Washington counties started mailing ballots on Oct. 16, and one of the measures on them is I-638, which would ban trans girls from girls’ school sports teams. To enforce that, every girl who wants to play on a girls’ team would need a form from her own health care provider verifying her sex, according to the attorney general’s office.
The office says students “would thus have to undergo some type of medical evaluation of their sex.” Boys’ teams would have no such requirement.
A week into voting, two prominent supporters of the measure, the Seattle conservative commentator Brandi Kruse and the activist Amy Sousa, spent Friday night getting escorted out of a professional women’s soccer game in Portland, Oregon. It was the Portland Thorns’ Fan Appreciation Night, and the team clinched a playoff spot with a 1-0 win over the North Carolina Courage.
When the second half started, their group of about 20 revealed the logos of XX-XY Athletics, a brand that sells “Save Women’s Sports” gear, on shirts they had kept covered and unfurled a “Save Women’s Sports” banner. Neither team had an out trans player.
By Saturday morning, President Donald Trump’s Justice Department had told Fox News, whose OutKick site had a reporter in the stands, that it would “review the matter thoroughly.” It’s a circus.
For backers like these, I think “save women’s sports” is a pretext for a MAGA fight over trans people. Look at the cast of this one: a commentator who joined Trump at a White House roundtable last year, a company that sells the slogan on a $98 hoodie and a Justice Department that promised a review by morning.
What happened at Providence Park
Kruse wrote on X that night that the group was “here in Portland to take a stand.” According to OutKick, fans had been handed trans pride flags just before the second half, and one man repeatedly shouted obscenities at the group.
Kruse and Sousa say fans hit members of their group with flagpoles and threw drinks at them. Nobody should be hit with anything at a soccer game.
Stadium security walked Kruse out of the stadium with her arm held behind her back, and the Thorns haven’t said why the group was removed. By her own account to OutKick, she had asked a guard why her group was being removed while the fans she says hit them weren’t, and then refused to leave.
Portland police say two potential crimes were reported at Friday’s game, alleged harassment and alleged vandalism, and that nobody reported an injury to them, no one was arrested at the scene, and the incidents are under investigation. A Justice Department official told Fox the conduct “appears to raise viewpoint discrimination and First Amendment questions,” but Fox’s own story noted that the city-owned stadium is run by a private company and that its public ownership “alone does not establish a violation.”
It isn’t the first time this Justice Department has raised “viewpoint discrimination” in Portland. After police there arrested the conservative influencer Nick Sortor near the city’s ICE building in October 2025, the department opened an investigation that Harmeet Dhillon, who was running its Civil Rights Division, said concerned “potential viewpoint discrimination.”
At the White House roundtable days later, Attorney General Pam Bondi told Trump, “after that happened to Nick, I called Harmeet Dhillon.” Kruse, who was also there, said she was “living proof that you can recover from TDS,” or Trump Derangement Syndrome.
Who gets what out of this
Kruse isn’t a minor figure in the fight over I-638. According to proprietary monitoring data from my firm, Pink and Blue Strategies, her posts alone drew about 71% of the likes, shares and comments on supporters’ posts naming I-638 in the accounts we track, in the period before the No campaign’s June 17 kickoff rally.
That figure, which I reported this month, doesn’t count the campaigns’ own accounts or that of Let’s Go Washington’s founder. Her post about being removed “for the crime of wearing an @xx_xyathletics t-shirt” tagged XX-XY and has been viewed more than 2 million times.
OutKick reported that the brand’s founder, the former gymnast Jennifer Sey, has been “resolute” in trying to pass I-638 and a similar measure in Colorado, just like Kruse and Sousa. This summer, an XX-XY spokesperson told Front Office Sports that business had increased sixfold in two weeks, during the fight over WNBA player Sophie Cunningham’s comments about trans women.
Sey told the outlet, “This is not capitalizing on culture-war noise.” But the commentators get the attention, the company gets the sales, and MAGA gets another fight over trans people.
Who should set the rules
Sports associations should set rules to ensure girls’ sports remain fair and safe, not politicians. The Washington Education Association, the Washington State Nurses Association and the Washington State PTA are among the hundreds of groups that have endorsed the No Hate in WA State campaign against I-638.
The checks could cost families money: one test can cost $1,310, according to the Spokesman-Review, and the initiative doesn’t say who would pay. Washington’s school sports association knows of roughly 10 trans athletes among more than 200,000 kids who compete, and to keep the trans girls among them off girls’ teams, I-638 would require verifying the sex of every girl on one.
Ballots are due Nov. 3
As I wrote earlier this month, no girl should need a medical evaluation of her sex to play volleyball, but if I-638 passes, every girl who wants to play on a girls’ school team in Washington will need one. Two of its prominent backers, meanwhile, spent Friday night taking their fight to a women’s pro game in another state.
Today, Oct. 26, is the last day to register online, and you can register in person until 8 p.m. on Election Day, Nov. 3, according to Fox 13. Ballots have to be in a drop box by 8 p.m. that day or postmarked by Election Day, and the Postal Service recommends mailing them at least a week early.
Kruse has asked her followers to text or call 10 friends and family members to remind them to vote yes. I’m asking you to vote no on I-638, and to call 10 of yours.
Imagine making being a TERFy cunt your entire personality.
Larry Nassar proudly endorses this bill! From the grave but he still managed to strongly send his endorsement