By Suzanne Bowdey

Just how sincere is California Governor Gavin Newsom’s (D) concern about girls’ sports? The world is about to find out. The longtime Democrat’s frank interview with Charlie Kirk earlier in the month shook the foundations of his leftist base when he declared that it was “deeply unfair” to let biological boys hijack girls’ sports. It was a calculated political move, to be sure. But the man with his eye on 2028 may have left something out of those calculations: a Trump administration determined to make him mean it.

The governor’s team counted on the controversy that followed in the days after his podcast. Predictably, everyone from the Human Rights Campaign to LGBT lawmakers ferociously condemned Newsom for opening the door to common-sense thinking on sex. What they didn’t count on was being squeezed to act on the issue at home. After all, it’s one thing to take a few slings and arrows and quite another to put those policies into practice.

But that’s exactly what the Trump administration is demanding from the governor. “We’ve got to own that,” Newsom told Kirk of the lopsided playing field. “We’ve got to acknowledge it.” Well, here’s your chance, Education Secretary Linda McMahon urged in a letter to Newsom, which bluntly reminded the governor that his state is in violation of the president’s order on Title IX.

“An overwhelming majority of Americans agree with you that biological men in women’s sports is unfair and wrong,” McMahon wrote. “Many are confused, however, by your office’s silence on the harms of substituting ‘gender identity’ for sex in other areas of the school environment. After all, if men ‘identifying as women’ shouldn’t play women’s sports, why do California schools continue to let boys ‘identifying as girls’ use girls’ bathrooms and locker rooms, and sleep in girls-only overnight accommodations?”

“Take a stand on your convictions,” she insisted. “A great place to start protecting girls in California K-12 schools is … by calling on your legislature to pass AB 844 [the Protect Girls’ Sports Act]. This would make it clear that California schools operate within reality and common sense,” the secretary pointed out. “Sex-specific school programs and activities should be separated on the basis of sex, not the subjective feeling of ‘gender identity.’ Allowing participation in sex-separated activities based on ‘gender identity’ places schools at risk of Title IX violations and loss of federal funding.”

In other words, it’s time for Newsom to put the state’s money where his mouth is. And the Trump administration isn’t the only one holding the governor’s feet to the fire. Local school districts are waging a surprisingly strong war on California’s absurd trans policy. When a teenage boy won a high school girls’ high jump competition by eight feet in February, the outrage reached a tipping point.

Just this past Tuesday, school board members for Temecula Valley Unified School District in Southern California unanimously passed a resolution to support the Republicans’ bill in the state legislature to protect girls’ sports. What’s happening in blue states is “an absolute travesty,” the board’s Jennifer Wiersma argued. And yet, “oddly enough, the law’s never been challenged, until now,” she pointed out. “California’s AB 89 is an important opportunity for us to say as a district, ‘Absolutely, we support this bill.’ … Sacramento needs to hear from us … every city council and every school board across this state should pass this resolution and support AB 89.”

Look, Joseph Komrosky added, “All it takes is one. If you’re a father of a girl who competes — for years, and years, and years, trying to refine the skill of winning and fierce competition — [all it takes is one] biological boy to just take that to shreds,” Komrosky said. “And that’s despicable, I’m sorry. That is wokeness, and the days of wokeness are gone.”

Maybe Newsom thought he could score political points but not be called to account. That will be next to impossible now, as a fierce debate over sports barrels down the track in the state capital. Already, GOP Assemblyman Bill Essayli is turning up the heat on the presidential wannabe. “Talk is cheap,” he fumed. “Why don’t you support my bill AB 844 to reverse CA’s law allowing boys to compete in girls sports? You’re the Governor, not a commentator!” — a not-so-subtle jab at the man who seems to think that he can sympathize with the problem and then pretend he’s powerless to stop it.

The question on most people’s minds is what FRC’s Joseph Backholm asked California Family Council President Jonathan Keller this month. “Is Gavin Newsom going to lead the charge back to the center for the Democrats, and will that work? Or is he going to abandon his base and commit political seppuku by becoming persona non grata in the Democratic Party?” Keller thinks he’s “trying to find a way to kind of tack back toward the center without betraying all of his progressive orthodoxy.”

But the problem Newsom’s running into is that Americans won’t believe him without a record. And that’s one thing he’s sorely lacking when it comes to political moderation. “He has a shark’s instincts,” Kirk warned after the interview, “and he’s hoping that the voters will have a goldfish’s memory.”

With AB 844’s April 1 hearing date right around the corner, conservatives are hoping to harness the governor’s supposed open-mindedness for a key win in their deep blue state. Then again, Concerned Women for America’s Doreen Denny reminded people, “A whopping 67% of Democrats now agree that women’s sports should be for women only — and that’s a message Gov. Newsom can’t ignore if he has any ambition beyond California.”

The reality is, Denny told The Washington Stand, “Newsom may have conceded that allowing trans-identifying boys in girls’ sports is deeply unfair, but he now needs to clean up the mess in his own state where numerous young women athletes are facing discrimination in their own sports. Talk is cheap. Whether Newsom supports a state bill to protect girls’ sports and female locker rooms will be the telltale sign of whether he really cares about what he claims.”

In the meantime, California is staring down a $500 billion mountain of debt, which makes Trump’s threat to yank federal funding a serious one. “But if Newsom only acts because he risks financial fallout,” Denny added, “we’ll know he’s not really serious about protecting female athletes from discrimination.”

Newsom may have been willing to sacrifice the Left’s temporary wrath on the altar of political ambition, but both sides should be wary of his true agenda. “I think that whatever Gavin Newsom says to Charlie Kirk in 2025 or whatever he says to Democratic primary voters in 2027 and 2028,” Keller cautioned, “I think any of those promises very well may have an expiration date — and it may be sooner than a lot of us think.”

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