California GOP lawmaker introduces bill to ban transgender girls from women’s sports
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CALIFORNIA REPUBLICAN INTRODUCES BILL TO BAN TRANS GIRLS FROM WOMEN’S SPORTS
California Assemblymember Kate Sanchez, R-Rancho Santa Margarita, this week announced her intent to file a bill that would require the California Interscholastic Federation to ban transgender girls from participating in women’s sports.
“Young women who have spent years training and sacrificing to compete at the highest level are now forced to compete against individuals with undeniable biological advantages. It’s not just unfair — it’s disheartening and dangerous,” Sanchez said in a statement announcing the bill, which did not have a number as of Monday afternoon.
Medical experts dispute the claim that trans girls have an advantage in sports.
“A person’s genetic make-up and internal and external reproductive anatomy are not useful indicators of athletic performance,” Dr. Joshua D. Safer, executive director of the Mount Sinai Center for Transgender Medicine and Surgery in New York, said in testimony given on behalf of the American Civil Liberties Union in the ongoing federal lawsuit Hecox v. Little, which challenges Idaho’s ban on trans women and girls participating in women’s sports.
Safer added that for a trans woman who meets NCAA standards, “there is no inherent reason why her physiological characteristics related to athletic performance should be treated differently from the physiological characteristics of a non-transgender woman.”
Sanchez’s bill is almost certainly DOA in the Assembly.
Assuming it even makes it to a committee hearing — not a guarantee — it still would have to make it through a Democratic supermajority in both houses and also survive Gov. Gavin Newsom’s veto pen. Highly unlikely.
Legislative LGBTQ Caucus Chair Assemblymember Chris Ward, D-San Diego, told The Bee in a statement that his caucus would fight against any attempts “to use kids as political pawns.”
He said that sports participation leads to better outcomes in both academics and mental health, and that transgender students deserve the opportunity to benefit from it “in an environment that both affirms and validates their gender identity.”
“Attacking kids is a failed 2024 issue,” Ward said in a statement to The Bee. “We are surprised the assembly member introduced her first bill targeting a very small, vulnerable population of kids rather than using the opportunity to address key issues of affordability, housing, and more that are impacting Californians.”
BIDEN SIGNS BILL RENAMING AUBURN VA CLINIC FOR PEARL HARBOR SURVIVOR
Via David Lightman...
The Auburn Department of Veterans Affairs community- based outpatient clinic will be named after Navy Lt. Commander Louis A. Conter, the last survivor of the attack on the USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.
Conter was 102 when he died in April. The Grass Valley native “heroically evacuated shipmates who were blinded, wounded, or burned, even restraining some of his fellow shipmates from jumping overboard into the burning sea,” said Rep. Kevin Kiley, R-Roseville.
Kiley sponsored the legislation to rename the facility.
President Joe Biden signed the bill into law Saturday.
The Japanese attack on the Arizona killed 1,177. A NPR story last year recalled how Conter was a quartermaster on the back decks of the battleship when the Japanese struck.
“As the bombs rained down on the naval base, one landed between two main guns at the front of the Arizona. The explosion ignited a huge store of TNT black powder that was used for the ship’s battery guns,” NPR said.
Conter left the ship and was told to go onto a rescue boat helping to retrieve bodies from the water.
“Guys were coming out of the fire, and we were just grabbing them and laying them down,” Conter said, according to NPR. “They were real bad. You would pick them up by the bodies, and the skin would come off in your hands.”
Conter went on to fly over 200 missions in the South Pacific and was shot down twice, according to a U.S. Navy press release.
He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and served on the USS Bon Homme Richard during the Korean War, trained with Army special forces, and completed Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape training, the Navy said.
He retired from military service in 1967.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“While I am disappointed with the election results, I am glad to see a peaceful transition of power today. This is the foundation of our democracy. It stands in stark contrast to the violent mob that attacked the capitol four years ago. We must never forget that dark stain in our nation’s history.”
- Assemblymember Marc Berman, D-Menlo Park, via Bluesky.
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