Like many others, Terry Schilling of American Principles Project has been speaking out on the trans issues for years. In recent weeks he and others have witnessed legal victories at the U.S. Supreme Court for parents and an arm-twisting victory at the University of Pennsylvania.
Looking ahead, however, he is urging Republicans in Congress to codify executive orders from President Trump to protect children and female athletes. A federal law, he points out, would go much farther than a four-year order signed by a president.
"Young girls in California deserve the right to compete in their own athletic competitions without men," says Schilling. "They deserve their own right to privacy and not have men in their private spaces, and they deserve you know to be protected from these gender transitions, this predatory industry."
Schilling uses California as an example because the state’s transgender-defending Democrats, who vastly outnumber Republicans, are fighting President Trump’s defense of females through Title IX law.
Rather than an executive order, he reasons, big changes will happen when elected officials realize the trans issue is a winning one for voters.
"If Democrats lose enough elections over these transgender issues,” he predicts, “they'll drop it very quickly."
In the summer of 2024, Schilling was given a 15-minute meeting with then-candidate Donald Trump to share his views on what voters care about. In that brief meeting Trump listened to Schilling tell him Republicans in Congress ran from the trans issue, which might have cost them the midterms in 2022. He also shared research showing most voters were solidly on the side of female athletes.
How did Trump respond? He listened, and Schilling says he was “blown away” by how quickly Trump grasped the issue for his campaign and for the families being harmed.
