The Trump White House press office won’t reply to reporters who include pronouns in their email signatures. They claim those reporters deny “biological reality” and can’t be trusted to tell the truth.
New York Times reporter Michael Grynbaum said this happened three times recently. Each time, a reporter with pronouns in their signature got shut down. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed it’s policy.
“As a matter of policy, we do not respond to reporters with pronouns in their bios,” Leavitt told a Times reporter asking about a climate research site.
The reporter shared another example involving Katie Miller, a senior adviser at the Department of Government Efficiency. She also refused to respond to someone with pronouns in their email.
“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 facts,” Miller said. In a follow-up, she added, “This applies to all reporters who have pronouns in their signature.”
Grynbaum reached out again to Leavitt for clarification. She didn’t back down. “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.
White House communications director Steven Cheung also chimed in. “If The New York Times spent the same amount of time actually reporting the truth as they do being obsessed with pronouns, maybe they would be a half-decent publication,” he wrote.
Grynbaum said this isn’t just happening at the Times. Other journalists have gotten the same treatment. One reporter, Matt Berg from Crooked Media, even tested the policy.
Berg added pronouns to his email just to see what would happen. “I find it baffling that they care more about pronouns than giving journalists accurate information, but here we are,” he told the Times.
The Trump administration has zeroed in on gender identity issues in his second term. They’ve banned transgender people from serving in the military. They’ve also blocked trans women from women’s sports and removed gender identity language across government.
A spokesperson for the New York Times also responded. “Evading tough questions certainly runs counter to transparent engagement with free and independent press reporting. But refusing to answer a straightforward request to explain the administration’s policies because of the formatting of an email signature is both a concerning and baffling choice, especially from the highest press office in the U.S. government.”