Trans high school athlete competes in California finals in shadow of protests, Trump funding threats
LGBTQ issues
Donald TrumpFacebookTweetLink
Follow
The transgender high school athlete whose participation in this weekend's California track and field championships prompted President Donald Trump to threaten to remove state funding is competing in Saturday's final round.
A.B. Hernandez, a public high school junior in Southern California, placed first in long jump, high jump and triple jump in the preliminary round Friday as a group protested her ability to compete, holding signs reading, 'Save Girls Sports' and cheered while an airplane with a banner reading, 'No Boys in Girls' Sports' flew over the stadium.
'I don't think that having a male in female competition is fair competition,' one protester told CNN, who misgendered A.B. while saying as an athlete, she should compete in her 'biological field.' Most parents who came with their children to the meet, however, said they don't want the issue to be politicized and want the focus to remain on the competition.
Her qualification led the high school sports governing body to allow more cisgender girls, whose gender identity conforms with their sex assigned at birth, to compete, as A.B. earned her place in the championships after finishing first in the triple jump and long jump at last weekend's Southern Section Masters Meet, which led to criticism from some in the community who said she prevented lower-ranked competitors from advancing.
The top 12 finishers in each event in Friday's preliminary round advanced to Saturday's state finals in Clovis. A.B. was ranked first in both long jump and triple jump, and 14th in high jump entering the championships, according to Mile Split California data.
The California Interscholastic Federation announced a new policy on Tuesday which only applies to this weekend's meet, allowing 'biological female' student athletes who would otherwise have earned a qualifying mark – if not for the participation of trans students – an automatic entry to the finals.
The same day, Trump said on Truth Social, 'large scale' federal funding 'will be held back, maybe permanently, if the Executive Order on this subject matter is not adhered to,' referencing his February directive titled, 'Keeping Men Out of Women's Sports.'
A day after Trump's announcement, the Justice Department said it was investigating whether California's School Success and Opportunity Act violates the federal Title IX law prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sex in education programs or activities receiving federal money. The California law in part prohibits public schools from blocking transgender students from participating in school sports.
The federal agency sent the announcement in letters to the California Attorney General and the superintendent of public instruction, as well as the California Interscholastic Federation and the Jurupa Unified School District, where A.B. attends high school.
The school district said it is required to follow California law and the state federation's policy regarding school athletics.
The office of Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat who recently has broken from many progressives' position on the issue and others, said the governing body's pilot rule is 'reasonable.' Newsom, in a March podcast episode with conservative activist Charlie Kirk, called the issue of trans athletes competing in sports 'deeply unfair.'
With trans athletes' participation in girls' and women's sports a legal, political and cultural debate stoked by the political right, the White House has tried to use federal money to get states to align their policies with its ideology.
At the track meet, one coach from Redondo Beach told CNN affiliate KCAL 'it's not easy' for A.B. to be competing.
The coach said of CIF's pilot policy: 'The solution they came up with is very good. They're allowing her to compete but not displacing the other athletes. I think they came up with a good solution for a difficult, challenging question. The problem is it's not going away,' according to the KCAL report.
One protester told the outlet what CIF is 'doing wrong is allowing boys in girls' sports. I would like to see the three categories. Let them have their own category… These girls don't have a fair playing field. They're going against a boy,' the woman told KCAL, adding she believes A.B. has a 'biological advantage.'
At the core of disagreements over access is whether trans women have unfair physical athletic advantages. Few trans athletes have reached elite levels of sports competition and even fewer have taken home top prizes, but their limited success has fueled the growing movement to ban them from participating on teams consistent with their gender identity.
Research on trans people's athletic performance is scarce, and there have been no large-scale scientific studies on the topic or on how hormone therapies may affect their performance in specific sport categories, such as running or wrestling.
Trans athletes and advocates say trans people deserve the right to compete alongside their peers and reap the proven social, physical and mental benefits of sports.
This weekend's meet wasn't the first time A.B. faced backlash as she competed.
At another competition earlier this month, she was met with heckling and protesters in the crowd as she was accompanied by campus security guards and deputies from the Orange County Sheriff's Department, according to Keinan Briggs, who coaches two athletes who placed lower than A.B. in last weekend's competition.
While many parents and community members are upset, Briggs agrees with those who believe A.B. should compete because there is not a specific category for transgender athletes, he said.
In an interview with Capital & Main earlier this month, A.B. said she has the support of most of the athletes she competes against: 'Girls were just shocked that people would actually come to do that, and really bully a child.'
