DOE: CA Law is Illegal—Newsom: LOL
Dear John,
While the rest of the country is focused on protecting women’s civil rights, Gavin Newsom’s office is busy posting WWE memes.
Earlier this week, the U.S. Department of Education released the findings of its investigation into whether California’s laws allowing males to compete in female sports violate Title IX. The Department found what anyone with common sense already knew: California’s Department of Education (CDE) and the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) are in violation of Title IX — the 1972 federal civil rights law enacted to protect women from sex-based discrimination in education, including athletics.
The DOE offered a voluntary resolution that requires California to acknowledge that Title IX and its regulations forbid schools from allowing males to participate in female sports and use female facilities. The resolution also requires CIF and CDE to adopt biology-based definitions of “male” and “female.”
Governor Newsom’s press office responded by posting a WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment) meme on social media showing Education Secretary Linda McMahon being body-slammed by a male wrestler, captioned “Live look at Linda’s legal claims.”
The backlash on X was immediate.
“Hard to believe a real government office tweeted this after @EDSecMcMahon found California in violation of Title IX,” wrote Riley Gaines, a 12-time NCAA All-American swimmer and advocate for protecting women’s sports. “Ironically, the video is a perfect visual of why they’re not in compliance.”
“This is how dismissive Gavin Newsom is of girls in California. Absolutely shameful,” wrote CPC attorney Julie Hamill, president of California Justice Center.
Hamill called on Newsom to “put his money where his mouth is,” pointing out that the governor publicly admitted on his own podcast that it’s “deeply unfair” to let males compete in girls’ sports.
In response, Newsom spokesman Brandon Richards tried to deflect responsibility — claiming on X the governor doesn’t control CIF or the CDE, and that California is just following state law — as if Newsom is somehow a powerless spectator in a state run entirely by his party.
Hamill fired back: “[T]he issue is swapping gender identity for sex, and your boss is the one in the driver's seat on this issue… Your attempts to pretend Gavin has nothing to do with it signal to me he is going to keep hiding in the corner while allowing the radical activists to run roughshod over California girls.”
Let’s be clear: state law — Ed Code 221.5(f) — is the problem. It says students can compete in sex-segregated sports and use facilities based on their self-declared gender identity, regardless of their biological sex. It’s the same law Newsom could’ve moved to repeal any time over the last several years. Former Assemblyman Bill Essayli — now U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California — even handed him the opportunity on a silver platter with his bill, AB 844. But California Democrats refused to allow a floor vote on Essayli’s bill.
Newsom is trying to straddle the political fence. His administration via California Attorney General Rob Bonta quietly sued the Department of Justice to defend putting biological males in girls’ sports on June 9, invoking two 9th Circuit cases that say prohibiting males who identify as females from participating in girls sports violates the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Parties have petitioned the United States Supreme Court for review in both cases.
As Hamill explained on X, "Important context for people who care about girls sports and spaces: Newsom filed a lawsuit on June 9 to demand male inclusion in girls sports and is now pretending he has nothing to do with obliterating girls sports… Will he hang AG Bonta out to dry and pretend he has nothing to do with this?”
Another major development: The week after Bonta filed the lawsuit on behalf of the State of California, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a Tennessee law that bans certain medical treatments for minors related to “gender dysphoria, gender identity disorder, or gender incongruence.” As the DOE explained in its press release this week, the Court ruled that laws "regulating medical treatment or procedures in this realm" are subject to rational basis review — the most deferential standard, which only requires that a law be reasonably related to a legitimate government interest — rather than heightened scrutiny, a tougher constitutional test. In so holding, the Supreme Court acknowledged that a person’s identification as “transgender” is distinct from a person’s “biological sex.”
What’s next? Newsom has just 10 days from the June 25 notice to remedy California’s violation of Title IX. If California does not enter into a voluntary resolution, then litigation and termination of federal funds will ensue. Instead, Newsom should work with Bonta, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond, and CIF to agree to stop enforcing California's unconstitutional law.
Continuing to dodge responsibility and pretend he has no influence will cost California dearly — in both federal funding and opportunities for female students. Newsom should stop acting like a Twitter troll and start acting like a governor — before the state pays the price.
