Yesterday was a huge victory for women, women in sports, and sanity in general. When President Donald Trump signed his executive order banning men (aka 'trans women') from participating in girls' and women's sports, he was surrounded by young female athletes in one of the most indelible early images of his administration.
"From now on, women's sports will be only for WOMEN." –President Donald J. Trump 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/2Vix6jlhJe
— President Donald J. Trump (@POTUS) February 6, 2025
ICONIC
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) February 5, 2025
Men don’t belong in women’s sports!
If that statement triggers or upsets you, well… I don’t really care, Margaret. pic.twitter.com/neIOL1ZMg4
America never should have gotten to this point. But we did. We can't change that, we can only fix it. Now, Congress needs to codify Trump's EO into law so that it NEVER happens again.
But it was still a tremendous victory and some of the most courageous and ardent advocates for protecting women's sports and spaces couldn't contain their joy at what the President did for women everywhere.
I can't even tell you how much this visual means to me https://t.co/NjxWz5cR3D
— Riley Gaines (@Riley_Gaines_) February 5, 2025
I don’t have the words right now to describe how I feel about my friend @Riley_Gaines_
— Sage Steele (@sagesteele) February 6, 2025
This pic was taken today at The @WhiteHouse right after @POTUS signed the EO to keep men/boys OUT of womens/girls sports - fixing what Biden & Harris destroyed with Title IX. What President… pic.twitter.com/92lhR0vlTc
Steele's tweet continues:
What President Trump did today would not have happened without Riley. She CHOSE to stand up, speak up, fight, and bring other young women with her. I love you, Riley! Thank you for helping me and so many others realize that we cannot afford to stay silent!
Riley Gaines, Sage Steele, Paula Scanlon, and so many others fought for years to right this injustice. I cannot imagine the joy and vindication that yesterday's signing brought to their hearts. I am just grateful for them and all of the women and young girls who refused to be erased by the gender ideology cult. The fact that Trump signed the order on National Girls and Women in Sports Day just made it all the more poignant.
Recommended
And appropriate.
Not everyone was standing up and applauding though. Here is how ESPN -- the most prominent sports media outlet in the world -- characterized the executive order shortly before it happened.
President Donald Trump will sign an executive order Wednesday designed to prevent people who were biologically assigned male at birth from participating in women's or girls' sporting events. https://t.co/57XwdjyIy9
— ESPN (@espn) February 5, 2025
'People who are biologically assigned male at birth.'
Un. Be. Lievable.
Unless you are talking about God, ESPN, no one 'assigns' infants their biological sex. Certainly not a doctor in the delivery room and certainly not YOU.
ESPN was raked over the coals for their tweet and their article, and it signified that yesterday's order is an inflection point in our culture. We should all take the time to celebrate this tremendous victory, but after that, it is time to push forward even further and drive a stake into the heart of the woke ideology that has infected not just women's sports but ALL sports in America.
I love to watch sports. Like a lot of men, when I was in my 20s, I was a sports junkie and would watch anything and everything that ESPN or other networks put in front of me. Football, basketball, baseball, hockey, tennis, even golf, you name it. If it featured the best athletes in the world competing against each other at the highest levels, I would tune in.
As I grew older, two things happened. I had less and less time to dedicate to sports. That is normal. But also, many of these sports began to be infected by woke ideology. That is NOT normal.
From Colin Kaepernick kneeling and wearing 'All cops are pigs' socks to the NFL, NBA, and other leagues embracing the Marxist 'Black Lives Matter' scam to every league forcing their athletes to adopt 'Pride' nights, suddenly my love for sports began to ebb as leagues and networks like ESPN were less concerned about the play on the field, court, or ice and more concerned with telling America how we needed to think, how they DEMANDED that we think.
These days, I mostly only still watch hockey (and college football). I grew up playing hockey. Sadly, I was not good enough to fulfill my childhood dream of being the next Bobby Orr, but even when I realized that I was only a mediocre talent (at best), I still loved watching the sport. It is fast, it is physical, and it is exhilarating. In my humble opinion, it is the greatest sport on Earth.
My love for hockey was also fueled by the popular saying, 'Hockey players are just built different.' Usually, this refers to the players' toughness and how they will fight and play through any injury, from torn muscles to bloody faces and missing teeth. It also means that hockey players, even if they are not from America, embody a great American ideal: rugged individualism.
When the NHL, like other leagues, mandated that players wear rainbow jerseys and sticks during warmups on 'pride nights,' hockey players rebelled. The first through the door was then-Philadelphia Flyers defenseman Ivan Provorov, who refused to 'wear the ribbon' on religious grounds. Soon others followed suit, and even more players raised objections behind the scenes in the locker rooms and front offices. The NHL caved and no longer forces any player to participate in 'pride' celebrations.
The resistance to forced wokeness started to grow. Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker openly talked about his Catholic faith and fans quickly made his jersey the top-selling jersey in the country. The left tried to shame a child -- a CHILD -- for painting his face with Chiefs' colors and wearing a tribal headdress in support of the team. America responded by putting Deadspin out of business and mocking horrible reporter Carron J. Phillips into obscurity.
The pendulum was swinging back and swinging back HARD. And then the 'vibe shift' happened.
During the 2024 presidential campaign, athletes across America started doing the 'Trump dance.'
Trump is posting more on X now. He dropped this beauty from the West Virginia game. It's sweeping the nation.
— Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) November 13, 2024
The Trump dance is a global phenomenon.pic.twitter.com/lx5382qrF9
Make no mistake, this was a YUGE cultural shift. This would have been unheard of in 2016. And these athletes were not just supporting Trump with their dance moves, they were rejecting a culture that told them they could not.
It was 'I really don't care, Margaret' long before J.D. Vance ever thought of saying 'I really don't care, Margaret.'
Then Trump won.
Now, that vibe shift is paying off and growing stronger. As big a victory as Trump's executive order was for women and girls yesterday, it also signaled that now is the time. Now is the time that we take our sports -- all of our sports -- back from the woke ideologues who hijacked it in the 21st century.
We used to boycott sports when they embraced wokeness and rejected American ideals. But Riley Gaines and so many other athletes like her showed us there is a better way. Stand up and call them out. And never stop until you have won.
When ESPN tries to tell us that people are 'assigned' their gender, we need to stand up and mock them. When leftist sports personalities like Dan Le Batard or Jemele Hill call everyone a racist, we fire back at them and reduce them to irrelevance, just like Carron J. Phillips.
On the reverse side of that coin, when prominent figures like Phil Mickelson come out and stand with Daniel Penny, we need to join them and show our support for sanity, common sense, and American values.
We are stronger than the left and there are a LOT more of us.
Yesterday's executive order from Donald Trump wasn't a one-off victory. It was just the beginning.
There are bigger issues we need to tackle than sports, there is no question about that. But for Americans who love sports -- watching, playing, or just supporting -- they are a fundamental part of our American experience.
For all of those people, now is the time.
Sports do not belong to the woke left. They belong to us.
So let's take them back.