'I've trained so hard. I mean, hours of conditioning every day, five days a week. Every day since November, three hours after school. And then all of summer, no summer break for me,' she told Capital & Main. 'A few people think I'm brave and strong and they hope to be like me one day. I say, don't just hope, make it happen.'
'I'm still a child. You're an adult, and for you to act like a child shows how you are as a person,' said A.B., whose family declined to comment for this story when contacted by CNN.
A.B.'s mother Nereyda Hernandez said this month on Instagram her daughter's identity 'doesn't give her an advantage; it gives her courage. It takes immense bravery to show up, compete, and be visible in a world that often questions your very right to exist, let alone to participate.'
Both A.B. and her mother spoke at a Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified School District board of education meeting on April 8. Nereyda Hernandez told the board A.B. is competing at the high school level in girls' sports in accordance with the law but has faced harassment and stalking.
'We're supposed to treat all children equal, and we're supposed to protect our children,' the mother said, adding the team does not feel 'unsafe.'
A.B. referenced the Save Girls Sports group at the meeting, saying: 'If you are going to save someone, it should be the girls on my team who all love me and support me, and they've told me over and over again that they want me on this team.'
CNN's Samantha Waldenberg, Stephanie Elam, Jen Christensen, and Elizabeth Wolfe contributed to this report.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
New York Times
33 minutes ago
- New York Times
Astros takeaways: Yordan Alvarez fallout continues, Jake Meyers adjusts swing and more
HOUSTON — Fallout from a dysfunctional Saturday spilled into Sunday at Daikin Park, where prior to the finale of a 10-game homestand, the Houston Astros honored Dr. Thomas Mehlhoff for 35 years of service to the organization with an on-field ceremony and framed jersey. Alex Bregman, George Springer and Jeff Bagwell all sent taped remarks praising Mehlhoff: one of the team's physicians who, according to an in-stadium announcement, handles most of the Astros' hand and wrist injuries. Advertisement Ironic isn't strong enough to describe the scene — a coincidental confluence of events that epitomized a whirlwind weekend in Houston. The team completed a 10-game homestand 7-3 and split four games with the Tampa Bay Rays, but both accomplishments seemed secondary to the saga of a slugger's right hand that — after a month — is now known to be fractured. Many questions remain about the Astros' handling of Yordan Alvarez's situation. Those with the medical expertise to answer them won't be made available any time soon, leaving baseball men to double as orthopedic specialists. General manager Dana Brown did his best during the team's pregame radio show, when play-by-play man Robert Ford asked whether, in hindsight, the organization wished it had done anything different during Alvarez's recovery. 'When he had the first injury, in terms of the muscle strain in the hand, maybe we shouldn't have let him fight through that,' Brown said. 'He said it wasn't the normal pain that he usually gets in his hand, so he thought maybe he could grind through it and it was just soreness. 'Maybe at that point we probably should have shut him down, maybe for a week, giving it a chance to heal and not let him try to fight through it and potentially cause more damage.' Brown's candor again calls into question every aspect of the team's return-to-play procedure. His predecessor, James Click, panned it before his dismissal in 2022. Now, Brown must decide what, if anything, to do about it. At the end of last season, Troy Snitker sent a list of goals to Jake Meyers, a defensive wizard with decreasing offensive production. Some suggested mechanical tweaks. Others offered advice for extending at-bats. Meyers carried his hitting coach's counsel into a pivotal winter. He slashed .190/.256/.307 across his final 362 plate appearances of 2024. Brown barely mentioned Meyers throughout a transformative offseason spent searching for an outfielder. Advertisement Instead, Brown has found the best version of Meyers, a soft-spoken Midwesterner morphing into a lineup mainstay. Only two qualified Astros have a higher OPS than Meyers' .753 mark. Just Jeremy Peña has a higher batting average than Meyers' .292 clip. Meyers raised it by 42 points across 109 prolific May plate appearances. According to FanGraphs, only four American League outfielders were worth more wins above replacement than Meyers last month: Aaron Judge, Ryan O'Hearn, Addison Barger and Cody Bellinger. Contact is allowing Meyers to keep that company. Pitchers are throwing him more strikes than any season of his major-league career and Meyers is making contact on 86.9 percent of the swings he takes against them. His career average is 82 percent. Much of the improvement can be traced to a swing adjustment listed as part of Snitker's offseason goals. Meyers corrected a career-long tendency to initiate a swing with his top hand, which created a steep entrance into the strike zone. An inconsistent bat path and poor plate coverage ensued. Meyers chased outside the zone at a 31.2 percent rate last season. He whiffed 27 percent of the time, too — the fourth straight season in which he posted at least a 27 percent whiff rate. 