tend to swallow the rule.
The broader context matters. Trump's willingness to act decisively on transgender policy extends beyond passports. In early 2025, Jenner praised Trump's executive action on women's sports, saying it was "about time" to protect female athletes. That intervention pushed the NCAA to update its transgender-athlete policy, as Fox News reported. Jenner supported that move enthusiastically.
The tension is plain. Jenner cheered executive action when it aligned with a preferred outcome, protecting women's sports, but now objects when the same governing principle, that biological sex is the relevant legal category, produces a personal inconvenience on a passport.
Trump has shown no sign of retreating on the passport order. The Supreme Court's backing gives the policy strong legal footing. And the political incentive runs entirely in the other direction: the president's base overwhelmingly supports biological-sex standards on government documents.
Jenner's letter to Trump has not produced any public response from the White House. The administration has been willing to hold firm on contested positions even when allies push back, and a passport carve-out for transgender-identifying individuals would undercut the entire framework the order establishes.
The case also highlights a recurring dynamic in Trump-era governance: the president attracts supporters who agree with 90 percent of his agenda but want an exemption on the 10 percent that touches them personally. That is human nature. But governance by exemption is how Biden-era rules got tangled in the first place.
The Supreme Court's willingness to let the passport order stand is part of a broader pattern. The Court has taken up several Trump administration policy fights this term, signaling that executive authority exercised within constitutional bounds will not be lightly overturned by the judiciary.
Strip away the celebrity and the personal story, and the question is simple: Should the federal government issue identity documents that reflect biological fact, or should it issue documents that reflect how a person identifies?
Trump answered that question on his first day back in office. The Supreme Court agreed. The policy is in effect, and it applies equally to every American, including famous ones who supported the president and now find the rule inconvenient.
Jenner's frustration is understandable on a personal level. But the entire point of a uniform standard is that it does not bend for individual preference. The Biden administration tried the alternative, letting people choose their own passport sex marker, and the result was a system built on self-declaration rather than verification. Trump's administration has consistently taken its policy fights to the highest levels rather than back down under pressure, and there is no reason to expect a different outcome here.
Open questions remain. Jenner has not explained which specific countries or border situations have prevented travel. The letter to Trump has not been made public. And the administration has not responded on the record.
A government that lets citizens write their own identity documents is not enforcing standards, it is abandoning them. Jenner may not like the passport rule, but the whole point of the rule is that it doesn't ask whether you like it.
