After losing re-election in 2024, Former Montana Senator Jon Tester has spoken out against trans athletes in women’s sports.
During an interview on HBO’s Real Time With Bill Maher on Friday, Tester said he agreed with California Governor Gavin Newsom’s recent comments that allowing trans athletes in women’s and girls’ sports is “deeply unfair.”
“In that statement, Gavin Newsom is 100% correct,” Tester said. “We’re talking about a very, very, very small amount of people who, by the way, men shouldn’t be playing in women’s sports. It’s a bunch of crap.”
However, Tester also argued, like many other Democrats, that it is an overblown issue.
“The truth is is that it has been blown way out of proportion,” Tester said. “We’re talking about that and Congress is acting on that, instead of acting on the issues that impact Americans.”
A recent New York Times/Ipsos survey found that the vast majority of Americans, including a majority of Democrats, don’t think transgender athletes should be permitted to compete in women’s sports. Of the 2,128 people who participated, 79% said that biological males who identify as women should not be allowed to participate in women’s sports.
Of the 1,025 people who identified as Democrats or leaning Democrat, 67% said that transgender athletes should not be allowed to compete with women.
Meanwhile, a national exit poll conducted by the Concerned Women for America legislative action committee found that 70% of moderate voters saw the issue of “Donald Trump’s opposition to transgender boys and men playing girls’ and women’s sports and of transgender boys and men using girls’ and women’s bathrooms” as important to them.
Additionally, 6% said it was the most important issue of all, while 44% said it was “very important.”
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Tester lost his seat to former Navy SEAL Tim Sheehy back in November, after serving three terms in Montana – a state that has consistently voted for the Republican presidential candidate for decades.
Despite the fact that many Democrat lawmakers and the majority of voters have expressed opposition to trans athletes in women’s sports over the last several months, figures like Tester and Newsom have still come up with other reasons not to support GOP-led legislation to address the issue.
While Tester suggested that the issue does not “impact Americans,” Newsom argued that legislation to address the issue doesn’t account for the fact that the transgender population is “vulnerable.”
“So, that’s easy to call out the unfairness of that,” Newsom said on his podcast this week after claiming that trans inclusion is unfair. “There’s also a humility and a grace . . . these poor people are more likely to commit suicide, have anxiety and depression, and the way that people talk down to vulnerable communities is an issue that I have a hard time with as well.”
“So, both things I can hold in my hand,” the governor continued. “How can we address this issue with the kind of decency that I think, you know, is inherent in you, but not always expressed on the issue?”
President Donald Trump signed an executive order to ban trans athletes in women’s and girls’ sports back in February, but many states, including California, have refused to comply with it.
On Monday, Senate Democrats voted nearly unanimously to block the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act.
The law would have helped to set a stricter precedent to keep trans athletes out of women’s and girls’ sports across the country, as many states have so far refused to comply with Trump’s executive order to address the issue. But not a single Democratic senator voted to help pass the bill, and filibustered it from reaching Trump’s desk.
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