Why Trump's panic over one trans kid among 1,500 CIF track and field athletes is fake news
Had she been, Donald Trump would have spent last week alarming his followers with ghastly tales of innocent bystanders impaled by the mighty, errant javelin heaves of the teen.
When Trump goes on a crusade, all truth, reason and perspective saunter out for a smoke break. When he objected to a San Jose State trans volleyball player, Trump told wild — and wildly untrue — tales of opponents suffering injuries from 80 mph spikes of said Spartan.
You can't injure opponents by jumping into a sand pit or high-jumping onto a big air mattress, but from Trump's level of alarm and outrage, you might have thought that the SoCal teenager was planning to compete with a nuclear bomb strapped to her back.
Trump has signed an executive order banning trans athletes from competing in girls' and women's sports. When California didn't jump to comply on something that does not, after all, have the force of law, he opened up a can of blowhard.
'Please be hereby advised,' Trump trumpeted on social media, 'that large scale Federal Funding will be held back (from California), maybe permanently, if the Executive Order on this subject matter is not adhered to… I am ordering local authorities, if necessary, to not allow the transitioned person to compete in the State Finals. This is a totally ridiculous situation!!!'
The high schooler in question did compete Friday in the preliminaries of her three jumping events, and qualified to compete in Saturday's finals.
Look, this is an issue, at least insofar as people have been told that's the case by Trump and his cronies. Seven of ten American adults, according to one poll, say they are opposed to transgender athletes competing in girls' and women's sports. But had a poll been taken before Trump made this a moral crusade, 10 out of 10 adults would have had no idea that this was even a thing, let alone a national crisis.
I understand the concept of a 'slippery slope,' but fears of any wholesale invasion and destruction of female sports by trans athletes seems to be not a thing that is happening or ever going to happen. The CIF serves 835,000 California high school athletes, and the CIF has long let trans girls to participate in girls' sports, since 2013 statewide, in some school districts 20 years or more. It was never a problem before Trump.
There were 1,533 athletes, boys and girls, competing at the state meet in Clovis. Only one of them was a trans person competing in girls' events.
The San Jose State volleyball controversy, remember, was about one athlete among tens of thousands of competitors just in her sport. On a middling team in a second-tier conference. As one of less than 10 trans athletes among more than 500,000 college student-athletes.
Trump sees one tortoise creeping out onto the highway and calls it a stampede.
The state track meet was such a colossal crisis that about a dozen protestors showed up outside the event. One airplane towed a banner. It was, as Trump might say, a protest like nothing we've ever seen before.
It would be cool to be able to write that California and the CIF stood their moral and legal ground and told Trump to pound sand, which conveniently can be found in the jumping pits.
Instead, the CIF took a stab at appeasing Trump by cobbling together a new rule. The trans girl could compete, but an extra girl would be allowed into the competition, so that no girl would be 'deprived' of a shot at glory by the lone trans competitor. Any medals or places the trans athlete earned would be shared with the competitor who finished just behind her.
Never mind that this 'solution' won't work in any other sport, and that it works — sort of, awkwardly — only in the 'field' half of track & field.
The effort, no doubt, was genuine. Recognize that many now see this as a problem, and seek areas of compromise. Buy time for civilized discourse and discussion.
Yeah, no. The CIF and the state are dealing with a man who is open to discussion and debate, as long as it ends quickly in supplication, followed by tearful gratitude.
Not that it matters. Had the CIF and the state and all those 'local authorities' yielded to Trump and kicked one trans athlete out of the state meet, another villain would have been quickly targeted.
The trans athlete 'issue' was never a legitimate crisis, it was a convenient club used by a bully to beat California into submission, to further demonize the heathen state.
Maybe the way out of this situation would have been for her parents to buy a couple of tickets to a million-dollars-per-plate Trumpy event. They could have raised the money through GoFundMe or whatever.
Then, not only would the athlete in question have been given Trump's blessing to compete, the unprincipled prez would have commissioned a bronze of her for his planned statue garden of athletic heroes.
Trump recently issued 60 pardons/commutations — not counting 1,500 or more related to the January 6 insurrection — and at least 10 of those free birds have clear financial or political connections to the Pardoner-in-Chief.
Ah, but even if Trump had been briefly distracted from the high school track & field controversy, he quickly would have re-aimed his wack-a-mole club at another random California crime against humanity.
The CIF's quick fix will be just that. Eventually, you either bow down in surrender, or stand up for what you believe.
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