Surrounded by hundreds of females big and small, President Trump held a signing ceremony Wednesday at the White House where he signed a “No Men in Women’s Sports” executive order. The executive order vows to withhold federal funds from educational institutions that require female athletes to “compete with or against, or to appear unclothed, before males.”
With a stroke of his pen, on National Girls and Women in Sports Day, Trump also reversed the Biden administration’s radical plans to redefine the federal Title IX law was passed in the 1970s to ensure nondiscrimination against female athletes.
"The day was absolutely surreal," Macy Petty, a former college volleyball player, tells AFN. "I was standing up on stage behind President Trump, and I saw him approaching the stage and honestly, I got a little teary-eyed because of the magnitude of the moment."
The White House ceremony was almost four years to the day that Petty, then a college freshman and NCAA volleyball player, first jumped into the issue with state representatives in South Carolina. In testimony from her own dorm room, Petty described playing against a male volleyball player in high school. She urged the state legislature to support and vote for a women-in-sports bill only to witness skeptical lawmakers call it a non-issue.
"Everyone was telling me that this wasn't a real issue, and that I was just making it up,” Petty tells AFN. “But here I am, four years later, at the White House.”
Female athletes went ignored
Petty, now a legislative strategist at Concerned Women for America, attended the White House event on behalf of that organization after CWA and similar women’s groups lobbied state legislatures and Congress to defend female athletes.
During that political fight, one tactic they faced was to be dismissed for raising a made-up issue, which Petty witnessed in South Carolina.
Another similar tactic was to be told the issue affects a tiny minority of girls and women, an argument used by Utah’s Republican governor, Spencer Cox, when he vetoed legislation in 2022.
When he vetoed that bill, only four transgender players were competing in sports in the state, a PBS story helpfully pointed out at the time.
In the liberal news media, most stories similarly appealed to emotion and sympathy for the “brave” male athletes. The same stories also downplayed or ignored a female athlete struck by a volleyball or ignored a male runner setting new women's records at a state meet.
After Trump’s singing ceremony Wednesday, ESPN was among other media outlets that reported the order affects “transgender athletes” without clarifying that was referring to male athletes in swimming, volleyball, and track. The word “transgender” appears 11 times in the ESPN story but “male” is never used, AFN found.
Trump listened to campaign pitch
Trump's embrace of the issue didn't happen by accident. In a post-election AFN story, Terry Schilling of the American Principles Project described how he urged then-candidate Donald Trump to embrace the women's sports issue in his campaign. In a 15-minute meeting with Trump, Schilling showed him polling that assured Trump the issue was a winning one among voters, including women and independents.
After other Republicans ran from the issue for years, Schilling said, Trump did not.
Trump’s action Wednesday was almost immediately followed by a statement from Charlie Baker, president of the NCAA. He said the order “provides a clear, national standard” and is being reviewed by the NCAA Board of Governors.
An NCAA policy, in place since 2010, allows men to compete in women's collegiate sports if they undergo hormone treatment.
The statement from Baker concludes by saying the NCAA will also help schools that want to “support student-athletes affected by changes in the policy.” That appears to be a reference to the male athletes who have been allowed to join women’s teams and undress in the women’s locker room.
A day later, on Thursday, the NCAA Board of Governors announced a new policy. "A student-athlete assigned male at birth may not compete on a women’s team," the board said.
God 'totally shifted' her life
According to Petty, she never intended to engage in the political and cultural fight over women’s sports.
"But the Lord totally shifted my plans for life and touched my heart with conviction,” she says. “And with that, through the power of the Holy Spirit, emboldened me to use the voice that I do today.
“So if the Lord is calling you into this fight to defend your daughters, to defend yourself, to defend what you know to be true,” she advises, “the Lord will honor that and equip you for exactly that He is calling you to."
