My Day at the Culture War Races

Clovis, California, became the epicenter of our nation's culture war over this past weekend. As a boy, ab Hernandez was allowed to compete in and dominate his various events in the California State High School Track and field competition overseen by CIF the California Interscholastic Federation, which is the governing

For the end of February.

I think I sweat out over the course of Friday and Saturday, about four times my body weight worth of water.

So I want to go through the whole thing.

Now, let's start with the actual controversy itself and the legal setting. So California has had laws on the books, laws that were passed in twenty thirteen that went into effecting twenty fourteen and under Jerry Brown, that basically say, in California public high schools, sports and other accommodations like bathrooms, locker rooms, et cetera, are on the basis of gender identity,

So the CIF did not comply with the Trump executive order.

Now, over the course of last week, CIF wound up changing their policies like twice in two different ways, and basically what they ended at was a policy that's not really in conformity with the Trump executive order because they are still allowing males to compete in competition alongside female competitors.

Or could be taking opportunities from girls.

The most egregious harm of such policies is the violations of women's privacy that it entails men using women's bathrooms, men changing in women's locker rooms, men showering in women's locker rooms. When you're talking about high school, also, let's remember not just focusing on Pacific athletic event like this Track and Feel meet, but just in general, you're at a high school, you train, you know, you've got a

Girl.

The girl's basketball team could include a fourteen year old freshman girl and a eighteen year old male who identifies as a girl, who are expected now to shower together. Let's let that sink in. Okay, and you could have you're talking about an adult male who might be a high school senior who identifies as a woman. But it's just identify as there doesn't need to be any hardware update.

Let me if I can put it delicately. Okay.

This might be someone who has not had any surgery, any kind of plastic surgery to make his body appear more like the body of a woman. This might not even be someone who's on hormones to try to make their appearance more like a woman. You can genuinely have a situation where an eighteen year old male is showering alongside fourteen year old females. So that was not at all addressed by the CIF policy. So CIF made their policies less egregious.

How do they do that?

So what CIF did over the course of last week is basically, say, a biological boy is allowed to compete in the girls event on the basis of a claim gender identity. But basically they're not going to take any spot from a girl. So no girl is going to fail to qualify for the next round if they are

Right. Also, no girl is going to miss out.

On her final result or spot on the basis of a transgender competitor. So if the transgender person gets first place, the next ranked girl is also awarded first place, and then the next girl who is third as far as her time or distance or whatever, is awarded second place, and so on. So no girl's going to miss out on a spot because of a transgender competitor. No girl is going to miss out on a ranking because of a transgender competitor, which really kind of makes it seem like,

Now, Trevor actually said it best.

He had me on the show on Thursday and we talked about it, and Trevor just off the top of his head and he said, I could use this line.

So I'm going to use this line.

Basically said, so Aby Hernandez, this boy who's playing in the girls events, he's basically in a phantom league of his own. And that's exactly what it is. He's more or less competing in this phantom league. And you saw that during the track meet last weekend.

He wins.

First place in the triple jump by a massive margin.

But another girl.

From Albany, California is also awarded first place, even though she jumped you know, almost two feet, not as far as Hernandez did in the triple jump. The next girl, who had the third longest jump is awarded second place.

And so on.

Now I'm gonna take you kind of day by day over the course of the show.

I'm going to take you guys kind of.

Day by day throughout the week, and I'm going to start I'll start with Thursday. So Thursday was the press conference that took place at the Clovis Veterans' Memorial Building that was convened by Diane Pierce. And I just want to say this, Diane Pierce stood tall this whole week as the obvious leader locally on this issue. Now it was in Clovis, in the city of Clovis. One could argue that it sort of made sense for a City of Clovis official to be the one leading the charge,

Beyond the Clovis City Council.

And there are probably going to be some opportunities like that locally for her, whether it's the County Board of Supervisors or the State Senate. I know it's announced that Nathan Magzig, who is the county supervisor who represents the Clovis area, is running for the state Senate once Shannon Grove term limits out. He'll be running for Grove's seat in twenty twenty six. I think there are going to be opportunities for Peers. And clearly she was heading shoulders

I'm not sure.

I mean, I can tell Tongu he's I can tell that talk about is trying to work within the constraints of what he can work with within the California state legislature, which is to say, very liberal constraints.

I guess I'm not sure how.

Sensible that's going to be, though, given that for sports like track and field, the only people who are going to be in the open boys are just so much bigger, taller, stronger, faster, and outmatch girls that the top boys out match the top girls so significantly. I mean the winning the best high jump on the girl's side was five foot seven. The best high jump on the boy's side was six foot nine. Like, what are we even talking about here? There's no, it's not necessarily very sensible for it to

Now.

