Politics
Trans athletes face intense efforts to sideline them. These California teens are resisting
At a recent meeting of California’s high school sports governing board, two seniors from Arroyo Grande High School spoke out against a transgender peer competing on their track and field team and allegedly “watching” them in the girls’ locker room.
One of the Central Coast students said she is “more comfortable” changing in her car now. The other cited a Bible verse about God creating men and women separately, and accused the California Interscholastic Federation of subjecting girls to “exploitative and intrusive behavior that is disguised through transgender ideology.”
“Our privacy is being compromised and our sports are being taken over,” she said.
During the same meeting, Trevor Norcross, the father of 17-year-old transgender junior Lily Norcross, offered a starkly different perspective.
“Bathrooms and locker rooms are the most dangerous place for trans students, and when they are at their most vulnerable,” he said. “Our daughter goes to extreme lengths to avoid them. Unfortunately, sometimes you can’t.”
Lily Norcross with her parents, Trevor and Hilary Norcross.
(Owen Main / For The Times)
Norcross said Lily’s teammates had for months been misrepresenting a single moment from the year prior, when Lily had to use the restroom after a full day of avoiding it, chose to use the one in the locker room because it is monitored by an adult and safer for her than others, and briefly stopped to chat with a friend on her way out.
“There’s always more to the story,” he said.
The conflicting testimony reflected an increasingly charged debate over transgender athletes participating in youth sports nationwide. Churches, anti-LGBTQ+ advocacy groups, cisgender athletes and their conservative families are organizing to topple trans-inclusive policies, while liberal state officials, queer advocacy groups, transgender kids and their families are trying to preserve policies that allow transgender kids to compete.
The battle has been particularly pitched in California, which has some of the nation’s most progressive statewide athletic policies and liberal leaders willing to defend them — including from the Trump administration, which has attacked transgender rights and is suing the California Department of Education and the CIF, alleging their trans-inclusive sports policies violate the civil rights of cisgender athletes.
Along with a pending U.S. Supreme Court decision on the legality of policies banning transgender athletes from competing in states such as Idaho and West Virginia, the Trump administration’s lawsuit against California could have sweeping implications for transgender athletes — with a state loss potentially contributing to their being sidelined not just in conservative states, but nationwide.
For the handful of transgender California teens caught in the middle of the fight, it has all been deeply unnerving — if strangely motivating.
“I have to keep doing it, because if I stop doing sports, they won,” Lily Norcross said. “They got what they wanted.”
A coordinated effort
The movement to overturn California’s trans-inclusive policies is being coordinated at the local, state and national levels, and has gained serious momentum since several of its leaders joined the Trump administration.
At the local level, cisgender athletes, their families and other conservative and religious allies have expressed anger over transgender athletes using girls’ facilities and resentment over their allegedly stealing victories and the spotlight from cisgender girls.
In 2024, two girls at Martin Luther King High School in Riverside filed a lawsuit challenging the participation of their transgender track and field teammate Abigail Jones, arguing her participation limited their own in violation of Title IX protections for female athletes. A judge found insufficient evidence of that, and recently dismissed the case.
Last year, Jurupa Valley High School track star AB Hernandez won several medals at the CIF State Track and Field Championships despite President Trump personally demanding she be barred from competing. Critics argued Hernandez’s wins were unfair, despite CIF having changed its rules so that her cisgender competitors received the medals they would have received had she not competed.
AB Hernandez competed for Jurupa Valley High School in the long jump at the 2025 CIF State Track and Field Championships.
(Tomas Ovalle / For The Times)
The challenges to Abigail, AB and Lily competing have all been driven in part by a network of conservative organizations working across California and beyond to oust transgender girls from sports, including by coordinating with evangelical churches, pushing social media campaigns, lining up speakers for school board meetings and working with cisgender athletes to hone their messages of opposition.
Shannon Kessler, a former PTA president and church leader who is now running for state Assembly, has worked within the wider network. In March 2025, Kessler founded the group Save Girls’ Sports Central Coast, and the next month distributed fliers at Harvest Church in Arroyo Grande that called on parishioners to challenge Lily’s participation on the track and field team.
Kessler said the two seniors on Lily’s team, who did not respond to a request for comment, had initially asked if she would “speak on their behalf,” so she did, but she has since let the girls “take the lead.”
