Cultural Rejection, Part II: Trump Orders Newsom to End Male Intrusion in Female Sports HotAir

What about the legal aspect of this threat? Trump has no authority to order “local authorities” to do anything, obviously. It’s the kind of bluster that Trump likes to use, perhaps unseemingly so at times. Presidents have little authority over local functions for good reasons that have to do with the Tenth Amendment and the wisdom of the founders. 

However, Trump does have authority to enforce federal law, and generations of Democrats made sure presidents had that authority specific to Title IX, added in 1972 to the Civil Rights Act with the express purpose of protecting women in education. That has been used to force schools to protect women’s athletics by ensuring equal access to competition, and specifically to ensure females have an equal number of sports opportunities as males. For the past 50-plus years, presidents have used federal funding to enforce their interpretations of Title IX on states and schools. A federal court recently rejected Joe Biden’s attempt to neuter Title IX by interpreting it as applying to self-identified “gender,” and Trump reversed the policy almost immediately on taking office. 

The threat to order local officials to block biological males in women’s competition is an empty one. The threat to California’s access to the trough of federal education funding is not. Newsom and California can take Trump to court over it — Maine and Janet Mills already are doing so — but the power that Democrats invested in the executive branch to interpret and enforce Title IX is almost certain to prevail. That’s especially true given that Newsom’s policies (and Mills’ too) actively degrade female access to aspects of educational opportunities through athletic competition, the issue that prompted Congress to pass Title IX in the first place. 

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Still, this comes down to Newsom rather than Trump. If allowing males to compete against females in female-only competition is “deeply unfair” as Newsom acknowledges, why wouldn’t he do something about it? Why hasn’t he done something about it? The answer to that question might be the first step in unlocking the “cultural rejection” that Democrats are experiencing. If they refuse to address it, they’d better be prepared for a long stay in the cultural and political wilderness. 

via hotair.com

Ed Morrissey