Mainstream Media Consumers Left Unprepared for Supreme Court Reality Check on Men in Women’s Sports

Welcome back to Forgotten Fact Checks. This week, we look back at the mainstream media’s departure from the general public consensus on the topic of fairness in women’s sports, and we cover more media misses.

Media Goes to Bat for Men in Women’s Sports, Again and Again

The issue of fairness in women’s sports heads to the Supreme Court this week, as the justices prepare to hear appeals from two states — Idaho and West Virginia — that have banned males from participating in the female category.

The Court will hear a pair of cases: Little v. Hecox and West Virginia v. B.P.J. The former concerns an adult biological male, Lindsay Hecox, who wanted to compete in women’s track and cross-country at Boise State University, while the latter involves a teenage track and cross-country athlete, referred to in the case as BPJ.

While polls have shown an overwhelming majority (nearly 70 percent) of Americans do not believe men should be allowed to participate in women’s sports, the mainstream media has proven time and time again that journalists belong to the minority who believe allowing biologically advantaged men to compete against women is a matter of “trans rights.”

So it’s unsurprising that outlets like The Guardian are framing the state laws at issue in the upcoming oral arguments as discriminatory: “How the US supreme court case on trans athletes could unravel LGBTQ+ rights.” CNN, meanwhile, previews the cases by looking back at the Court’s 2020 decision in Bostock: “Since the Supreme Court protected transgender people from discrimination, ‘The backlash has been brutal.’”

Historically, USA Today has proven to be one of the media’s worst offenders on the topic of fairness in women’s sports, with NR’s Abigail Anthony succinctly refuting a series of “fact checks” from the outlet on the issue.

In an opinion piece last year, writer Nancy Armour celebrated Simone Biles’s “greatness” in “standing up for the transgender community” against conservative activist Riley Gaines, who has used her own experience in college athletics to become an advocate for fairness in women’s sports.

“Gaines has used her tie for fifth place with Lia Thomas, a transgender woman, in the 200-yard freestyle at the 2022 NCAA championships to become a MAGA media darling,” Armour wrote at the time, going on to accuse Gaines of doing “real harm to the transgender community, which is already at an elevated risk for suicide and self-harm.”

As Abigail wrote:

While Armour says that Gaines’s speech causes “real harm,” she fails to mention the actual physical harms that female athletes have suffered from competing against males. One case that Armour would have encountered if she had bothered to conduct a Google search is that of Peyton McNabb, who was diagnosed with a traumatic brain injury, a brain bleed, partial paralysis, and vision loss after a male opponent in volleyball spiked a ball that hit her. Additional harms experienced by female athletes under “inclusive policies” are the lasting psychological trauma of being forced to undress in front of a man, and the loss of opportunity in the form of denied scholarships, both of which are alleged to have occurred in a lawsuit against San Jose State University.

Even more laughably, Armour went on to claim, “There is no scientific evidence that transgender women athletes have a physical advantage over cisgender women athletes, but that hasn’t stopped Gaines from claiming they do.”

The Armour piece wasn’t the first time USA Today put male athletes’ “feelings” ahead of female athletes’ safety.

Back in 2021, the outlet quietly edited an op-ed after its publication — and without consulting its author — after it deemed the author’s use of the word “male” to describe the transgender athletes she was forced to compete against in high school track was “hurtful.”

Former Connecticut high school runner Chelsea Mitchell wrote the piece, in which she discussed losing four state championship races to male opponents. But editors later changed “male” to “transgender” throughout the piece, without Mitchell’s knowledge or consent.

“This column has been updated to reflect USA TODAY’s standards and style guidelines. We regret that hurtful language was used,” an editor’s note explained.

And again USA Today proved what side of the debate it was on when it published a flawed “fact check” on “Algerian fighter Imane Khelif, DSDs, biology and Olympic boxing.” That fact check, which was published during the Paris Olympics in 2024, declared, “Khelif is a woman, who is not transgender, nor identifies as intersex.”

Here at NR, we always remained clear-eyed about the situation. Particularly when Italian boxer Angela Carini quit 45 seconds into her boxing match against Khelif, who had been previously disqualified from the 2023 International Boxing Association Women’s World Boxing Championships after failing a sex-identification test. The boxing association said that DNA tests proved Khelif and Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting had XY chromosomes. The association’s leader, Umar Kremlev, added that the two athletes “attempted to deceive their colleagues and passed themselves off as women.”

NR’s editors wrote at the time, “genetics do determine sex — regardless of what we ‘assign’ or what letter is printed on a passport.”

Both Khelif and Lin won a gold medal in their respective weight class in the 2024 Olympics.

And in 2025, a leaked document obtained by journalist Alan Abrahamson revealed the truth; an excerpt of Khelif’s 2023 test results from a certified and accredited lab that stated “chromosome analysis reveals male karyotype.” The test results revealed Khelif had a testosterone level befitting that of a male, due to a difference in sexual development (DSD) condition.