“They took the initiative to speak and wrote their own speeches,” Kessler said, of their remarks at the recent CIF meeting.
Norcross said the effort to sideline his daughter has clearly been coordinated by outsiders from the start. He blames Kessler, Harvest Church and the state’s wider network of conservative activists for stirring up baseless fears about transgender athletes, exposing his family to danger and leaving them no choice but to defend themselves publicly.
“It’s not a fair position to be in,” he said.
Tied up in court
Within months of Trump issuing his February 2025 executive order calling for transgender athletes to be barred from competition nationwide, two leaders within the California conservative network turned Trump administration officials — Harmeet Dhillon, who is now assistant attorney general for civil rights, and former state Assemblyman Bill Essayli, who is now in charge of the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles — quickly moved to bring the state to heel.
They launched an investigation into California’s trans-inclusive sports policies, ordered its school districts to comply with Trump’s order in defiance of state law, and then sued the Department of Education and the CIF when they refused — alleging the state’s policies illegally discriminate against cisgender girls under Title IX by ignoring “undeniable biological differences between boys and girls, in favor of an amorphous ‘gender identity.’”
Neither Dhillon nor the Justice Department responded to a request for comment. Essayli’s office declined to comment.
Assistant Atty. Gen. for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon arrives for a news conference at the Justice Department in September.
(Andrew Harnik / Getty Images)
The Department of Education and the CIF have called for the lawsuit to be dismissed, arguing that Title IX regulations “do not require the exclusion of transgender girls” and that the Justice Department had provided no evidence that the state’s policies left cisgender girls unable to compete.
The CIF said in a statement that it “provides students with the opportunity to belong, connect, and compete in education-based experiences in compliance with California law,” but it and the Department of Education said they do not comment on pending litigation. California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta’s office has slammed the Trump administration’s efforts, and filed its own lawsuit to block them.
Separate from the California litigation, there is a major case on transgender youth athletes before the U.S. Supreme Court.
After athletes successfully challenged West Virginia and Idaho bans on transgender competition in lower federal courts, the states appealed. During arguments last month, the high court’s conservative majority sounded ready to uphold the state bans — but not necessarily in a way that would topple liberal state laws allowing such athletes to compete.
Pressure and resolve
Lily, AB and Abigail — all of whom are referenced anonymously in the federal lawsuit against California — agreed, with their parents, to be identified by The Times in order to share how it has felt to be targeted.
Abigail, 17, graduated early and is preparing to start college but hasn’t stopped being an advocate for transgender high school athletes, continuing to show up to CIF and school board meetings to support their right to compete.
“This is a part of my life now, whether I like it or not,” she said.
Speaking can be intimidating, Abigail said, but it has also become familiar — as has the cast of anti-transgender activists who routinely show up to speak as well. “It’s always the same people,” she said.
Abigail Jones participates in a protest against President Trump and his attacks on transgender people in April in Riverside.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
AB, also 17, said last year — when everyone, including Trump, seemed to be talking about her — was “just so much — too much.”
She felt she had to constantly “maintain an image,” including among her peers, that she was “not bothered by anything and just confident,” which was exhausting, she said. “There were a lot of times I just didn’t go to school, because I felt like I couldn’t keep up that image and I didn’t want them to see me down.”
It still can be overwhelming if she looks at all the vitriol aimed her way online, she said, but “off the internet, it’s a completely different story.”
AB was nervous headed into last year’s championships, but a couple of other competitors reached out with their support and the meet ended up being “a blast,” she said. At track practice this year, she’s surrounded by friends — one of her favorite things about being on the team.
For Lily, the last year has been “different and interesting, in not really a good way.”
She has had slurs lobbed at her and been physically threatened. She sometimes waits all day to use the toilet, nearly bursting by the time she gets home. When she has to use a school restroom, she times herself to be in and out in under three minutes. She took P.E. courses over the summer in part because she felt there would be fewer students around, but faced harassment anyway. Like AB, she feels as though she’s under a constant spotlight.
And yet, Lily said she is also “a lot happier with who I am” than she ever was before transitioning a couple of years ago. She said she’s enjoying her classes and her school’s Gender and Sexuality Alliance, where LGBTQ+ kids gather at lunch to swap stories, and is optimistic about the future — even if things aren’t great right now.
