Rogers signs pledge from anti-trans group to ‘defend women’s sports’ 

A day before the Republican primary election, U.S. Senate candidate Mike Rogers connected with a right-wing nonprofit connected to Project 2025 and anti-trans activists.

Rogers, a former congressman who represented his mid-Michigan district for seven terms, sat down Monday in Oakland County for a round \table discussion that included former U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and athlete and anti-trans activist Riley Gaines as Rogers signed the Stand With Women Commitment, a pledge created by Independent Women’s Voice (IWV) “to uphold legislation that preserves female opportunities and private spaces.” 

That legislation would ban trans athletes from participating in sports that align with their gender identity.

“In front of a packed room in Grand Blanc, I signed a pledge to stand up and defend women’s sports,” Rogers posted to social media. “In the Senate, I’ll always fight for our daughters and granddaughters.”

IWV is the 501(c)(4) “action arm” to its sister organization, the 501(c)(3) Independent Women’s Forum (IWF), one of the groups that is on the advisory board for Project 2025, an authoritarian blueprint for a second President Donald Trump term in the White House created by the right-wing Heritage Foundation. 

IWF and DeVos have also teamed up to oppose the Biden administration’s final rule for Title IX, that seeks to protect LGBTQ+ students from discrimination “based on sex stereotypes, sexual orientation, gender identity, and sex characteristics,” The updated regulations are also aimed at “restoring and strengthening full protection from sexual violence and other sex-based harassment.”

But in its release about Monday’s gathering with Rogers, IWV described the Title IX rule as pressuring “schools to let males who identify as women take women’s scholarships and roster spots,” adding that “Rogers’s commitment to preserve uniform, biological definitions for sex-based words in federal law will preserve equal opportunity for women and girls in all aspects of education, including in sports.”

“Protecting women’s spaces and opportunities to compete are critical to the future of our nation. I am proud to sign the Stand with Women Commitment to ensure our daughters can access opportunities for generations to come,” said Rogers. “Biological men should not be competing with our daughters, period.”

The concept of defining gender strictly based on an individual’s reproductive organs, has been at the heart of Republican efforts across the country to limit and/or deny rights to transgender individuals by declaring there only two genders, male and female, and that they are immutable, a political stance that is completely at odds with the science. 

The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) has opposed such legislative efforts as not only misguided, but also harmful. 

“Proponents of these bans suggest that trans athletes are pretending to be trans in order to do well at sports — ignoring entirely the incredible stigma trans youth face,” stated the organization.

And in fact, a study by the Williams Institute which found “transgender people are over four times more likely than cisgender people to be victims of violent crime.” 

Rogers is facing two other Republicans in Tuesday’s primary: former U.S. Rep. Justin Amash (I-Cascade Twp.) and Niles physician, Dr. Sherry O’Donnell. 

On the Democratic side, U.S. Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Holly) and actor Hill Harper are squaring off.

This story was originally published by the Michigan Advance