Yet as Abigail wrote at the time, “the mainstream media churned out ‘fact checking’ articles insisting that Khelif is a woman, biology doesn’t matter, and conservatives were pouncing on this poor athlete to advance draconian ‘transphobic’ policies.”

Meanwhile, last year, readers of the mainstream media could be excused for not understanding why exactly the University of Pennsylvania stripped Lia Thomas of his titles in women’s swimming and issued an apology to the female athletes he “defeated.”

Mainstream outlets remained committed to using Thomas’s preferred pronouns (she/her), thereby muddying the details of the story.

“UPenn will strip a trans swimmer, Lia Thomas, of her records and ban trans athletes in women’s sports,” Axios reported, while Forbes reported, “The University of Pennsylvania came to an agreement with the Trump administration that will strip transgender swimmer Lia Thomas of her titles and recognitions and ban trans athletes from women’s sports.”

“The University of Pennsylvania on Tuesday modified a trio of school records set by transgender swimmer Lia Thomas and said it would apologize to female athletes ‘disadvantaged’ by her participation on the women’s swimming team,” reported the Associated Press.

And a headline from the New York Times was flat-out misleading: “Penn revokes Lia Thomas’ records, bans trans athletes under Trump administration deal.” However, the Trump administration mandate only prohibits men from participating in women’s sports; women who identify as men are still allowed to compete and train in men’s sports.

Meanwhile, NBCU Academy offers journalists advice on how to “Responsibly Report on Transgender Athletes,” which includes “meet[ing] trans athletes where they are.”

“Sports is more than just winning or losing,” the guidelines advise. “What playing means for an athlete is also important,” though that apparently only applies to “trans” athletes, and not the women who are being edged out of opportunities by biological men.

The issue of men’s participation in women’s sports will now come before the Supreme Court less than a year after the justices ruled 6–3 to uphold a Tennessee law banning irreversible transgender operations on minors.

Headline Fail of the Week

CNN put its thumb on the scale in its report on Renee Nicole Good, which clearly appeals to readers’ emotions: “Mother of 3 who loved to sing and write poetry shot and killed by ICE in Minneapolis.”

While Good’s death is undoubtedly tragic, it’s worth noting she was more than just a mother and poet, she also belonged to a Minneapolis-based “ICE Watch” group that actively tracked immigration enforcement operations and trained activists to interfere with agents, including by blocking law enforcement vehicles.

According to NR’s Haley Strack, ICE Watch chapters train activists to monitor ICE activity using purpose-built apps and alert allies who have been trained to flood an operation area and interfere with arrests being made.

Video footage of the shooting shows Good behind the wheel of an SUV parked perpendicularly to the road to block off a street where ICE operations were taking place. Good drives the vehicle forward as an ICE agent approaches from the front. The officer opens fire as the vehicle approaches, firing once through the windshield and twice more through the driver’s side window.

Good reportedly followed ICE agents to two separate locations before she was shot. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said she was “stalking and impeding” agents all day prior to the shooting.

NR’s legal expert, Andrew C. McCarthy, explains here why the shooting, though tragic, was a legally justified use of force.

Media Misses

– Former Late Show host David Letterman blasted the “idiots” who have taken over CBS during a recent podcast appearance. “CBS News is a wreck, it’s just gone. CBS News for decades, going back to World War II — before World War II — they would be, Ed Murrow would be broadcasting the blitz of London from the rooftop of buildings in London for CBS Radio,” he said on The Barbara Gaines Show. “And it was that mentality that drove the integrity of CBS News that has been trampled on, p***** on, and eviscerated by these idiots that have taken it over. And I’m at a point now where it really is hurting my feelings. Because I’m sick and tired of people saying, ‘Oh, wait until those midterms.’ Kids, we’re far downstream of the midterms having any effect on this.”

-MS NOW host Rachel Maddow recently likened the Trump administration’s reported plans to construct a handful of large-scale holding centers for deportees to the internment camps built for Japanese Americans during World War II. “The Washington Post just reported on internal documents in the administration that say that they want a series of temporary relocation camps where they’re going to hold people for weeks, and then they’re going to send them to about 10 big warehouse-style facilities where they’re going to hold up to 10,000 people at a time. That’s exactly, exactly the structure they used for Japanese American incarceration during World War II,” she said on Jimmy Kimmel Live. The spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security told the Post she “cannot confirm” the report about the warehouse plan.

–The Nation finally admits what those of us on the right have known all along: Antifa is real. Despite the protestation of the Left when Trump designated Antifa a terrorist organization, the left-wing outlet now declares, “Liberals think Antifa isn’t real. But it is — and it knows how to win.”