President Trump on Tuesday threatened to revoke federal funding from California over a transgender high school track and field athlete who qualified over the weekend for the state championship meet, instructing local authorities to block the student from participating.
In a post on Truth Social, Trump railed against 16-year-old AB Hernandez, a junior at Jurupa Valley High School in Southern California who won the girls long jump and triple jump at the California Interscholastic Federation’s Southern Section Masters meet May 24, qualifying for the state championships that will take place May 30-31.
He said Hernandez won “everything” at the meet she tied for fourth in the high jump, also qualifying for the state championships in that event and falsely claimed she had previously competed on the boys team. Hernandez came out as transgender in the eighth grade, her mother, Nereyda, said in an April interview with Capital and Main, a nonprofit news organization in California.
“THIS IS NOT FAIR, AND TOTALLY DEMEANING TO WOMEN AND GIRLS,” Trump wrote Tuesday. “Please be hereby advised that large scale Federal Funding will be held back, maybe permanently, if the Executive Order on this subject matter is not adhered to.”
The order Trump signed in February states that “it is the policy of the United States to oppose male competitive participation in women’s sports” and threatens to “rescind all funds from educational programs that deprive women and girls of fair athletic opportunities.”
At a signing ceremony in Washington, D.C., Trump said his administration will not allow transgender athletes to compete in the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.
Several Democratic-led states, most notably Maine, have bucked Trump’s order, which they say violates state laws against discrimination. The California Interscholastic Federation, which governs high school sports in the Golden State, said in response to Trump’s order that it would continue allowing transgender athletes to compete on teams that match their gender identity, consistent with a 2013 law.
The Department of Education announced it had opened a Title IX investigation into the organization shortly after.
On Tuesday, Trump said he is “ordering local authorities, if necessary, to not allow” Hernandez to compete in the state championships next weekend. The White House did not respond to a question about to which state authorities Trump referenced. The president does not have direct authority over local law enforcement.
Trump added that he plans to speak Tuesday with California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), who, in the debut episode of his podcast, “This is Gavin Newsom,” in March, said he believes transgender athletes participating in girls’ and women’s sports is “deeply unfair.”
At a press conference in Modesto, Calif., the following month, Newsom said he would be “open” to a conversation about limiting trans athletes’ participation if it were conducted “in a way that’s respectful and responsible and could find a kind of balance.”
A spokesperson for Newsom declined to comment on whether the governor, seen as a likely contender for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination, would speak Tuesday with Trump.
Later on Tuesday, the California Interscholastic Federation said it decided over the weekend to allow “any biological female student-athlete” who would have qualified in an event where a transgender girl took a qualifying spot to participate in next weekend’s track and field championships.
The Newsom spokesperson said the governor “is encouraged by this thoughtful approach.” The White House did not immediately return a request for comment on the new policy.
Hernandez has for months been the target of protests against transgender girls playing girls sports. At a recent track meet in Orange County, more than two dozen adults, including three local school board members, heckled Hernandez for hours, at one point raising their voices so loud as to cause a false start in another event, Capital and Main reported.
“I’m still a child and you’re an adult, and for you to still act like a child shows how you are as a person,” Hernandez told the outlet this month. “There’s nothing I can do about people’s actions, just focus on my own.”
She said her teammates and most competitors support her.
Hernandez’s season-best triple jump of 41 feet, 9 inches is the longest among California high school girls this year and ties for ninth nationally. She also has the state’s second-longest long jump.
At a March meeting of the Jurupa Unified School District Board of Education, Superintendent Trenton Hansen acknowledged the risk of the district losing its funding.
“There is the threat from the federal government to withhold funding, there’s threats from the state government to withhold funding if we violate laws,” Hansen said. “Unfortunately, school districts are placed in the middle of this tug of war. All the information we’ve received from legal counsel … is that we follow the laws here in California, that executive orders do not carry the weight of the force of law, and that these issues will need to be figured out in the court system.”
Updated at 4:16 p.m. EDT
