Count United States Vice President JD Vance among the Republican lawmakers who have a problem with Nike's alleged role in funding a study on young transgender athletes, because allowing males in girls' and women's sports – regardless of pharmaceutical intervention – defies common sense.
Nike appears to have, at some point, helped fund a study on the effect of "gender-affirming" care among young male athletes to see if it's possible to impair them enough so they can "fairly" and "safely" compete in girls' and women's sports.
While the company has since told OutKick that the study "was never initialized" and "is not moving forward," it's unclear when those decisions might have been made. The company has refused to provide additional context, despite the study's head researcher – Dr. Kathryn Ackerman – and a secondary researcher – Joanna Harper, a male who "identifies" as a woman – both publicly stating that Nike was funding the study.
Vance joined Clay Travis and Buck Sexton on "Clay & Buck" on Tuesday and Travis asked about the study and Nike's alleged funding.
"I think that so many of these companies, Nike or otherwise, got caught up in this cultural zeitgeist of 2020, 2021," Vance said. "Maybe they just thought the progressives were going to win, so they decided to fund this stuff to the hilt, not realizing that the American people would have a rebellion against the craziness. I think that rebellion on the trans issue, in particular … giving hormonal therapies to 12-year-old kids, causing irreversible damage to their bodies, forcing young girls to compete against boys in sports, sometimes causing serious injury in the process [makes] this issue such a bad loser among the American people that even some of the true believers have dropped it as a political issue."
To Vance's point, even California Gov. Gavin Newsom – among the most radical left-wing progressives in American politics – recently backed away from the trans in sports issue and declared it "unfair."
