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Floor Speech

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Mrs. HYDE-SMITH. Mr. President, I rise today to once again join my Republican colleagues in reaffirming our commitment to safeguarding the protections provided by title IX and the hard-won opportunities it offers women and girls.

Since its enactment in 1972, title IX has been instrumental in preventing sex discrimination in education, ensuring equality for girls and women. Remember that before title IX, women and girls were denied the same academic and athletic opportunities as their male peers.

Title IX was originally designed by Congress to ensure that women and girls receive equal and fair opportunities based on biological reality while also ensuring their safety in educational settings. For more than 50 years, it successfully upheld these principles.

Unfortunately, over the past 4 years, we have seen a concerted and completely misguided effort to redefine gender in ways that ignore biological facts and threaten the significant strides women and girls have made since the passage of title IX. These misguided actions eroded the protections that title IX was created to offer.

After watching the Biden administration claw away at the integrity of title IX for 4 years, I am proud to stand with my colleagues and President Trump in fighting to restore the protections that title IX was always meant to provide to girls and women in sports.

Despite the attempts of our colleagues across the aisle to defend their war on title IX, the American people overwhelmingly agree on a fundamental point: Biologically male athletes should not be allowed to compete in women's sports or use women's locker rooms.

I find it ironic that the party that wore pink to protest President Trump's address last night claiming his policies harm women is the same party where not one Member voted to protect women in sports this week. If it were not so serious, it would almost be laughable.

This is not a matter of partisanship but of common sense and fairness. It is a matter of equal opportunity for all.

This is the message we must continue to amplify in Congress as we work to ensure the future protections of title IX remain intact.

We must pass legislation that protects female athletes and preserves the integrity of women's sports. To suggest that biological females and transgender women are the same in all respects, particularly in the context of athletic competition, is to set women and girls back, not forward.

The Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act would safeguard title IX by defining gender based on an individual's biological and genetic sex at birth. It would also ensure that no Federal funding goes to schools or educational organizations that allow males to participate in women's sporting events, ensuring that title IX's original intent is upheld across the board.

Importantly, its passage would make it harder for some future President to again assault title IX.

It is disheartening to see that, once again, my Democratic colleagues are failing to advocate for the importance of title IX and what it means to women and girls everywhere. Instead, they choose to cater to an out-of-touch woke mob on this issue.

I am proud to join Senator Tuberville in supporting this commonsense legislation that will continue to protect our daughters, nieces, and granddaughters for years to come.

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