In recent years, the debate over transgender women and girls in female sports has become one of the most contentious topics in politics. But unfortunately, one Republican lawmaker has been pushing outright misinformation in an attempt to support his stance.
Tommy Tuberville, a Republican Senator from Alabama, has been advocating for federal legislation that would ban transgender women and girls from competing in women’s sports. However, during a recent interview with Fox News, Tuberville made a blatantly false claim about the number of transgender girls currently competing in high school sports nationwide.
“We’re getting to a point now where women and girls sports are getting ready to be extinct. Because already in states across this country, we have high school teams that are made up of totally boys participating against girls,” Tuberville claimed in the interview via Aaron Rupar.
Of course, this is entirely untrue. There is not a single high school team in the country composed entirely—or even predominantly—of transgender girls. In fact, in 2023, there were only five transgender athletes competing in girls’ high school sports across the entire nation.
Needless to say, this blatant information from Tuberville sparked outrage on social media.
“This is just completely untrue. A total fabrication by Coach Tubs,” USA Today’s Dan Wolken said in a post on X.
“Not a good sign when all you have left is completely making things up,” the HRC’s Brandon Wolf added.
“Repulsive moron just makes things up and lies,” journalist John Harwood commented.
“There are 35 Trans high school athletes out of 6 MILLION kids 10 out of over half a million in the NCAA Meanwhile, over 14 million US households with high school-aged kids are food insecure If this is your primary concern, you are an evil moron,” another person added.
“Zero chance Tommy could produce a single shred of evidence of this happening,” someone else wrote.
“These people do nothing but lie and their supporters are too dumb and full of hate to care,” another person wrote.
“Tommy Tuberville is the dumbest man to have ever set foot in a Senate office,” someone else added.
“There are fewer than 100 trans athletes in the entire country. And fewer than 10 in high school,” another person wrote.
This is hardly the first time Tuberville has been caught spreading an outright falsehood. Just last month, the former Texas Tech Red Raiders head coach falsely claimed that he recruited Kansas City Chiefs star Patrick Mahomes to Texas Tech. Mahomes wasted no time shutting that down, making it clear that he had no relationship with Tuberville and doesn’t even recall ever meeting him.