Newsom's problem was that when he started the podcast, he was like talking only with like really conservative people like Charlie Kirk and then Michael Savage and this person and that person, and it really ticked off liberals that he did that, and conservatives were like whoa, Okay, So, you know, the very first episode of Newsom's podcast, he's talking with Charlie Kirk and he says, yeah, it's deeply unfair when

This is the state.

Track and field championships. We're gonna say that the bet that the high jump champion of California is a girl, that the long jump second place finisher of California is a excuse me, that the high jump girls champion is a boy, that the long jump second place girls finisher is a boy, and that the triple jump champion by almost two feet is a boy.

Where are you?

Where are you trying to lead the charge in the state legislature to change this? But this is the problem with Newsom. He says it's unfair, but he doesn't have the political stones, He doesn't have the political courage to actually do.

Anything about it.

He's not going to introduce legislation to keep boys out of girls sports, and he doesn't have clean hands on the question. It was Newsome in twenty twenty who changed California law signed into law massive changes for California prisons mandating that they house inmates on the basis of gender identity, not biological sex. Which, as much as we're talking about girl sports, and yes, I do think boys playing girl sports is unfair and unjust, housing men in women's prisons

With convicted criminals, convicted criminal men.

As we see in Madera County where Sally Moreno, the DA up there is prosecuting a man who got housed in the Chowchilla Women's prison who proceeded is accused of raping three of his cellmates, one of whom he got pregnant. When we return, we'll have more from my weekend at the races, My day at the races, My day at the Culture War races.

That's next on the John Girardi Show.

John Girardi here, we're talking about this past weekend at the California State High School track and field meet held up Buchanan High School, in which a biological well, just a boy. I'm not sure there's any other kind of boy than a biological boy. Biology is what makes you a boy.

A boy.

Ab Hernandez, who's a junior from la from Harupa Valley High School in southern California, a boy, won the California state championship in the triple jump, tied for first in the high jump, and got second placed in the long jump, all in the girls' division in spite of the fact that ab Hernandez is a boy. So I was there Friday and Saturday. Friday was the pliminaries and Saturday was the championship competitions for the state track and field meets, and it was actually it was my first time going

Almost to the point of being clown makeup.

His hair is oddly bleached, kind of a copper color, coppery blonde. But he's recognizably a boy, and the physical advantages of being a boy in these competitions or him are just obvious.

He's flat chested, he's got narrow hips.

He's got broad shoulders, he's got more defined musculature than most of the girls. And it's sort of that, I mean, that's why clearly he's doing so well. It's not because He's got this immaculate form in any of his events, and I'll talk about that more later. He can kind of get away with sort of mediocre form because he's got muscles on muscles on muscles that the girls just don't have.

And it's not the girl's fault. They're just girls. Girls musculature is different from boys.

And it allows him, as a fairly mediocre male athlete, to just completely dominate.

Now, when we return.

I'll talk about specific events and specifics of what I saw, including some of the craziness that happened outside the gates at the track meet. All that next on the John Girardi Show at the California State Track and Field Meet Friday, and this past Friday and Saturday, the high school track and Field meet, in which a boy, ab Hernandez was competing in the girls division for some of the events. The action happening outside was about as wild as the action happening inside the stadium.

So let me kind of try and paint the scene for you.

So Friday, Friday, the gates open at two at Veterans Memorial Stadium at Buchanan. It is hot. It is like one hundred plus degrees. Really stinking hot. I go into the stadium and I'm at the kind of the east end of the stadium, which is near you know, you can look right outside the fence and you see the corner of Minnie Wah Wah and Knees Avenues in Clovis, and there's sort of that corner there, and on that

Blue, because you can switch between blue and pink, which is hilarious.

How the whole transgender ideology is premised on the idea that sex or gender is really just based in nothing other than very hackneyed stereotypes about the male and female sexes. Being a woman is just a matter of liking girly things. Being a man is just a matter of liking guy things. So being a girl means you like pink. Being a boy means you like blue. In spite of the fact that like twenty or thirty years ago, feminists would have screamed at you for.

Saying, just because a boy likes likes feminine things does not make him less of a boy. Just because a girl is a tomboy does not make her less of a woman, like which true.

Like, I don't think you ceased to be a boy just because you're, you know, a three year old and your playing with your sister's naked barbie doll or something. And I don't think a girl is a boy because you know she's falling down in mud and wants to play baseball. Like no, you're You're still a boy, and you're still a girl. And it's based on biology and physiogogy.

Your body.

