As part of its ongoing effort to transform American higher education, the Trump administration is directing its ire from the Ivies in the East to public colleges in California.
In an interview with Bloomberg’s Akayla Gardner on Tuesday, Education Secretary Linda McMahon said that the administration is contemplating large cuts to federal money for Golden State colleges.
“In California, I think we saw pretty flagrant violations of Title IX, and that is why this focus that was put on them,” McMahon stated during the question-and-answer session Tuesday. “We have men participating in women’s sports, which is clearly against Title IX, and the president has made it very clear that he is definitely going to uphold Title IX.”
Beyond worries about antisemitism on campuses after the start of the war between Israel and Hamas, the administration’s concentration on the West Coast represents a new stage in its attempt to put America’s top institutions on notice over political ideology.
A transgender athlete’s participation in a sporting event prompted President Donald Trump to threaten to remove federal assistance from the state last month.
At the state track and field championships, A.B. Hernandez, a junior in a Southern California public high school, placed third in each of her three events. Some members of the community had protested and criticised her participation, claiming it hindered the advancement of lower-ranked competitors.
While current research suggests that hormone therapy may impact a person’s physical capabilities, some experts argue that much more data is required to draw firm conclusions about whether transgender people generally have advantages in their respective sports. Critics of transgender athletes argue that they have an unfair advantage in sports.
At the US Department of Justice’s request, the California Department of Education earlier this month recommended Golden State schools to oppose prohibiting trans athletes from participating in sports. The state sued the DOJ on Monday for requesting the information.
Following the DOJ’s pressure, State Superintendent Tony Thurmond issued a statement stating that “California state law protects all students’ access to participate in athletics in a manner that is consistent with their gender identity. We will continue to follow the law and ensure the safety of all our athletes.”
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The Justice Department said it was looking into whether California’s School Success and Opportunity Act, which forbids public schools from preventing transgender students from participating in school sports, violates the federal Title IX law, which forbids sex-based discrimination in educational programs or activities that receive federal funding, a day after Trump threatened to withhold federal funding from the state due to Hernandez’s involvement in the event.
McMahon stated on Tuesday that California has “blatantly (refused) to be in compliance with the Title IX regulations.”
Based in part on Title IX compliance, Trump issued an executive order in February called “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports” that prohibited transgender women from participating in women’s sports.
The decision would take the opposite stance on Title IX from the Biden administration, which set a rule that states schools are in violation of Title IX when they prohibit transgender kids from participating on sports teams, according to a White House official ahead of the signing.
“If you’re going to have women’s sports, if you’re going to provide opportunities for women, then they have to be equally safe, equally fair, and equally private opportunities, and so that means that you’re going to preserve women’s sports for women,” the official stated concerning the Trump administration’s stance on Title IX.
