As Congress begins its 2025 session, if you thought GOP Speaker Mike Johnson’s top legislative priority is the cost of housing or eggs, or even illegal immigrants, you’d be wrong.
Banning trans athletes is. (Read story here.) Why? Because turning trans athletes into a culture war issue has paid off for Republicans at the ballot box. And because for Republicans, politics always takes precedence over serious governing and national interests.
But is this a crisis that demands the attention of Congress? NCAA President Charlie Baker, a Republican and former governor, says of roughly 500,000 women in college sports, he knows of “about 10” trans women. And they’re not particularly successful in sports.
Nevertheless, the very first thing the GOP House majority plans to do is vote to ban those 10 competitors from sports. If you also count high school trans athletes, the Republican Party is prioritizing “the persecution of a couple of dozen trans young people” ahead of national security, a budget, defense, health care, immigration, the fentanyl crisis, and everything else.
It’s not that Republicans are haters (although some are). They’re just unprincipled demagogues willing to exploit hate for political advantage, that’s all. What kind of people do that? Don’t ever let anyone tell you the GOP is a moral party, because it’s not and its leaders certainly are not.
