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trans rights
Governor Mills Stood up for Students and Survivors—Who Will Join Her?
Rather than descend into reactionary advocacy that centers an untrustworthy, increasingly fascist government, we must go above and beyond Title IX, standing up for actionable, lasting solutions to sex-based discrimination in schools.
Mar 27, 2025
“Are you going to comply with that?”
The question came at a bipartisan governors’ meeting, lobbed unceremoniously by U.S. President Donald Trump toward Gov. Janet Mills of Maine. Gov. Mills is one of the few representatives of any political party or institution to defy a recent executive order barring transgender students from women’s sports—and to stand firmly and vocally against the weaponization of Title IX to advance a bigoted, anti-trans agenda.
“I’m complying with the state and federal laws,” she replied. And then—“See you in court.”
Even as we identify and invest in alternate approaches to protecting students from gender-based discrimination, we cannot grant right-wing politicians leeway to weaponize Title IX for their own political gain.
The exchange, though brief, and the rushed and retaliatory federal investigation that followed, echoed far beyond the White House as a rare but critical example of how state, local, and school officials must stand up for students in the absence of adequate federal protections against sex discrimination. And those federal protections have never been adequate.
It is high time to recognize that in practice—and without states and schools moving beyond compliance to true advocacy for their students—Title IX has never offered comprehensive, accessible solutions to gender-based violence. I should know: I’ve experienced Title IX’s failings as a student, an organizer, and a policy advocate working to change how schools treat—and advocate for—survivors.
I was a college student in the Obama years, during what should have been a progressive “golden age” for Title IX, the federal civil rights law prohibiting gender-based discrimination in publicly funded schools. The reality on the ground was marked less by progress than by confusion and chaos. When my peers sought support from our Title IX office, administrators called their reasonable requests for support “too difficult” to address. Without on-campus advocates, nearly 40% of survivors who reported abuse during this period experienced a substantial disruption in their education due to retaliation, institutional betrayal, and being pushed out of schools. Many survivors stayed silent.
When Betsy DeVos gutted Title IX protections during the first Trump administration, I joined the survivor- and youth-led project Know Your IX, where I worked with student activists whose horror stories under the Trump administration’s Title IX rule sounded eerily familiar. Survivors experiencing traumatic investigations dropped out of school—paying off student loans for a degree they would never get. Medical school students chose not to report abuse for fear of losing professional opportunities. Young people who had experienced dating abuse developed new mental health challenges, and their schools refused to grant accommodations. And though Joe Biden won the presidency in 2020, Trump-era guidance on how schools should enforce Title IX persisted throughout nearly the entirety of his presidency. President Trump moved to officially reinstate DeVos-era guidance, after appointing people who have caused sexual harm or been complicit in it (including Secretary of Education Linda McMahon) to the highest positions of power in our country. If it wasn’t already clear, it should be staggeringly so now: We cannot rely on the federal government to save us.
Rather than descend into reactionary advocacy that centers an untrustworthy, increasingly fascist government, we must go above and beyond Title IX, standing up for actionable, lasting solutions to sex-based discrimination in schools. Local organizing at K-12 schools and college campuses led by students and survivors offers one path forward. We can also fight for stronger state anti-discrimination policies that reflect the needs of marginalized students. And we can empower student groups with resources and training to support their peers in the absence of federal or administrative protections.
Most importantly, it is time for schools to take responsibility for protecting their students and act accordingly—regardless of state and federal policy, or how the president decides to interpret the 37 words that make up the statute of Title IX. While federally funded schools are required to comply with Trump’s Title IX rule, they can and should create separate anti-discrimination policies that fill in the gaps of the current Title IX rule. We should encourage schools to go above and beyond what federal law requires to protect students from sexual violence, and respond with care when it occurs.
Of course, in the absence of strong, federal legislation codifying students’ protections and schools’ responsibility to address gender-based discrimination, “sending education back to the states” creates an inequitable patchwork of civil rights protections, resulting in even more students experiencing traumatic disruptions to their education. While investing in school- and state-level organizing, we must build wide networks of support and mutual aid that persist no matter how hostile the environment. Groups like Know Your IX, now a project of the national youth activism organization Advocates for Youth, will continue to organize alongside brilliant and dedicated survivors and student activists holding their schools accountable and fighting for survivor-centered solutions.