Her dad said watching her come out and transition has been gratifying, because “the smile came back, the light in her eyes came back.” Watching her navigate the current campaign against her, he said, has been “really hard,” because “she has been forced to grow up too quickly — she has been forced to defend herself in a way that most kids don’t.”
Mostly, though, he’s just proud of his kid.
“We had our fears as parents, as any parent would, that, OK, this is a different path than we thought our kid was going to be on, and we are worried about her safety and her future in this world,” he said. “But she is amazingly strong — amazingly courageous.”
new video loaded: Bill Clinton Says He ‘Did Nothing Wrong’ in House Epstein Inquiry
transcript
transcript
Bill Clinton Says He ‘Did Nothing Wrong’ in House Epstein Inquiry
Former President Bill Clinton told members of the House Oversight Committee in a closed-door deposition that he “saw nothing” and had done nothing wrong when he associated with Jeffrey Epstein decades ago.
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“Cause we don’t know when the video will be out. I don’t know when the transcript will be out. We’ve asked that they be out as quickly as possible.” “I don’t like seeing him deposed, but they certainly went after me a lot more than that.” “Republicans have now set a new precedent, which is to bring in presidents and former presidents to testify. So we’re once again going to make that call that we did yesterday. We are now asking and demanding that President Trump officially come in and testify in front of the Oversight Committee.” “Ranking Member Garcia asked President Clinton, quote, ‘Should President Trump be called to answer questions from this committee?’ And President Clinton said, that’s for you to decide. And the president went on to say that the President Trump has never said anything to me to make me think he was involved. “The way Chairman Comer described it, I don’t think is a complete, accurate description of what actually was said. So let’s release the full transcript.”
By Jackeline Luna
February 27, 2026
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U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) accused Everett, Washington, Mayor Cassie Franklin of escalating tensions with federal authorities after she issued a directive limiting immigration enforcement in the city.
Franklin issued a mayoral directive this week establishing citywide protocols for staff, including law enforcement, that restrict federal immigration agents from entering non-public areas of city buildings without a judicial warrant.
“We’ve heard directly from residents who are afraid to leave their houses because of the concerning immigration activity happening locally and across our country. It’s heartbreaking to see the impacts on Everett families and businesses,” Franklin said in a statement.
“With this directive, we are setting clear protocols, protecting access to services and reinforcing our commitment to serving the entire community.”
ICE blasted the directive Friday, writing on X it “escalates tension and directs city law enforcement to intervene with ICE operations at their own discretion,” thereby “putting everyone at greater risk.”
Mayor Cassie Franklin said her new citywide immigration enforcement protocols are intended to protect residents and ensure access to services, while ICE accused her of escalating tensions with federal authorities. (Google Maps)
ICE said Franklin was directing city workers to “impede ICE operations and expose the location of ICE officers and agents.”
“Working AGAINST ICE forces federal teams into the community searching for criminal illegal aliens released from local jails — INCREASING THE FEDERAL PRESENCE,” the agency said. “Working with ICE reduces the federal presence.”
“If Mayor Franklin wanted to protect the people she claims to serve, she’d empower the city police with an ICE 287g partnership — instead she serves criminal illegal aliens,” ICE added.
DHS, WHITE HOUSE MOCK CHICAGO’S LAWSUIT OVER ICE: ‘MIRACULOUSLY REDISCOVERED THE 10TH AMENDMENT’
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement blasted Everett’s mayor after she issued a directive restricting federal agents from accessing non-public areas of city facilities without a warrant. (Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
During a city council meeting where she announced the policy, Franklin said “federal immigration enforcement is causing real fear for Everett residents.”
“It’s been heartbreaking to see the racial profiling that’s having an impact on Everett families and businesses,” she said. “We know there are kids staying home from school, people not going to work or people not going about their day, dining out or shopping for essentials.”
The mayor’s directive covers four main areas, including restricting federal immigration agents from accessing non-public areas of city buildings without a warrant, requiring immediate reporting of enforcement activity on city property and mandating clear signage to enforce access limits.
BLOCKING ICE COOPERATION FUELED MINNESOTA UNREST, OFFICIALS WARN AS VIRGINIA REVERSES COURSE
Everett, Wash., Mayor Cassie Franklin said her new directive is aimed at protecting residents amid heightened immigration enforcement activity. (iStock)
It also calls for an internal policy review and staff training, including the creation of an Interdepartmental Response Team and updated immigration enforcement protocols to ensure compliance with state law.
