Columnist Jason Zhao argues that the Trump administration is using transgender athletes as a scapegoat for more serious policy failures.
Credit: Abhiram JuvvadiLia Thomas who? I opened up my news feed a week ago to a surreal sight: headline after headline devoted to how the United States has been gripped by intense political dogfights and moral reflection over … watersports. A genocide in Sudan? The collapse of the United States’ international alliances? $4 trillion of capital value wiped out in the stock market due to tariffs? No, clearly the Penn swimming and diving team is our most important concern.
There are 35 members, give or take, of the Penn women’s swimming and diving team. The $175 million in funding stripped by the Trump administration is enough to give each of them $5 million. Frankly, given how underpaid female athletes are, it would be a better use of the funds than President Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s real intention: to suppress dissent and distract from their immense incompetence.
Trump and Musk stripped funding from Penn, citing “policies forcing women to compete with men in sports.” By “men,” the administration meant 2022 College graduate Lia Thomas, a transgender woman who swam on Penn’s women’s swimming and diving team until graduating three years ago. Barred from all women’s swimming competitions by World Aquatics — the governing body of international water sports — Thomas currently does not compete with women, has not done so for three years, and likely never will again.
Regardless of your thoughts on the transgender community, let’s not kid ourselves about what the Trump administration is doing. That $175 million didn’t go toward trans athletes, transition treatment, or programs promoting trans participation in sports; it went to medical and national security research. This is the oldest trick in the political book — any social ill, any economic woes, any anger we the people feel because we have been neglected and failed by our government — just pin it on “them.”
I can cite any number of examples — the Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar, the “colored” population in Indonesia, Jewish people everywhere. Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Black, or white — name any descriptor you can imagine, they’ve been the out-group somewhere at some time. The critiques are just as vapid each and every time, the same lurid fantasies of a tiny group (trans people comprise just 0.95% of the American adult population) conquering and corrupting society at large, from blood libels to bathrooms. American history is essentially a history of things we considered unnatural and perverse until we didn’t: a white man marrying a Black woman, two women holding hands, or even a Catholic president. The vast majority of us were “them” once, the supposed source of all our nation’s ills, as uncomfortable as that fact might make us. Trump and Musk are like a giant anglerfish, holding out trans people in sports like a big light to distract us until we’re swallowed whole by MAGA stupidity and greed.
So, let’s swim away from the light and take a good look around: In the first 60-odd days of this administration, they’ve pushed us to the brink of recession, handed every American’s Social Security funds over to teenagers who can barely manage their own acne, and spilled national secrets in their DMs. That’s just domestic policy; foreign policy-wise, the Trump administration called our most loyal allies in Europe pathetic, aligned us with North Korea on a crucial resolution at the United Nations, and threw a hissy fit when Ukraine didn’t get down on its knees to beg us for more help. This is the most disastrous start to any American presidency in history. Millions of retirees may not receive their Social Security checks on time — if they receive them at all. Tens of thousands of servicepeople are at risk because their information is being leaked to Russia, and every last friend of ours is turning into an enemy.
None of this happened because of transgender people.
We can argue about the trans community all we want. I myself have complicated thoughts about how we as a society should approach issues of gender and sexuality, and I reject the notion that discomfort over these issues constitutes bigotry. The fact remains, however, that they’re not the ones making our country less safe, our food more expensive, and our economy less secure. Trump and Musk are.
Transgender people are not stripping funding for research into lifesaving allergy remedies, cancer research, and search-and-rescue robots. Trump and Musk are.
When we watch our loved ones gasp for breath as they go into anaphylactic shock, when we watch cancer tear their bodies apart with excruciating pain, when we watch them drown as floodwaters carry them away, think of Trump and Musk. Think of what they are willing to take away from you because they’re angry at a swimmer.
JASON ZHAO is a Wharton junior from Seattle studying finance and computer science. His email address is jaszhao@wharton.upenn.edu.
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