By Suzanne Bowdey

When you’re as unpopular as today’s Democrats, the typical response is to try to find a way back into voters’ good graces. Not so for this party, which seems amazingly determined to stay in America’s doghouse. Instead of shedding their trans extremism, Democrats are clinging to it — ignoring the message 80% of the country is sending and killing any dream of a political comeback in the process.

Monday’s vote on girls’ sports protections should have been an easy lift in a nation that overwhelmingly rejects the idiocy that allows biological boys onto our daughters’ teams. But, as disillusioned Democrats have come to learn, nothing is easy for Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s (D-N.Y.) party — a fact that this movement’s champions still can’t believe. “Do they have kids?” former San Jose State University volleyball player Brooke Slusser demanded to know. “If this were your daughter, how would you feel watching her lose opportunities, face unfair competition, and be put at risk all while knowing you had the power to stop it?” the teammate of trans-identifying Blaire Flemingasked. “… [I]t’s just not fair. I feel like I could go on and on to them about it. I just don’t see how they could support it.”

But to the dismay of Slusser — and millions of other athletes fighting this same injustice — Democrats unanimously turned their backs on the women they claim to represent, cementing their fate in the Senate for the third straight time. The legislation’s sponsor, Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), knew it was a steep climb. “We’re going to have to get to 60 votes,” he pointed out on Megyn Kelly’s show before the vote, “and we’ve got a lot of work to do. We have 53 Republicans.” And while President Trump did sign an executive order reinforcing Title IX, the sad reality is that it “only last[s] as long as the president is there,” the legendary coach warned. 

When Tuberville started talking about the boys overtaking girls’ teams, he got emotional. “It is a disgrace,” he said, then repeated it. “What’s going to happen is we’re going to end up not having women’s sports, because parents are not going to allow their kids to dress in dressing rooms, take showers with biological boys, or they don’t want them to compete against them because of being a safety factor. … Now is the time to act on this,” Tuberville insisted. “We can’t wait any longer. [Title IX] has been decimated by the Biden and the Democrats and all the far-left progressives.” 

And yet, the party responsible could only manufacture absurd reasons to vote no. “What Republicans are doing today is inventing a problem to stir up a culture war and divide people against each other,” Senator Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) argued on the House floor. It was a pathetic deflection even for Democrats, whose own base supports the measure by an eye-popping 67%.

“Name and shame them all,” former All-American swimmer Riley Gaines posted on X next to a list of the 45 senators who voted no. “The Democrats’ war on women continues,” she warned. “Never ever let them gaslight you into thinking they care about women’s rights.”

After an election decided by this issue, the border, and inflation, it defies imagination that Joe Biden’s party could only muster two votes out of a possible 260 in the House and Senate for a policy so uncontroversial everywhere else that most people wonder why Congress is even debating it. But then, maybe that’s the problem.

As Doreen Denny, senior advisor for Concerned Women for America, told The Washington Stand, “We keep hearing about Democrat disarray. Today’s Senate vote on the Protection of Women and Girls in Sport Act only proves it. An issue that commands the support of 67% of its party should be a no-brainer. Instead, Senate Democrats have thrown female athletes under the bus by siding with radical special interests over women’s hard-fought Title IX rights.” 

This “no” vote, Denny said, fails women athletes again “by denying equal opportunities for safe sports, safe spaces, and an equal playing field on the basis of sex. They continue to obstruct a victory demanded by 80% of Americans by embracing trans ideology over women’s rights.”

The Democrats’ betrayal is even more astounding against the backdrop of momentum Americans are witnessing in the states. More than half (27) have passed either outright laws or advisory policies making biological sex the determining factor for sports — and Georgia is on the verge of becoming 28. The statehouse passed the Riley Gaines Act last Thursday by a lopsided 102-54, bringing the South closer to a full legislative sweep.

They understand, as Tuberville does, that this “landslide will keep going” unless people act. “I grew up in this business and coaching. I saw what it did for young girls, older girls. It’s created leaders across this country. And we’re absolutely devastating [them]. … I don’t know what Joe Biden was thinking,” the Alabaman shook his head, “or was he even thinking? Or [were] any of the Democrats when they thought this was the right thing to do?” he wondered.

Other GOP senators were equally disgusted by the outcome. “The vast majority of Americans have rejected the farce of men pretending to be women playing in women’s sports,” Senator Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) underscored. “But not Senate Democrats! Senate Democrats STILL want to force girls to compete against men pretending to be women.”

Conservative leaders like Family Research Council President Tony Perkins continue to marvel at the Left’s insistence on swimming against the moral tide. “There is one border the Democrat Party has secured — the ideological border around their party,” he observed. “Common sense could not penetrate their high walls of gender delusion.”

Their reckoning will come, but that’s of little comfort now. While Denny applauds all the White House is doing, she recognizes the limits of the executive branch’s power. “President Trump has boldly seized the moment to correct this injustice,” she told TWS, “but it will take Congress to ensure that women’s hard-fought rights under Title IX are protected for the next generation.”

Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.