'I learned how to initiate the bat with my hands and, because I'm athletic and strong, I can still get the bat to the ball,' Meyers said. 'You get to the big leagues and they're throwing a bunch of different pitches moving a bunch of different ways, it makes it extremely hard to do that and redirect where you're going.' This winter, Meyers focused on a more efficient way to start his swing. He took one-handed swings using his top hand, trying to stay level while his barrel entered the strike zone. Gradually, after getting comfortable, he introduced a second hand and saw a swing he didn't need to initiate. Advertisement 'He's quieted that down to get into some better positions, but he's coming out of those positions cleaner as well,' Snitker said. 'The sequence is better. The way he's rotating, first, and then the path that follows that is cleaner.' Meyers is whiffing 21.3 percent of the time this season and chasing outside the strike zone at just a 22.9 percent clip. His aggression remains — Meyers is seeing just 3.59 pitches per plate appearance and has absurd numbers against the first pitch of a plate appearance — but has cut down on chasing in the middle of at-bats, allowing for some longer battles. Whether Meyers can continue this surge will be fascinating. Meyers also had a magnificent first two months last season, slashing .289/.360/.489 in his first 151 plate appearances. The freefall that followed won't be repeated, Meyers believes. 'The way I've gone about these first two months is very different than last year and the years before,' Meyers said. 'It will be sustainable because of the things I'm focusing on and the things I've set in the offseason and spring training and through these couple months, I know I can be confident it will work.' During pregame stretch on Saturday night in Albuquerque, Jacob Melton saw something peculiar. Teammate Tommy Sacco Jr. walked toward the group with his glove. Manager Mickey Storey followed. Melton knew Sacco wasn't in Triple-A Sugar Land's starting lineup. That he came to work out with those who were could mean only one thing. That Storey joined him only confirmed Melton's suspicion that he could be headed to the show. 'Before (Storey) even said anything, I kind of had a feeling this is what it was,' Melton said with a smile. 'It was surreal. I don't think I really have the words to describe how I felt in that moment.' Melton made his major-league debut during Sunday's 1-0 win against the Rays, starting in center field and finishing 1-for-3 from the eighth spot in Houston's batting order. Melton's role moving forward will evolve, though it's difficult to envision him getting everyday at-bats. Brown intimated as much prior to Sunday's game, acknowledging the myriad health issues that have plagued Melton this season — first a back problem that started in spring training and then a groin issue that affected him in April. Advertisement 'We're taking it a little slow with the groin. We were playing him four days a week in the minor leagues and it kind of fits here,' Brown told the team's pregame radio show. 'He's probably going to come up here and face right-handers, gives us that left-hand bat we've been looking for. We don't have to play him here every day, but we're gradually going to break him in and see what he can do.' Production can alter any plans of a semi-platoon. Melton could mash his way into more regular at-bats, but as it stands, he isn't a better option than any of the Astros' three everyday outfielders: Meyers, Jose Altuve and Cam Smith. Melton is a natural center fielder, but the team is more than comfortable playing him in either corner. Being without both Alvarez and Zach Dezenzo does open more designated hitter at-bats, which will benefit Melton in the short term. That he hits left-handed will benefit an entire ballclub that lacks any semblance of balance. No team in baseball entered Sunday with fewer plate appearances from a left-handed hitter than the Astros. Manager Joe Espada has given a major-league low 21 pinch-hit plate appearances all season, a byproduct of having an all-right-handed bench that can't be used to create any platoon advantage. Melton's mere presence can change that. Having him on the roster will lessen Houston's need to play switch-hitting backup catcher Victor Caratini every day just for balance and deploy him more in late-game, pinch-hit situations. Bear in mind, Caratini went 8-for-19 in pinch-hit at-bats last season. Finding Alvarez's hand fracture — and realizing he'll be sidelined for longer — 'nudged' the Astros to promote Melton, Brown said. It stands to reason that the lack of external left-handed bats available did, too. Prior to the season, The Athletic's Keith Law ranked Melton as the organization's second-best prospect behind Smith, who has since exceeded prospect status. In 2023, Brown fought to keep Melton out of the Justin Verlander trade, instead parting with fellow outfielders Drew Gilbert and Ryan Clifford. (Top photo of Yordan Alvarez: Steph Chambers / Getty Images)
News24
an hour ago
- News24
200 000 young people go ‘back to school' for Presidential Employment Stimulus
