Right-wing media spent years demanding that President Donald Trump ban transgender women from competing in women’s sports. He complied. But rather than declare victory, conservative outlets immediately demanded even stricter measures, expanding their campaign to include intersex athletes and calling for invasive genetic testing. Their goal isn't fairness; it's perpetual outrage and ideological policing of women's bodies.

After Trump signed an executive order to ban trans women from women’s sports, right-wing media figures quickly pivoted to a months-old controversy centered around Olympic boxer Imane Khelif, a cisgender Algerian athlete who was falsely accused of being transgender last summer. Khelif was disqualified from the 2023 Women’s World Boxing Championships, even though she was assigned female at birth. Despite this, conservative media have revisited Khelif’s case as justification for excluding intersex women, labelling the boxer as “male” in order to claim Trump's ban isn't strict enough, and once again moving the goalposts in their ongoing obsession over who counts as a woman in 2025.

The reality: trans athletes are a tiny fraction of competitors

The portrayal of transgender women as dominating forces in women's sports is a deliberate distortion. Exemplifying the kind of misinformation driving this narrative, Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) recently claimed without evidence that “we’re getting to a point now where women and girls’ sports are getting ready to be extinct,” because, he said, “Already in states across this country, we have high school teams that are made up of totally boys participating against girls.”

In reality, the number of trans athletes is even smaller than you might imagine. But conservative outlets have amplified isolated cases in order to manufacture fear, portraying transgender athletes as an existential threat to women’s sports.

Right-wing media push for broader bans and genetic testing

After Trump’s executive order took effect, right-wing media quickly escalated their demands. On February 19, Fox News' America's Newsroom highlighted supposed “loopholes” in the NCAA’s regulations that critics claim would allow transgender athletes to compete. That same day, Fox host Harris Faulkner raised fears about the NCAA’s policies, saying that “if birth certificates don’t count … we are in a world of hurt.” Later that evening, host Laura Ingraham carried the topic into the Fox opinion block, attacking pro-trans policies in Maine and suggesting a loss of federal funding could follow as a consequence.

By February 24, Fox Business' Maria Bartiromo suggested that the NCAA could lose its nonprofit status if it doesn’t comply with anti-trans restrictions — framing the issue as a financial threat. Anti-trans activist Riley Gaines escalated further the same week, calling for financial penalties to be levied against non-compliant schools and states and warning Fox viewers, “The war on woke has certainly not been won yet.”

The Daily Wire echoed Gaines, highlighting an ad campaign for a t-shirt company accusing the NCAA of deliberately undermining Trump's policy.

By March 6, City Journal began explicitly including intersex athletes in its push for expanded bans, advocating for chromosomal tests to exclude women with differences in sex development. Its writer asserted that “in rare cases, though more commonly in developing countries, doctors may misidentify a male newborn’s sex due to female-like or ambiguous genitalia caused by a developmental condition. … Just this summer, a loophole of this kind allowed two male athletes, Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-Ting, to compete as women and win gold medals in boxing at the 2024 Paris Olympics.” If evidence exists for this claim about private and personal details of Khelif and Lin’s bodies, it is entirely absent from the article (seriously, go take a look). According to BBC, the International Olympic Committee has stated that “Lin and Khelif were ‘born and raised as women.’”

The attack on intersex athletes

This new phase targets intersex women — individuals with differences in sex development who've been recognized as female their entire lives — who it asserts are simply “male.” Under policies championed by conservative figures, women with conditions like androgen insensitivity syndrome — who have XY chromosomes but develop female anatomy — could be excluded entirely from women's sports. Many women with AIS only learn about their genetic makeup during puberty when menstruation doesn't begin.

Similarly, women with 5-alpha reductase deficiency or Swyer syndrome — conditions resulting in the presence of XY chromosomes but female-typical sex characteristics — would also face disqualification under strict chromosomal definitions. These conditions occur in roughly 1 in 100 people. Although rare, women born with XY chromosomes have given birth in the past.

History demonstrates the harm of such restrictive policies. Olympic medalist Caster Semenya endured invasive scrutiny and discrimination over her naturally occurring testosterone levels, exemplifying the potential consequences of implementing genetic testing requirements. Conservative media continue to advocate for mandatory genetic testing, despite evidence that it could unfairly exclude cisgender and intersex women alike.

The goalposts will keep moving

Right-wing media's escalating demands following Trump's anti-trans executive orders represent an ongoing pattern. As Media Matters previously reported, conservative figures consistently deemed even Trump's most extreme anti-trans policies insufficient. Their end goal isn't fairness; it's continuous outrage, exclusion, and control.

On March 11, a group of two dozen House and Senate Republicans signed a letter calling for the International Olympic Committee to change their eligibility criteria for the 2028 Summer Games in accordance with President Trump’s executive order. “President Trump affirmed the position of the American people and those around the world,” the letter read. “Commitment from the I.O.C. to protect women’s sports is paramount.” Trans women were already effectively banned from the 2024 Paris Games. 

Each new restriction fuels the next demand. Having initially targeted transgender athletes, they've moved to intersex athletes, advocating for genetic testing and telling people who have lived as women their entire lives that they were actually men the whole time. There will never be a finish line — because outrage is precisely the point.