By
Despite what you may hear in conservative media or from the White House, it’s Donald Trump — not transgender athletes — who poses a true threat to women’s sports.
Trump, who threatened to “protect” women “whether the women like it or not,” has weaponized hatred toward transgender people for political gain, borrowing a bigoted strategy used by other extremist movements (like Nazi Germany, for example). And this week, Trump threatened to withhold federal funding from the state of California because it’s allowing a trans woman to participate in high school track-and-field finals. Trump has also announced a Title IX probe into the state for allowing trans participation in sports more broadly.
As NBC 4 Los Angeles reported:
The U.S. Department of Justice on Wednesday announced an investigation into whether a California law that allows transgender athletes to compete in girls high school sports violates the landmark Title IX federal civil rights law. The DOJ said it sent letters of legal notice to California Attorney General Rob Bonta, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond and the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF), the state’s high school sports governing body, and the Jurupa Unified School District, which the agency said is a target of the investigation. The investigation will determine whether California’s School Success and Opportunity Act, or AB 1266, conflicts with Title IX, the federal law that bans sex discrimination in schools or educational programs that receive funding from the U.S. government.
For the record, Trump and the Republican Party’s insistence that trans women’s participation in women’s sports constitutes a threat to the sanctity of women’s sports is not supported by reputable science.
Back in 2022, I wrote about a Harvard University panel that featured multiple experts on women’s sports, who all pointed to things like patriarchal leadership structures, poor equipment and lack of media coverage as the real source of woe for women’s sports programs and athletes. None of them mentioned trans competitors as a concern.
So there’s a deep irony in Trump using Title IX rules, which are designed to prohibit gender-based discrimination, to crusade against trans athletes.
That’s because, as ESPN reported in March, Trump’s attempts to close down the Department of Education threatens the existence of the very sports he’s claiming to defend. Specifically, the outlet reported, the closure threatens the department’s Office for Civil Rights, with a purview that includes enforcing Title IX rules that provide support for girls’ and women’s sports programs:
The Office for Civil Rights determines how K-12 schools and colleges and universities are supposed to provide equal opportunities for female athletes, which includes equitable financial aid, promotion, coaching salaries, equipment and travel, among other factors.
The Trump administration has shut down the Education Department’s regional Office of Civil Rights in California and fired all of its staff. Attorneys who remain at the agency have complained about their office being used as a weapon to wage right-wing culture wars. If one were truly concerned about making sure women’s sports programs survive and thrive, it simply doesn’t make much sense to fire the officials whose jobs are dedicated, in part, to that goal.
Nonetheless, Trump’s gutting of the Department of Education undermines the federal agency most responsible for supporting women’s sports programs — all while he launches bogus investigations that allow him to pay lip service to defending women.