As Trump Vows To Protect Women’s Sports, Riley Gaines Urges Lawmakers To Keep Up The Fight

WASHINGTON—Hours before President Donald Trump signed an Executive Order keeping men out of women’s sports, congressional Republicans huddled in the basement of the U.S. Capitol with the woman who started it all.

Riley Gaines, the former University of Kentucky swimmer whose 2022 loss to trans-identifying male swimmer Lia Thomas helped ignite the battle to keep men out of women’s sports, is no stranger to the Republican Study Committee. Several committee members, including then-RSC Chairman Jim Banks (IN) and Rep. Kat Cammack (FL) were among Gaines’s earliest and strongest allies. And the 180-member caucus has been a leading voice on transgender issues ever since.

So, when Gaines addressed the RSC on Wednesday, it felt in many ways like a homecoming. Members elbowed past each other to snap photos with Gaines and were eager to share their stories of how they voted for bills she’s endorsed, or told their grandchildren about her fight. Gaines was a big enough draw that even Rep. Elise Stefanik (NY) Trump’s nominee for United Nations Ambassador, took time to attend.

Surrounded by supporters and with Trump’s Executive Order mere hours from being signed, it would have been easy — and understandable — for Gaines to take a victory lap.

She didn’t.

“This war on woke has not been won,” Gaines told the committee members. “In the next four years, God forbid AOC runs and wins, this executive order could be overturned just as easily as it was implemented,” she said, encouraging Senate leadership to prioritize codifying the protections for women’s sports.

RSC Chairman August Pfluger (R-TX) echoed Gaines’s warning, telling The Daily Wire that while Trump’s order is certainly a “decisive blow against gender ideology,” it’s hardly the end of the road.

“The woke left has waged a relentless war on women’s sports, threatening decades of hard-fought progress,” Pfluger said. “We will not rest until we have permanently codified these protections.”

Also present at Wednesday’s event was Florida Rep. Greg Steube, who this week introduced a bill that would bar men from competing against women in the Olympics. Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville, who introduced a companion to Steube’s bill, told The Daily Wire that he was “proud” to do his part to defend women’s sports.

“Men should not be competing in women’s sports at any level,” Tuberville said. “We were all deeply disturbed last summer to see videos of men boxing against women in the Olympics. This is not only dangerous but it is incredibly unfair to the young women who have trained their whole lives to compete.”

On Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told The Daily Wire that Trump expects the International Olympic Committee to enforce his executive order during the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.

“I think the President with the signing of his pen starts a very public pressure campaign on these organizations to do the right thing for women and for girls across the country,” Leavitt said during Wednesday’s press briefing, adding that “there have been many notable female athletes who have had the courage to speak out against some very powerful institutions in this country.”

The President is bringing their voice to the highest level at the White House this afternoon, and he expects these organizations to comply with this federal executive order that he’ll be signing today.”

Trump’s order, like Tuberville and Pfluger’s bills, takes aim not just at the Olympics but the NCAA as well. Gaines on Wednesday recalled how the collegiate athletics governing body “muzzled” her and her fellow female athletes who spoke up in defense of women’s sports.

“I could spend hours talking about the effective ways — and I use the word effective because it worked — that our universities and institutions and the NCAA kept us quiet,” Gaines said, adding that these organizations “emotionally blackmailed” her and other athletes by telling them they would lose friends, hurt their careers, and be labeled a “transphobe.”

While she’s certainly not giving up her fight, Gaines made it clear on Wednesday that her goal remains the same as it ever was.

“What I have been fighting for for years is not anti-anyone, it’s not anti-anything, it’s not anti-any group of people.”

I’m standing for women,” she said. “It’s really that simple.”