Gavin's Gamble: Newsom sides with Trump on males in girls' sports as Maine leads #Resistance

A small, mostly rural, nearly all-white state is leading a bloc of like-minded states against a president they consider imperial. The governor of a big, racially diverse state, whose national ambitions are transparent, is siding with the White House.

This happened after, not before, Inauguration Day 2025.

California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, who goaded Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis into debating him in a possible preview of the 2024 White House campaign, last week scrambled the political math on one of the country's most polarizing issues by coming out against males who identify as girls competing in girls' sports, unexpectedly adopting President Trump's position.

Meanwhile, Maine is doubling down on its new role as #Resistance leader against Trump's barrage of executive orders on gender identity and his agencies' aggressive enforcement of Title IX regulations against itself, other blue states and school districts that determine access to sports, locker rooms and restrooms by gender identity.

Presumptive allies immediately savaged Newsom, whose move looks like a tack to the center for the 2028 presidential campaign. It gives high-profile cover to the few elected Democrats who have spoken against letting males compete in girls' sports, such as Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton and New York Rep. Tom Suozzi.

The setting for Thursday's bombshell was even more embarrassing for Democrats: Newsom's new podcast with guest Charlie Kirk, the conservative activist, who told the governor he should oppose "the young man who's about to win the state championship in the long jump in female sports," referring to a California transgender athlete who won the girls' jump by 8 feet.

"Would you say no men in female sports?" Kirk asked. 

Newsom, citing his two daughters and a wife who "played on the junior national soccer team," responded: "I think it's an issue of fairness. I completely agree with you on that."

"I'm not wrestling with" the issue as Kirk assumed, Newsom said. "The issue of fairness is completely legit. I saw that the last couple of years. Boy, did I saw [sic] how you guys [conservatives] were able to weaponize that" for political gain.

The governor's position is at odds with not only dominant Democratic allies but with state law, which the Legislature changed in 2013 to govern sports participation by gender identity.

California Legislative LGBTQ Caucus leaders Assemblymember Chris Ward and state Sen. Caroline Menjivar said that "until Donald Trump began obsessing about it," the state law was "not a problem" in school sports, NBC Los Angeles reported.

Los Angeles LGBT Center CEO Joe Hollendoner demanded Newsom "immediately apologize" for his "appalling betrayal" and "meet with transgender advocates to educate himself," accusing the governor of "parroting the same Republican talking points used to marginalize and erase trans people," apparently for his "own political aspirations."

Newsom's pivot put congressional Democrats in a bind. They declined to criticize him to Politico but tried to reframe keeping males out of girls' sports as "unleashing sexual predators on girls," as House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries put it, based on their assertion that it would require adults to look at children's genitals.

A swing-state Democratic strategist told Politico that Newsom was in line with the party's voters, who "don’t agree with trans athletes in youth or college sports." Neither do two-in-three American adults want males in girls' sports, according to new Pew Research Center polling.

As with opposition to limits on puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgical removal of healthy breasts and genitals for minors, Senate Democrats are trying to reframe the issue as parental rights and discretion for schools and localities, Axios reported.

New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker repeated Newsom's concern for "basic issues of fairness" but said "we should be discussing [them] on the local level, within sports leagues and within conferences."

Yet Newsom's office told CalMatters it won't commit to backing either GOP Assembly bill to reverse the 2013 law, as their sponsors called on him to do in light of his comments to Kirk.

Maine Democrats promote amendment without mentioning 'gender identity' or 'sports'

Maine Gov. Janet Mills is leading unified Pine Tree State Democrats into a potential budget bloodbath, risking multiple streams of federal funding for protecting male access to girls' sports in state law, policy and – under consideration – the Maine constitution.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Office for Civil Rights issued a notice of violation to the Maine Department of Education for funding the Maine Principals' Association, which by letting males play in girls' sports in fact discriminates on the basis of gender identity "against students who identify with their sex," according to the letter.

It referred the state to the Justice Department for prosecution based on "failure or threatened failure to comply," possibly referring to Mills' explicit refusal to follow Trump's executive order when he pressed her directly at a White House event.

The U.S. Department of Education's latest enforcement letter is against Washington state's Tumwater School District, a suburb of the state capital, based on a complaint filed by the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism on behalf of a female basketball player.

The complaint alleges the district committed sex discrimination by letting a male play in a girls' game, causing the unnamed girl to sit out the game, and she and her brother faced resulting "intimation and retaliation" for "speaking up against males in female sports."

Mills tried to pass the buck to the Legislature in her first comments since the Trump exchange, telling News Center Maine transgender sports participation is "worthy of a debate" for lawmakers but Trump was acting "like Louis the 14th" and bypassing Congress.

The Maine Legislature is considering a constitutional amendment that would guarantee "equal rights for all" based on gender identity, a protection already guaranteed in state law but diametrically opposed to the Trump administration's interpretation of Title IX, which holds that sex trumps gender identity in athletic competition and access to intimate spaces.

Curiously, Maine House Democrats didn't include the words "gender identity," "transgender" or "sports" in promoting the amendment Thursday, the same day as Newsom's podcast.

Assistant state House Majority Leader Lori Gramlich simply said the amendment would "guarantee equal legal rights … regardless of sex or gender" and repeatedly mentioned "women and girls" without including transgender women, who are biologically male.

She noted her former colleague, the late Lois Rickett, introduced the amendment every term Rickett served without noting the text didn't mention gender identity until 2023 version. The 2021 version only says "sex."

Gramlich mocked Maine Republicans for claiming Democrats were trying to "erase women" from history, without including the context: female Maine GOP lawmakers speaking against the transgender policy because it would allow males to "potentially set new state records" in girls' sports, as the Portland Press Herald paraphrased their rally.

State Rep. Laurel Libby said in Friday's Maine GOP address that she'd received thanks nationwide, from "so many Democrats from California" to "lesbian couples" to a transgender person, for posting before-and-after photos of a Maine transgender student pole vaulter who won 5th place in male competition two years ago and 1st place in female competition last month.

Female-only sports activist Riley Gaines gave her posts viral visibility, and House Democrats followed by censuring Libby, which means she can't speak or vote on the House floor, Spectrum News reported. 

"I will not be silenced and I will not allow the voices of Maine girls to be silenced, Libby wrote on Facebook, showing the House vote.