Facing daunting poll numbers, President Donald Trump was desperate for conservatives to notch some kind — any kind — of legislative victory before Republican leadership sent lawmakers home for a weekslong recess. And ironically, the anti-transgender hysteria fueled by the president played a key role in derailing that possibility. 

Trump failed to get Republicans to pass the voter suppression bill he’s backed, but that wasn’t the only bill he had homed in on. He had also set his sights on a bill to regulate college sports. I wrote a couple weeks back about the Protect College Sports bill that Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, has been trying to push across the finish line. That bill has been broadly backed by college athletic conferences, although it was conceived virtually without the input of college athletes themselves — one major reason advocates who represent those athletes oppose it.

The bill is also opposed by the Congressional Black Caucus and the AFL-CIO. 

Cruz spent the past couple weeks making alterations to the bill in hopes of garnering enough support for it to sail through Congress. Herding cats, basically.

But Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley threw a wrench into those plans by suggesting the bill would undermine anti-trans laws in states that restrict trans people’s participation in athletic programs. Hawley, alongside Republican Sens. Jim Banks of Indiana and Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, introduced an amendment they said would “ensure the bill doesn’t overturn any laws” along those lines, but at the same time they did manage to overturn any hopes of the legislation passing before the August recess.  

Hawley’s allegations apparently got Trump’s attention, given the president sought to downplay those ostensible concerns in a last-ditch effort to get Republicans to stay in Washington and delay their recess. Trump alluded to Hawley’s amendment in a social media post last Friday, saying that the bill doesn’t affect existing anti-trans laws and that “anyone who tells you differently is LYING.” 

“The PROTECT COLLEGE SPORTS ACT is a great bill, and the senate will hopefully stay in D.C. until it passes,” Trump wrote on Friday. 

The president’s pressure campaign didn’t work. The bill has been placed on the Senate calendar for September, but its passage is uncertain, as is its potential for withstanding the inevitable legal challenges that will follow. 

Trump, through his constant demonization of trans people, helped to create an incentive structure for Republicans like Hawley to target trans people at every opportunity. And Hawley’s doing so in this case ultimately created an obstacle for senators hoping to pass the Trump-backed college sports bill before lawmakers headed home for break.

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