Franklin directed city staff to expand partnerships with community leaders, advocacy groups and regional governments to coordinate responses to immigration enforcement, while promoting immigrant-owned businesses and providing workplace protections and “know your rights” resources.
The mayor also reaffirmed a commitment to “constitutional policing and best practices,” stating that the police department will comply with state law barring participation in civil immigration enforcement. The directive outlines protocols for documenting interactions with federal officials, reviewing records requests and strengthening privacy safeguards and technology audits.
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Everett, Wash., Mayor Cassie Franklin issued a directive limiting federal immigration enforcement in city facilities. (iStock)
“We want everyone in the city of Everett to feel safe calling 911 when they need help and to know that Everett Police will not ask about your immigration status,” Franklin said during the council meeting. ”I also expect our officers to intervene if it’s safe to do so to protect our residents when they witness federal officers using unnecessary force.”
Fox News Digital has reached out to Mayor Franklin’s office and ICE for comment.
Related Article
The morning after Netflix clinched its deal to buy Warner Bros., Paramount Skydance Chairman David Ellison assembled a war room of trusted advisors, including his billionaire father, Larry Ellison.
Furious at Warner Bros. Discovery Chief David Zaslav for ending the auction, the Ellisons and their team began plotting their comeback on that crisp December day.
To rattle Warner Bros. Discovery and its investors, they launched a three-front campaign: a lawsuit, a hostile takeover bid and direct lobbying of the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress.
“There was a master battle plan — and it was extremely disciplined,” said one auction insider who was not authorized to comment publicly.
Netflix stunned the industry late Thursday by pulling out of the bidding, clearing the way for Paramount to claim the company that owns HBO, HBO Max, CNN, TBS, Food Network and the Warner Bros. film and television studios in Burbank. The deal was valued at more than $111 billion.
The streaming giant’s reversal came just hours after co-Chief Executive Ted Sarandos met with Atty Gen. Pam Bondi and a deputy at the White House. It was a cordial session, but the Trump officials told Sarandos that his deal was facing significant hurdles in Washington, according to a person close to the administration who was not authorized to comment publicly.
Even before that meeting, the tide had turned for Paramount in a swell of power, politics and brinkmanship.
“Netflix played their cards well; however, Paramount played their cards perfectly,” said Jonathan Miller, chief executive of Integrated Media Co. “They did exactly what they had to do and when they had to do it — which was at the very last moment.”
Key to victory was Larry Ellison, his $200-billion fortune and his connections to President Trump and congressional Republicans.
Paramount also hired Trump’s former antitrust chief, attorney Makan Delrahim, to quarterback the firm’s legal and regulatory action.
Republicans during a Senate hearing this month piled onto Sarandos with complaints about potential monopolistic practices and “woke” programming.
David Ellison skipped that hearing. This week, however, he attended Trump’s State of the Union address in the Capitol chambers, a guest of Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). The two men posed, grinning and giving a thumbs-up, for a photo that was posted to Graham’s X account.
David Ellison, the chairman and chief executive of Paramount Skydance Corp., walks through Statuary Hall to the State of the Union address at the U.S. Capitol on Feb. 24, 2026.
(Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images)
On Friday, Netflix said it had received a $2.8-billion payment — a termination fee Paramount agreed to pay to send Netflix on its way.
Long before David Ellison and his family acquired Paramount and CBS last summer, the 43-year-old tech scion and aircraft pilot already had his sights set on Warner Bros. Discovery.
Paramount’s assets, including MTV, Nickelodeon and the Melrose Avenue movie studio, have been fading. Ellison recognized he needed the more robust company — Warner Bros. Discovery — to achieve his ambitions.
“From the very beginning, our pursuit of Warner Bros. Discovery has been guided by a clear purpose: to honor the legacy of two iconic companies while accelerating our vision of building a next-generation media and entertainment company,” David Ellison said in a Friday statement. “We couldn’t be more excited for what’s ahead.”
Warner’s chief, Zaslav, who had initially opposed the Paramount bid, added: “We look forward to working with Paramount to complete this historic transaction.”
Netflix, in a separate statement, said it was unwilling to go beyond its $82.7-billion proposal that Warner board members accepted Dec. 4.