Even as we identify and invest in alternate approaches to protecting students from gender-based discrimination, we cannot grant right-wing politicians leeway to weaponize Title IX for their own political gain. We must join Gov. Mills and shout from the rooftops that bigoted, transphobic attempts to attack marginalized young people through education policy will never be a solution to this country’s epidemic of sexual harassment and assault. We must hold strong in the face of increasingly brazen attempts from federal officials to curb students’ rights and retaliate against dissidence. If lawmakers actually cared about women and girls, they would bolster Title IX protections—not attempt to dismantle them.
Title IX was always the floor, not the ceiling. Now, it’s time to aim for the stars. Student survivors, LGBTQI+ youth, and pregnant and parenting people deserve nothing less.
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Trump Called 'Pathetic' for Demanding Apology From Maine Gov. Janet Mills
"On what legal basis can he treat the people of Maine differently depending on if their governor apologizes to him? None," wrote one Georgetown University professor.
Mar 23, 2025
U.S. President Donald Trump took to his social media platform Truth Social on Saturday to demand an apology from Maine Gov. Janet Mills, a Democrat, after the two had a heated exchange at the White House in February over an executive order banning transgender women and girls from playing in women's sports.
This new scrutiny on Maine comes as the state has been subject to numerous probes and funding cuts following that exchange that "have been widely interpreted as retaliatory," according to the local outlet the Maine Morning Star.
"While the state of Maine has apologized for their governor's strong, but totally incorrect, statement about men playing in women's sports while at the White House House Governor's Conference, we have not heard from the governor herself, and she is the one that matters in such cases," Trump wrote on Truth Social.
"Therefore, we need a full-throated apology from the governor herself and a statement that she will never make such an unlawful challenge to the federal government again before this case can be settled," he added.
The statement, according to Politico, implied that the Trump administration would continue to target Maine unless Trump receives the apology he wants.
"King Trump demands an apology from the Governor of Maine because she embarrassed him" wrote former NBCUniversal studio executive Mike Sington. "Pathetic."
Multiple outlets reporting on the remarks from Trump noted it was not immediately clear what Trump meant when he said that the "state of Maine" had apologized.
On Saturday, Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows wrote on Bluesky: "Can confirm 'state of Maine' hasn't apologized. (As the official keeper of all state records and guardian of the seal ;))."
Jonathan Ladd, an associate professor at Georgetown University's public policy school, wrote that "Trump is constitutionally required to take care that U.S. laws be faithfully executed. On what legal basis can he treat the people of Maine differently depending on if their governor apologizes to him? None."
The dispute between Trump and Mills stems from an interaction at a White House event as part of the National Governors Association on February 21.
"We're going to follow the law sir. We'll see you in court," Mills told the president in a heated exchange, referring to the Maine Human Rights Act, which was amended four years ago to include gender identity as a protected class. Mills and Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey have argued that the law supersedes the president's edict barring transgender girls from participating in sports that match their gender identity.
Since that episode, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services investigated and found Maine to be in violation of Title IX for allowing transgender girls to compete in women's sports, the U.S. Department of Agriculture launched and resolved a probe into the University of Maine System's Title IX compliance, and the Trump administration briefly imposed an end to the practice of allowing parents to register their newborns for a social security card at the hospital, among other measures.
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The Spreaders of the Trans Athlete Moral Panic Live in a Fact-Free Fantasyland
As political mayhem continues to unfold across the country and wider world, it is vital to remember that trans rights are human rights. Full stop.
Mar 21, 2025
During his recent speech to U.S. Congress, President Donald Trump turbocharged his manufactured moral panic targeting the trans community. “I signed an order making it the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders: male and female,” he gloated. “I also signed an executive order to ban men from playing in women’s sports.” Banishing trans people from public life was just “common sense,” he declared.
Trump’s bilious spectacle was to be expected, but California Gov. Gavin Newsom only made things worse when, days later, he claimed during conversation with neofascist MAGA cretin Charlie Kirk that the participation of transgender athletes in women’s sports was “deeply unfair.” Newsom added that “the issue of fairness is completely legit. So, I completely align with you.” He concluded, “That’s easy to call out: the unfairness.”
