Politics
J.K. Rowling went after trans Paralympian sprinter Valentina Petrillo — and failed
If you thought J.K. Rowling was done ranting about transgender athletes now that the Paris Olympic Games have long been over, you’d be wrong. After taking about two weeks off from social media, the once-beloved children’s author was back at it this week, going on at length about 51-year-old Valentina Petrillo, an Italian Paralympic sprinter who happens to be transgender.
Rowling’s gender critical allies also decried Petrillo’s participation in the Games as “unfair,” and called on Paralympic officials to ban trans women from the Games.
Rowling posted a grainy photo of Petrillo on X and wrote: “Why all the anger about the inspirational Petrillo? The cheat community has never had this kind of visibility! Out and proud cheats like Petrillo prove the era of cheat-shaming is over. What a role model! I say we give Lance Armstrong his medals back and move on. #Cheats #NoShame.”
Elsewhere, several of Rowling’s gender critical allies also decried Petrillo’s participation in the Games as “unfair,” and called on Paralympic officials to ban trans women from the Games.
“This ‘inclusive’ policy, in the name of being progressive, is actually regressive as the policy excludes women because BIOLOGY!” tennis legend Martina Navratilova wrote on X. Navratilova, who has long been vocal about her preference for excluding trans women from womanhood in general, continued, “You won’t find women who identify as men taking places of Males because BIOLOGY. Males and females are different. Period.”
Sharron Davies, a former Olympic swimmer turned anti-trans media darling, called on sport authorities to “do what everyone can see is right rather than what’s easy” and ban trans athletes.
But here’s the thing, Petrillo failed to qualify for the T12 400-meter final after she finished third in her semifinal heat. In that race, the trans runner recorded a personal best time of 57.58 seconds, finishing behind Iran’s Hajar Safarzadeh Ghahderijani by a full second and a half. In sprint events, that’s a lifetime.
Petrillo began her medical transition in 2019 after a long career winning Para athletic national titles as a male athlete. Her times now are significantly slower than they were before, which suggests that the hormone change had a real impact on her athletic ability.
As the Games began, Ukrainian runner Oksana Boturchuk was one of several of Petrillo’s cisgender female competitors critical of Petrillo’s participation. “I find this not fair, in my opinion,” Boturchuk told BBC Sport. Boturchuk said she is not against transgender people in general, “but in this situation I do not understand and don’t support it.” Unlike Petrillo, Boturchuk made the final, finishing well ahead of the trans runner she implied had an unfair advantage.
Petrillo’s failure to dominate —”https://www.paralympic.org/en/paris-2024-paralympics/results/para-athletics/women-s-200m—t12/sfnl——–” target=”_blank”>she came short of making the final race in the T12 200-meter dash Friday — is yet another example of a trans athlete “miraculously” not winning an elite sporting competition that people such as Rowling and Navratilova claimed would be unfair. In 2016, trans discus thrower Ingrid van Kranen finished ninth at the Paralympics, and no one even noticed her participation — because conservatives here and abroad hadn’t yet chosen trans athletes as a political target.
Without the political fervor stoked by conservatives and the likes of Rowling, Petrillo’s participation would probably have gone unnoticed as well. So would have 2021 Olympic weightlifter Laurel Hubbard, who failed to record a single lift and finished last in her division at the Tokyo Games.
We keep hearing about how trans athletes have a natural advantage in sports, and yet we’ve yet to see a trans athlete win an elite international title in any sport — no, Lia Thomas does not count for this. While Thomas did win an NCAA title, it was at the amateur collegiate, not elite, level, and her times were not necessarily comparable with the best swimmers in the world.
Petrillo’s failure to dominate is yet another example of a trans athlete “miraculously” not winning an elite sporting competition that people such as Rowling and Navratilova claimed would be unfair.
It seems as if gender critical activists have noticed that trans athletes losing big competitions contradicts their argument that they have an unfair advantage. So those activists have recently shifted away from claiming that trans women would dominate all sports and instead accused trans women of “taking away a spot” from a more deserving cis woman.
I’m a little more sympathetic to this argument, and it’s a clever play on emotions, especially for parents who may be hoping their daughters can one day get an athletic scholarship (and avoid crippling educational debt). But this line of thinking also results in the total exclusion of trans women athletes from all sports.
There hasn’t been a trans athlete yet whose performance improved, or even remained the same, after starting estrogen. Those performances typically get worse consistent with the general difference between cis men’s and cis women’s performances in many athletic measurements. There is no way to get fairness for trans athletes by forcing them to compete against cis men. Biology or not, that type of exclusionary policy would be a de facto ban on trans women athletes completely.
As we wrestle with these new ideas of sex and fairness, we must value trans humanity equally with cis people. The proof is in the pudding: Trans women are not dominating women’s sports and never will. Petrillo’s relatively poor performance on the track should put an end to Rowling’s rage, but of course Rowling is past the point of no return. She will seethe and rage about trans people for the rest of her life, because she is a bigot.
Katelyn Burns is a freelance journalist based in New England. She was the first openly transgender Capitol Hill reporter in U.S. history.
‘We are winning elections’: Bernie Sanders on Democrats’ progressive wing
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Politics
Trump wants the Postal Service to radically overhaul mail voting. But ballots are already going out.
President Donald Trump’s controversial demands for the Postal Service to overhaul and monitor millions of mail ballots hit another snag on Friday, when North Carolina became the first state in the nation to start sending out ballots for the November election.
