Trump is right: Transgender athletes turn girls' track meets into a farce | Opinion
Democrats, by pushing in recent years to allow transgender athletes to play on women's teams, have created a wholly unfair playing field for girls and women.
This insanity has to end.
On May 31, transgender high school athletes in California and Washington outperformed the girls they competed against in two state championship track and field meets.
In other words, two biological males beat the girls. Shocker, right?
There’s a reason that high school boys and girls and men and women have played on different teams for decades. They’re not the same physically. And once puberty hits, boys have advantages that girls never will because of testosterone.
Yet Democrats, by pushing in recent years to allow transgender athletes to play on women’s teams, have created a wholly unfair playing field for girls and women. Former President Joe Biden tried to weaponize Title IX – the federal law that bans discrimination based on sex – to force schools to allow transgender students to play on whatever team they please.
The courts smartly tossed out Biden's Title IX rewrite, which would have turned the law on its head.
Now, President Donald Trump has taken multiple steps in the first months of his second term to push back against gender identity nonsense.
And I thank him for trying to save women’s sports. So do many other women.
'A ridiculous situation' and 'TOTALLY DEMEANING TO WOMEN AND GIRLS': Trump is right about that.
Let’s take a look at these latest instances from the past weekend.
In California, a breeding ground for the worst liberal ideas, a transgender athlete placed first in the girls high jump and triple jump at the state track championships. AB Hernandez, a high school junior, had attracted a lot of attention leading up to the championship, including from Trump.
Ahead of the final meet, the president called out California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, for allowing this to happen – what Trump aptly called on social media a “ridiculous situation" and "TOTALLY DEMEANING TO WOMEN AND GIRLS." (The all-caps are the president's touch.)
While Newsom didn’t intervene in this case, earlier this year he admitted in an interview that boys in girls’ sports was “deeply unfair.” Whether he actually means that or is just trying to better position himself for a presidential run remains to be seen.
Trump has threatened to cut off California from federal funds, and the Department of Justice announced May 28 that it has opened an investigation into whether California’s law allowing for transgender athlete participation in women’s sports violates Title IX.
Just days before the May 31 competition, and following the federal pushback, California’s high school sports governing body made a rules change to allow for more girls to compete and medal in the events in which Hernandez, 16, participated. That’s a start, and it allowed female athletes to be recognized along with Hernandez.
But the girls shouldn’t have been forced to compete against a transgender athlete in the first place.
In Washington state, it was even worse for the female athletes. Transgender runner Veronica Garcia, 17, won the Class 2A 400-meter state title – for the second year in a row.
And the girl who came in after Garcia didn’t get to share in the first-place glory she deserved.
Progressives are so wrong on trans athlete issue. But they won't let it go.
The blatant unfairness of biological males competing against girls and women is far from just a conservative rallying cry.
Polls constantly show that this is one of the few issues the country is united on. A New York Times poll in early January 2025 showed that 79% of Americans, including a majority of Democrats, don’t think men should compete in women’s sports.
This is echoed in a May 2025 AP-NORC poll finding that more than 70% of U.S. adults think transgender athletes should not be allowed to participate in girls' and women’s sports at the high school, college or professional level.
That’s not to say there shouldn’t be empathy for transgender athletes. However, in the sports arena, where biological realities matter enormously, there has to be a better option.
I am tired of hearing from the left about how this is a Republican fringe issue that affects so few girls in the real world. That’s false, and instances of young women losing out to biological males keep happening.
It’s time for it to stop.
Ingrid Jacques is a columnist at Paste BN. Contact her at ijacques@usatoday.com or on X: @Ingrid_Jacques