Be among those who shape the future with knowledge. Uncover exclusive stories that captivate your mind and heart with our FREE 14-day subscription trial. Dive into a world of inspiration, learning, and empowerment. You can only trial once. Start your FREE trial now
Health Line
an hour ago
- Health Line
Hypervolemia (Fluid Overload) Symptoms, Causes, and Treatment
Hypervolemia occurs if your body retains too much fluid. You can experience swelling, discomfort, and other symptoms. Untreated, hypervolemia can cause severe complications, including heart failure. Hypervolemia, or fluid overload, occurs when your body holds onto more fluid than it needs, leading to swelling and other complications. Fluids in the body include: water blood lymphatic fluid If the amount of fluid gets too high, it can impact how it's moved through your body and negatively affect your organ function. Keep reading to learn the signs and causes of hypervolemia and how doctors diagnose and treat the condition. What are the signs and symptoms of hypervolemia? The symptoms of hypervolemia can include: swelling, also called edema, most often in the feet, ankles, wrists, and face discomfort in the body, causing cramping, headache, and abdominal bloating high blood pressure caused by excess fluid in the bloodstream shortness of breath caused by extra fluid entering your lungs and reducing your ability to breathe normally heart problems, because excess fluid can speed up or slow your heart rate, harm your heart muscles, and increase the size of your heart increased weight, caused by excess fluid Medical emergency If you experience severe symptoms, such as difficulty breathing, severe pain, or irregular heart rhythm, call 911 or your local emergency services, or visit a local emergency department. What causes hypervolemia? Often, problems with your kidneys cause hypervolemia. This is because the kidneys normally balance the salts and fluids in your body. But when they retain salt, they increase the body's total sodium content, which increases your fluid content. The most common causes of hypervolemia can include: heart failure, specifically of the right ventricle cirrhosis, often caused by excess alcohol consumption or hepatitis kidney failure, often caused by diabetes and other metabolic disorders nephrotic syndrome, a disorder that causes excess excretion of protein in the urine premenstrual edema, or swelling that occurs prior to your menstrual cycle pregnancy, which changes your hormonal balance and can result in fluid retention You can also experience hypervolemia from being on an IV, which can cause your sodium levels to be unbalanced. It can also occur if you consume too much sodium. How is hypervolemia diagnosed? If you believe you're experiencing hypervolemia, speak with a doctor. They can determine if you're experiencing this condition. First, a doctor typically conducts a physical exam. The key signs of hypervolemia include weight gain and swelling. One or more parts of your body may appear swollen, depending on whether you have been sitting, lying, or standing before your visit. The doctor is also likely to perform a blood test to check your sodium levels. While your body's total sodium levels will appear elevated if you have hypervolemia, your sodium levels in the blood work may be high, normal, or low. Performing a sodium test on your urine can help determine if your kidneys are causing your hypervolemia or if there is another cause. For renal failure, urinary sodium content is typically greater than 20 milliequivalents per liter (mEq/L), while in cases of heart failure, cirrhosis, and nephrotic syndrome, it is typically less than 10 mEq/L. If you are hospitalized, your care team may measure your fluid intake and output and your weight to check for hypervolemia. Can hypervolemia lead to other conditions? Untreated hypervolemia can cause several complications, some of which can be life threatening. These can include: pericarditis, or swelling of the heart tissues heart failure delayed wound healing tissue breakdown decreased bowel function How is hypervolemia treated? Treatment of hypervolemia differs from person to person, depending on the cause of the condition. Generally, people with hypervolemia may receive a round of diuretics. These medications remove excess fluid. In severe cases, a doctor may recommend dialysis (fluid removal through the kidneys) and paracentesis (fluid removal through the abdomen). A doctor may also require you to restrict your dietary sodium intake. What is the outlook for hypervolemia? While you recover from hypervolemia, a doctor may request that you weigh yourself daily to ensure you're expelling the excess fluid from your body. Many people who stick to a doctor's treatment plans fully recover. This can be important for preventing severe complications. If an underlying condition is causing your hypervolemia, treating the underlying condition may help your recovery. Besides monitoring your weight, you can prevent a recurrence of fluid overload by: tracking your fluid intake following the fluid intake guidelines from a doctor managing your thirst with sugar-free candies, ice chips, frozen grapes, and other low-fluid, thirst-quenching foods ensuring you do not consume too much sodium