In March, Trump signed the initial executive order, which aimed to crack down on mail-in voting — which he regularly alleges without evidence is a vector for widespread voter fraud — and assert an unprecedented amount of federal control over the upcoming elections.
Under this order and the subsequent rule drafted by the U.S. Postal Service, the USPS would refuse to deliver ballots to states that failed to provide lists of eligible mail voters or did not adhere to an approved envelope design style.
Since then, the order has faced legal challenges, and it remains paused by a federal judge’s orders. But the Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to allow the new rule to proceed — something current and former election officials from both parties say would be both a legal nightmare that oversteps the federal government’s traditional role in elections and a logistical one that is happening far too close to the November election to implement even if they agreed with it.
“Why the hell are you rocking the boat this late in the game?” said Stephen Richer, a former Republican recorder of Maricopa County, Arizona, who has clashed with Trump allies for defending the security of the 2020 election.
Still, election officials are trying to project a sense of normalcy for voters, particularly in North Carolina, which serves as a test of whether established local election systems can operate normally amid intensifying federal scrutiny.
“I want to emphasize this point because there has been a lot of outside noise: Our county workers are ready,” Sam Hayes, a longtime Republican lawyer in the state and now executive director of the North Carolina State Board of Elections, said in a Thursday afternoon press conference.
He added, “All we can do is what we’re doing. … It is business as usual as far as I’m concerned.”
Despite the legal challenges, the Trump administration has continued to press the courts to let it proceed. The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to lift an order from a Massachusetts judge which temporarily prevents the USPS from enforcing their rule. It is the second time the Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to step in, after winning an earlier victory in which the high court dismissed an earlier hold on the rule as premature.
“The uncertainty is coming from a single activist judge who continues to try and obstruct President Trump from implementing commonsense measures to protect the security of mail-in ballots and ensure only Americans vote in American elections,” White House spokesperson Lauren Bis said in a statement. “These safeguards for mail ballots were proposed months ago giving election officials ample time to prepare for the 2026 election.”
The USPS did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Election officials said that if the rule goes into effect this close to November, it would cause chaos and place added strain on the USPS and election officials. And an anonymous federal whistleblower said in a report circulated earlier this week by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) that the USPS was moving forward in a “secretive, rushed, chaotic, and fundamentally flawed process” to try to implement the new system ahead of the midterms.
In the coming weeks, states across the country will follow North Carolina’s lead. Nine other states will begin mailing ballots in the next two weeks, according to a tracker from the National Conference of State Legislatures — with the biggest day for mailing coming 45 days before the election in mid-September.
“It would be so outrageous to try to let this go into effect. It’s hard to even imagine,” said Ben Hovland, a senior fellow for democracy at the progressive think tank Center for American Progress and former Democratic commissioner with the Election Assistance Commission who was fired by Trump in July.
He added, “It would be a break-glass moment for our democracy.”
The rule would require meticulous changes to ballot handling and tracking practices that Hovland said are impossible to implement before Election Day in about two months, effectively disenfranchising millions of voters.
“Ballots are printed. Envelopes are printed. You can go on and on with all the practical reasons that show that implementing something like this at this time is not feasible,” he said.
Richer said he doubted the new rules would bring about more security. Even if the USPS received lists from the states, according to the postal service’s final rule, it would not do any additional vetting of the list, Richer said.
“It’s just that the mail ballots have to be on that list, and I don’t see what added value for election integrity that does,” he said.
He added, “It creates a lot of administrative burden, and I think it creates a lot more opportunity for error.”
While a decision looms in the courts, election officials and experts cast doubt on the likelihood of the rules going into effect before November. A more pressing issue, they said, is the confusion and uncertainty surrounding mail-in ballots, which could subvert and change the behaviors of voters.
“It makes things seem messy or difficult, and it can dissuade people from participating or coming out to vote,” Hovland said. “It certainly also helps establish a pretext to make bad faith claims about election results.”
Hovland said that while none of these claims of voter fraud are backed up with facts, they could cause Americans to lose faith in the voting process.
Still, some current officials contended they were well-prepared for whatever happens — and that they’d be able to communicate effectively with voters who have become increasingly buffeted by dramatic rhetoric about the once-unmentioned nuts and bolts of actually running an election.
“There’s always a lot of noise around elections, that’s not going to change, and it can be hard to differentiate that from what’s actually going on on the ground,” said Jason Tyson, director of external affairs for the North Carolina State Board of Elections.
As Election Day approaches, Tyson and election officials said they urge voters to check their registration status and make a plan to vote.
He added, “I think we’ve got a really well-trained, solid staff who are ready, and who have gone through all of the checks and balances and points of contact that we need to do to get to where we are.”
Missouri’s Supreme Court suspended a congressional map that state Republicans drew last year that would have netted the GOP an additional House seat, likely keeping the seat in Democratic hands this November.
The court ruled unanimously on Thursday that a referendum petition organized by Democrats to put the new congressional maps to a vote was incorrectly deemed insufficient by Republican Secretary of State Denny Hoskins, and ordered that the gerrymandered map be put to a vote in the fall.
Voters will ultimately decide the fate of the new lines in November. But in the meantime, it cannot be in place for the midterms, meaning Rep. Emanuel Cleaver’s original Kansas City-based district will likely stay in Democrats’ hands this fall.
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