“We believe we would have been strong stewards of Warner Bros.’ iconic brands, and that our deal would have strengthened the entertainment industry and preserved and created more production jobs,” Sarandos and co-Chief Executive Greg Peters said in a statement.
“But this transaction was always a ‘nice to have’ at the right price, not a ‘must have’ at any price,” the Netflix chiefs said.
Netflix may have miscalculated the Ellison family’s determination when it agreed Feb. 16 to allow Paramount back into the bidding.
The Los Gatos, Calif.-based company already had prevailed in the auction, and had an agreement in hand. Its next step was a shareholder vote.
“They didn’t need to let Paramount back in, but there was a lot of pressure on them to make sure the process wouldn’t be challenged,” Miller said.
In addition, Netflix’s stock had also been pummeled — the company had lost a quarter of its value — since investors learned the company was making a Warner run.
Upon news that Netflix had withdrawn, its shares soared Friday nearly 14% to $96.24.
Netflix Chief Executive Ted Sarandos arrives at the White House on Feb. 26, 2026.
(Andrew Leyden / Getty Images)
Invited back into the auction room, Paramount unveiled a much stronger proposal than the one it submitted in December.
The elder Ellison had pledged to personally guarantee the deal, including $45.7 billion in equity required to close the transaction. And if bankers became worried that Paramount was too leveraged, the tech mogul agreed to put in more money in order to secure the bank financing.
That promise assuaged Warner Bros. Discovery board members who had fretted for weeks that they weren’t sure Ellison would sign on the dotted line, according to two people close to the auction who were not authorized to comment.
Paramount’s pressure campaign had been relentless, first winning over theater owners, who expressed alarm over Netflix’s business model that encourages consumers to watch movies in their homes.
During the last two weeks, Sarandos got dragged into two ugly controversies.
First, famed filmmaker James Cameron endorsed Paramount, saying a Netflix takeover would lead to massive job losses in the entertainment industry, which is already reeling from a production slowdown in Southern California that has disrupted the lives of thousands of film industry workers.
Then, a week ago, Trump took aim at Netflix board member Susan Rice, a former high-level Obama and Biden administration official. In a social media post, Trump called Rice a “no talent … political hack,” and said that Netflix must fire her or “pay the consequences.”
The threat underscored the dicey environment for Netflix.
Additionally, Paramount had sowed doubts about Netflix among lawmakers, regulators, Warner investors and ultimately the Warner board.
Paramount assured Warner board members that it had a clear path to win regulatory approval so the deal would quickly be finalized. In a show of confidence, Delrahim filed to win the Justice Department’s blessing in December — even though Paramount didn’t have a deal.
This month, a deadline for the Justice Department to raise issues with Paramount’s proposed Warner takeover passed without comment from the Trump regulators.
“Analysts believe the deal is likely to close,” TD Cowen analysts said in a Friday report. “While Paramount-WBD does present material antitrust risks (higher pay TV prices, lower pay for TV/movie workers), analysts also see a key pro-competitive effect: improved competition in streaming, with Paramount+ and HBO Max representing a materially stronger counterweight to #1 Netflix.”
Throughout the battle, David Ellison relied on support from his father, attorney Delrahim, and three key board members: Oracle Executive Vice Chair Safra A. Catz; RedBird Capital Partners founder Gerry Cardinale; and Justin Hamill, managing director of tech investment firm Silver Lake.
In the final days, David Ellison led an effort to flip Warner board members who had firmly supported Netflix. With Paramount’s improved offer, several began leaning toward the Paramount deal.
On Tuesday, Warner announced that Paramount’s deal was promising.
On Thursday, Warner’s board determined Paramount’s deal had topped Netflix. That’s when Netflix surrendered.
“Paramount had a fulsome, 360-degree approach,” Miller said. “They approached it financially. … They understood the regulatory environment here and abroad in the EU. And they had a game plan for every aspect.”
On Friday, Paramount shares rose 21% to $13.51.
It was a reversal of fortunes for David Ellison, who appeared on CNBC just three days after that war room meeting in December.
“We put the company in play,” David Ellison told the CNBC anchor that day. “We’re really here to finish what we started.”
Times staff writer Ana Cabellos and Business Editor Richard Verrier contributed to this report.
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