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This is What Incitement Looks Like
Before it’s memory-holed, let’s recall that Newsom (and his loose-lipped, fast-fingered press staff) also fueled the rioting that continues to plague Los Angeles. Even as the city’s police chief declared that rioters had “overwhelmed” his officers, Newsom discounted the violence and set the parameters for a revolutionary response to federal authority.
On June 6, as federal agents began high-profile arrests in Los Angeles, Newsom suggested that California’s state and local sanctuary laws are an impenetrable Maginot Line against federal enforcement. White House border czar Tom Homan reminded California officials — including Newsom himself — “It’s a felony to knowingly harbor and conceal an illegal alien. It’s a felony to impede law enforcement doing their job.”
Newsom responded with a dare: “That kind of bloviating is exhausting,” Newsom said in a moment of just obvious Freudian projection. “So, Tom, arrest me. Let's go.” (Even feckless L.A. Mayor Karen Bass was more diplomatic: “I am the mayor of the city; the last thing in the world I’m going to do is get into a brawl with the federal government.”)
Again and again, Newsom was like this — lawless when he ought to have been law-abiding, provocative when he might have been diplomatic. Like Hamas in Gaza, Newsom encouraged his fellow citizens to rush into harm’s way. He called Trump’s enforcement of federal law “an unmistakable step toward authoritarianism.” In a June 10 speech carried live by major networks (including CNN, MSNBC, and PBS), the governor seemed to set the conditions for rebellion.
“Democracy is under assault right before our eyes — the moment we’ve feared has arrived,” Newsom declared. The president is “not opposed to lawlessness and violence as long as it serves him.” Rallying the resistance, the governor said, “What Donald Trump wants most is your fealty. Your silence, to be complicit in this moment... Do not give in to him.”
Turning the law upside down, Newsom said federal enforcement of constitutional order “sends fear and chills up the spines of law-abiding citizens,” and described “a red line crossed” and “a serious and profound moment in American history.” Trump’s federal enforcement “is theater, it’s madness, it’s unconstitutional, it’s immoral,” he told the New York Times. “It puts people’s lives at risk.”
He accused the Department of Defense of “spreading fake images — from old protests — to justify Trump’s illegal militarization of Los Angeles. This isn’t just disinformation. It’s a propaganda campaign from the Pentagon.” Even Newsom’s allies in the media declared that claim false.
In short, Newsom used every tool at hand to create space for violence.
This week, a South Los Angeles County city official took the next logical step. In a June 24 TikTok post, Cynthia Gonzalez, the vice mayor of Cudahy, called on local gangs to attack federal immigration officials. In the since-deleted video, Gonzalez urged two notorious street gangs to attack ICE agents:
I wanna know where all the cholos at in Los Angeles. 18th Street, Florencia. Where’s the leadership at?… Now that your hood is being invaded by the biggest gang there is, there isn’t a peep out of you. Don’t be trying to claim no block… if you’re not showing up right now trying to help out and organize… Get your f*** members in order.
Gonzalez followed up later — this time on Facebook – to say that the FBI had come to her home: “I need a lawyer… I believe this is a First Amendment rights issue.”
You might say that Gonzalez ought to know better. She is, after all, a graduate of the once-prestigious University of California system — a BA from UC Santa Barbara, not just one but two master’s degrees (in education) from UCLA, a UCLA doctorate in education, and administrative credentials from both UCLA and the University of California, Berkeley. In taking her oath of office, she swore to defend the Constitution. In all of that educating and oath-taking, she apparently never grasped the actual meaning of the First Amendment.
Nor, like thousands of other state and local officials in California, does she understand the rest of the Constitution — including the bit in Article I that gives the federal government total authority over international borders and immigration and naturalization.
These days, that kind of ignorance is on brand for a California education.
— This commentary by CPC president Will Swaim was originally published by National Review as Don’t Forget Newsom’s Role Stoking L.A. Lawlessness.
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Radio Free California #395: The Dodgers on ICE
On this week's podcast with CPC president Will Swaim and CPC board member David Bahnsen: The L.A. Dodgers will donate $1 million to supporters of illegal immigration. The 9th Circuit halts AG Rob Bonta’s effort to limit gun purchases to one per month. California can’t kick its foreign-oil addiction. Bonus! Dr. Kurt Miceli explains Do No Harm’s lawsuit alleging that UCLA’s medical school rejects highly qualified Asian and white students in favor of less-qualified applicants. Listen now.
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