Is a meaningful, constitutive element of who you are, of your identity. Now, this person ethan crawl, This pro transgender protester was out there dressed all in black, holding a pro a transgender pride flag attached to an aluminum pole, so holding and it was a big flag looked like a like almost like a I don't know, like a five foot long maybe five feet by three feet or so, I guess flag attached to a large aluminum pole.

Looked like it was about I don't know, four or five feet long.

I saw the after effects of it, but the video of the event itself got posted onto x that Kroll got into an argument with this local conservative kind of activist guy named Josh Fulfer, who's very active on various forms of social media. Fulfer's driving by, he told me, with his wife, got into kind of a shouting match with Kroll, and Kroll goes over to the side view window, to the passenger window of the car and begins to jam the butt end of this big aluminum pole that

So police arrested Kroll did not arrest.

Fulfer, according to him, and according to news accounts, seems like Krohle was the only person arrested.

Kroll got charged with a couple of counts.

And was booked into the Fresno County Jail, including with a felony count of assault with a deadly weapon not a firearm.

Now, that was nuts.

Okay, So that was happening while the track and field meet's going on. I'm kind of trying to watch the track and field, but now I'm like trying to cover this, and I'm talking with kids who were eyewitnesses to it.

It was completely nuts.

Also, the whole I should have led with this Friday was surreal because overhead the whole time, we were pretty much the entire afternoon from you know, the gates opened at two. I mean I didn't leave until I think after eight o'clock. The competition began at three. I don't

So everyone there was like, you know, engage with it. Now. The crowd, it was a pretty full crowd.

The Grand stands weren't completely filled just because the sun was just mercilessly beating down on the grand stands that are on sort of the north side of the state, the north side sort of the north slash, it's kind of the northeast side of the stadium, and then there's sort of more of the southwest side of the state. The southwest side of the stadium was more in the shade. The northeast side of the stadium was just getting beaten by the sun.

So a lot of people were kind of on a hill.

On the north west side of the stadium, and a ton of people wound up filling the north side bleachers, and everyone there, almost every single person there was either

You know, do you have any thoughts on the ab Hernandez thing?

And no one really wanted to go on Very few people anyway, wanted to go on the record.

Because they were like, you know, my kids competing in this.

If I give a quote or something, that's going to distract from my kid, Like, you know, that's not what I'm here for. But and I will note the crowd seemed mostly supportive of Hernandez when Hernandez's name was first announced for I think the first event Hernandez did on Friday was the high jump. There was a smattering of applause, of kind of pointed applause, and I would imagine pretty much every liberal person there wanted to oh, yeah.

Yeah, be very vocal about this.

And you have to remember this was kind of a cross section of California. This is not a cross section of America. It was a cross section of California. This was a California state wide event. So and it's track and field, which probably draws a bit more left. I'd say than other sports. I mean, this wasn't a high school football crown necessarily, although there are a lot of African American families who I don't think have the same cultural sensitivity on these things as sort of.

Lily white liberal families do.

But talking with people off the record quietly beside, a lot of people.

Were willing to say, yeah, it's kind of ridiculous, this is unfair. I mean, obviously it's unfair.

I mean, and people were like a lot of people I talked with were like very reasonable about it. I'm like, you know, I don't blame the kid, but yeah, it's obviously unfair for competition, Like that's a boy, Like he can do stuff boys can do, and it just doesn't

Pumping. I mean, it made sense.

Hernandez was doing it kind of differently from all the girls in the all the other girls in the competition, all of the girls, not other girls. He's almost like it's almost like prancing, and his with his hand palms sort of flat, not like pumping, like doing it in a more almost feminine. He's running in an almost more comically effeminate way than the girls who are running to

Hard to give off the appearance of being a girl.

And maybe I'm over analyzing this, but his form was definitely different from the girls. And yet he gets a jump of five feet seven inches to equal the best girl in spite of the fact that his form is bad. Why well, he can make up for the inadequacies of his form because he's a boy, because he's got bigger, stronger muscles. And this it led me to think of Danny Almonte. When I was a kid. Two thousand and one, there's this big scandal at the Little League World Series.

An amazing picture. Maybe he'll go pro. Danny al Monty, this Dominican kid from New York. Wow, he's just he's dominating the Little League World Series.

And then a couple of years later it turns out, oh, Danny al Monty is actually fourteen years old. His Dominican birth certificate was fudge was dicey. He was actually fourteen, and what did that do well? It immediately showed that Daniel Monty was not a very impressive athlete. Yeah, plenty of fourteen year olds can blow fastballs. By twelve year olds, it's not an indication of being anything special. And that's what Aby Hernandez is. He is the Danny al Monty