As with so many things that gush from Trump’s gullet, his remarks were brutish bunk. But Newsom, who often tries to shield himself with the fact that he supported marriage equality as far back as 2004, also stood on shaky factual ground. Moreover, in his cringey conversation with Kirk, Gov. Newsom let slip the reason why both he and Trump are so willing to sacrifice the human rights of trans people: electoral politics. In public polling, Newsom said of Democrats, “We’re getting crushed on it.”
Political messaging should be based on shared values, not the short-term political whims of the opportunistic.
In this political environment, so much that passes for “common sense” argument is just evidence-free, anti-science vibes. But facts still matter, or at least they should. “To abandon facts is to abandon freedom,” writes historian Timothy Snyder in his pithy bookOn Tyranny.
When it comes to any supposed advantages that trans women athletes may have, the actual facts are quite different from the “common-sense” hype. The scientific evidence has repeatedly shown that trans women who have undergone hormone replacement therapy for more than a year actually do not have an advantage. One in-depth review of existing scientific literature on transgender athlete participation in competitive sport published between 2011 and 2021 found that “trans women who have undergone testosterone suppression have no clear biological advantages over cis women in elite sport.”
Another study found that transgender women athletes could actually be disadvantaged: “Compared with cisgender women,” the study found, “transgender women have decreased lung function, increasing their work in breathing.” Douglas Oberlin, an exercise physiologist who reviewed the scientific evidence related to transgender athletes’ performance, notes that “the limited information available does not suggest that trans men and trans women have much, if any, athletic advantage post-transition.” Oberlin also highlights that sport federations focus on average differences between cis and trans athletes but overlook performance variations within cis athletes.
Clearly, more research is needed before creating exclusionary policies. But given the small number of transgender athletes, Oberlin cautions that excluding them from sports solely due to concerns about inequality or injury risk “may be a solution in search of a problem.”
Back in the terfy, moral-panic fantasyland, such rational caution is nowhere to be found. In their own ways, Trump and Newsom treat trans people as if they were mere political chits to be swapped and bartered. This despite the fact that experts from the United Nations have asserted, “Categoric exclusions of trans and intersex women from women’s sports is a prima facie violation of human rights.” As sports writer Frankie de la Cretaz toldThe Nation, “Denying a group of people their basic human rights is morally reprehensible and illegal, regardless of the size of that community.”
Forming political values based on polling numbers is bereft of ethics. After all, interracial marriage didn’t surpass 50% approval in the United States until the mid-1990s. In 2005, 68% of those polled thought same-sex marriage should not be recognized as valid whereas today the very opposite is the case. Political messaging should be based on shared values, not the short-term political whims of the opportunistic.
Let’s be absolutely clear: The stakes are sky-high. The endgame of this bipartisan, anti-trans witch hunt is twofold. On the practical side, it enables the bracing possibility of raving randos demanding genital checks from the sidelines of youth sports events for kids who don’t conform to their strict versions of gender. (In West Virginia, Republicans have already voted through legislation green-lighting healthcare providers’ ability to perform genital checks on children without parental consent). But more broadly, the endgame is trans banishment. As journalist Dave Zirin put it, “The ‘pro-trans in everything but sports’ position can metastasize into… a broader anti-trans stance, the forcible erasure of transgender people from society.”
The push to expel trans women from elite sport, aided and abetted by Democrats like Gavin Newsom, is stoked by what Judith Butler calls “fascist passions.” As M. Gessen recently wrote, “The message, consistent and unrelenting, is that trans people are a threat to the nation. The subtext is that we are not of this nation.”
Fortunately, despite Trump and Newsom’s craven political opportunism, not all elected officials are singing from their grim hymnal. Democrats in the U.S. Senate recently scuppered a Republican bill that would have banned transgender athletes from competing in women’s sports. In Montana, elected officials went further, with more than two dozen Republicans flipping the Trumpain script and voting against a slew of anti-trans bills.
As political mayhem continues to unfold across the country and wider world, it is vital to remember that trans rights are human rights. Full stop. One day a thriving trans community will be as normalized as interracial or same-sex marriage. But this won’t happen automatically. It’s time to stand up. This battle is far from over.
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