In the Democrats' race to the center, Gavin Newsom has struck hard. The governor of a furiously anti-Trump state (California) and the first American mayor to have married gay couples (in San Francisco, in 2004) is a possible hope for his party for the 2028 presidential election. That hasn't stopped him from going against the dogma of the left on the participation of transgender athletes in women's sport. He called it "deeply unfair."

On the scale of the problems facing the United States, the issue of transgender sportswomen might not seem the most crucial. By the own admission of Charlie Baker, head of the National Collegiate Athletic Association, there are "less than 10" transgender athletes out of 510,000 in intercollegiate competition.

But Republicans made it one of the focuses of their 2024 campaign, and Democrats have found themselves caught in the trap of the Republican outrage-making machine. One of Donald Trump's campaign clips that most hurt Kamala Harris, according to pollsters, was one showing the candidate, then California's attorney general, advocating access to gender transition surgery for prisoners. "Kamala is for they/them; President Trump is for you," the ad said.

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