By Suzanne Bowdey

In previous years, people might have missed the irony. But not now — not after the meteoric rise of women’s basketball. When the WNBA champs visited the White House last week, reporters didn’t cover it out of obligation. They covered it because it was a real story. And Joe Biden’s betrayal of girls’ sports only made it more of one.

The timing of the photo op couldn’t have been more politically inconvenient for the president, whose administration has been lit up by lawsuits over the dismantling of the very thing the team was there to celebrate: women. While Biden was applauding the champs for “showing that the future of women’s sports is brighter than the Vegas lights,” most people couldn’t help but notice how utterly disingenuous he was being. After all, Biden is the one trying to eradicate 52 years of women’s progress. He’s the one insisting biological men make better girls than our daughters. And it was his idea — not Congress’s — to turn Title IX into a manifesto of transgender rights.

Yet he stood at the podium and with a straight face declared, “It matters to girls and women, finally seeing themselves represented — and it matters to all of America. That’s why,” Biden insisted, “as a nation, we need to support women’s sports…” Not just during the championships, he tweeted later. “But all year round. Let’s grow women’s sports and continue inspiring the nation.”

The reaction was instantaneous. After three years of this administration, most parents, coaches, and teachers understand exactly what this president wants to do to women’s sports — and it isn’t growing them. It’s erasing them. “Here’s something @POTUS could do to support women,” Alliance Defending Freedom’s Kristen Waggoner fired back, “… Keep men out of women’s sports.”

Family Research Council’s Meg Kilgannon was equally incensed by the president’s hypocrisy. “President Biden wants to ‘grow’ women’s sports by allowing men who identify as women to play. Forcing women to accept men in our locker rooms, sports teams, and even prisons IS NOT supporting women,” she argued. “Protecting women’s sports and female athletes would be truly inspirational for the nation’s women and girls, and the men who love us.”

Former NCAA All-American Riley Gaines was just as appalled, saying on her “Gaines on Girls” podcast that the “easiest way to support women’s sports is to keep men out of them.” And frankly, Independent Women’s Forum pointed out, it’s difficult to believe the “audacity” of Biden’s comments considering that he “just mandated that girls surrender their sports opportunities to boys.”

Members of Congress, who just took turns grilling Education Secretary Miguel Cardona on this absurd rewrite of Title IX, were appalled that Biden would try to play both sides of this debate based on the harm he’s already done. The rule Biden’s team released has already triggered multiple lawsuits from more than 20 states — a fact not lost on the House Education and the Workforce Committee. After the president’s phony hype for girls’ sports, Republicans tweeted, “Three weeks ago, the Biden admin finalized a radical rewrite of #TitleIX that would ERASE women’s sports by allowing biological males to compete in female sports. The guy doing the most to harm women’s sports should sit this one out.”

In one of those hearings, Cardona’s refusal to even protect his own daughter prompted a passionate response from Rep. Burgess Owens (R-Utah). When Biden’s top education official couldn’t answer whether he’d step in if his daughter was uncomfortable dressing in front a biological boy, the dad of girls couldn’t believe his ears.

“I’ll say this, Mr. Secretary, before I go on to the next topic,” Burgess paused. “With all due respect, I pray that our country will never, ever have the vision that your policies are driving us toward in terms of manhood. It’s a vision that teaches our boys that harming girls is no big deal. I pray that we remain a country that produces overwhelmingly massive majorities of men who feel the way I do about my girls. I will give my life in a heartbeat for my girls. And the blessing I have is that they have no doubts about that. There are millions of men and women across this country that do not have faith, do not have trust in you protecting our girls because of policies you can’t say yes or no to. By the way, those are not very hard questions as a father.”

He repeated that sentiment with FRC President Tony Perkins on Saturday’s edition of “This Week on the Hill.” Asked why he took Cardona to task, Owens replied simply, “I have five girls — and I grew up in an age where we were taught, very simply, [to be] a very proud young man, have a good legacy, a good name, be happy when it’s all said and done. Learn to love God, country, family. Respect women … particularly motherhood and womanhood. We all know that’s what makes our country what it is — how we think of our ladies and what they bring to our culture.”

But right now, Burgess pointed out, “We have an administration that could care less about our ladies.” Equally as frustrating, he said, they don’t care what their transgender agenda is doing to our sons. “Young men have no idea what it is to respect ladies. They have no idea what it is to not be bullies. And they don’t mind harming ladies in any way they can.”

The reason he put Cardona on the spot, he explained, is that leftists may have a way of dealing with the fallout of this rule in theory, “but when it comes down to their kids, they think quite differently. They use their common sense. Well, not [being] able to answer common sense questions about putting his daughter in harm’s way shows the American people cannot trust him. He needs to leave,” Owens insisted. “He needs to do something else. We cannot trust this guy to take care of protecting our kids or educating our kids standing up for our culture.” It’s all backwards, he argued. “The upside is that we now know what they’re all about. And [the] American people will not stand for it. And I think November is going to be a good thing for us.”

Speaking of the election, just this past Friday, former President Donald Trump illustrated the stark difference between the two men’s policies when he vowed to roll back Biden’s extreme new Title IX immediately. “We’re going to end it on day one,” he promised. “Don’t forget, that came down as an executive order. And we’re gonna change it. … Tell your people not to worry about it,” he said, calling Biden’s idea of letting boys in the girls’ locker rooms “crazy.” “It’ll be signed on day one,” Trump repeated. “It’ll be terminated.”

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