On his first day back in office, President Donald J. Trump issued an executive order declaring that there are only two sexes, male and female, that a person’s sex is established at conception and that it cannot be changed.

Then, through a series of executive orders, he issued a raft of policies targeted at transgender Americans, a population of roughly 1.6 million. The orders cover many areas of life — schools, medical care, prisons, housing and passports — and pull the government back from accepting trans people in the military, allowing them to participate in sports and protecting them under anti-discrimination laws based on sex.

Lawsuits have already been filed. More are on the way. But the sheer volume of orders, and their language and tone, suggest to both transgender advocates and Mr. Trump’s supporters that the overarching intention is about more than policy — it’s about undermining the very idea that transgender identities are legitimate and should be recognized.

The transgender debate is divisive, with polls showing that many Americans want to protect trans people from discrimination, but also think that society has gone too far in accommodating them. A Gallup poll conducted last month found that a majority of Americans support allowing transgender men and women to serve openly in the military, though that percentage has declined since 2019. And nearly 80 percent do not believe transgender female athletes should be allowed to compete in women’s sports, according to a recent poll from The New York Times and Ipsos.

But the executive orders are notable for the way they try to frame the debate in moral terms, portraying trans people as lacking honesty and integrity, and thus unworthy of consideration when it comes to legal rights.

For instance, the orders use the term “biological reality” to imply a deliberate deception on the part of trans people, a trope that has historically been used to rationalize violence against them. In the first directive alone, that term appears six times.