President Donald Trump on Tuesday threatened to withhold federal funds from California over an unnamed transgender competitor’s victory in a high school athletic competition and purported to command the state’s scholastic athletic governing body to ban the athlete in question from an upcoming state championship competition.
Writing on Truth Social, Trump accused California Governor Gavin Newsom of having “illegally” allowed “men to play in women’s sports” and complained that an unidentified “transitioned male athlete at a major event” had “won ‘everything’” and qualified for “state finals” to be run next weekend.
“As a Male, he was a less than average competitor. As a Female, this transitioned person is practically unbeatable. THIS IS NOT FAIR, AND TOTALLY DEMEANING TO WOMEN AND GIRLS,” Trump said.
Continuing, Trump said he was advising that “large scale federal funding” could be “held back, maybe permanently” if the athlete he was referring to is permitted to continue competing, citing a February executive order authorizing the Department of Education to sanction schools that allow transgender athletes to compete for violating Title IX prohibitions on sexual discrimination in schools. He also said he would be speaking with Newsom later in the day to discuss the matter.
“In the meantime I am ordering local authorities, if necessary, to not allow the transitioned person to compete in the State Finals,” he said before adding that the situation was “totally ridiculous.”
It wasn’t immediately clear what “local authorities” Trump was purporting to be “ordering,” since the president doesn’t have any ability to order local authorities to do anything.
It was also unclear what event or athlete was being referenced in the president’s social media post, but in recent days a number of right-wing media outlets have highlighted the case of a California teenager who’d taken second in a long jump competition in last week’s California Interscholastic Federation’s Southern Section Masters track and field meet.
According to multiple reports, the athlete in question, AB Hernandez, has won multiple competitions and has incensed parents and some fellow competitors, one of whom reportedly posed for a photograph atop a medal podium after taking second place to Hernandez in long jump.
The Daily Mail also reported that Hernandez’s mother was confronted by other parents at the meet who accused the woman of being “a coward of a woman” by allowing her child to compete.
Trump’s threat against the Golden State and its governor is the latest example of his administration’s efforts to crack down on what he calls “transgender insanity,” which critics have called a backlash to years of expanding rights for LGBT+ persons.
His administration has carried out numerous executive actions aimed at removing transgender Americans from public life.
One of them, an executive order revoking federal recognition of trans, nonbinary and intersex people — which is being used as the foundation for policy decisions across the administration — was labeled “demeaning,” “biologically inaccurate” and “frankly ridiculous” by a federal judge earlier this year.
His February order to end “the dangerous and unfair participation of men in women’s sports” directed federal law enforcement agencies to take “immediate action” against schools and associations that “deny women single-sex sports and single-sex locker rooms,” according to a summary from the White House.
During a signing ceremony surrounded by young girls, Trump claimed that the “radical left” has “waged an all-out campaign to erase the very concept of biological sex and replace it with a militant transgender ideology.”
The president has also ordered the removal of all trans service members from all branches of the U.S. military, which the Supreme Court has allowed while multiple legal challenges play out.
He also signed an order designed to prevent trans people under 19 years old from accessing gender-affirming healthcare.
Alex Woodward contributed reporting from New York
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