On Wednesday, Riley Gaines urged Congress to pass Rep. Debbie Lesko’s (R-AZ-08) bill defining a woman.
Gaines is the former University of Kentucky swimmer forced to compete against a biological male who identifies as a transgender woman: Lia, formerly Will, Thomas. Gaines and other swimmers were also made to share private spaces with Thomas, such as locker rooms.
Gaines, who joined Lesko in a press conference on Wednesday, asserted defining the term “woman” was necessary to ensure equal protections under the law.
“Elected bureaucrats and judges and officials and administrators have altered the legal meaning of these sex-based terms to interpret it as they want, and to reflect identity rather than biology, and to require that men and women be treated not just equal but the same,” said Gaines. “The public knows what a woman is, and it’s time that our laws did, too.”
Lesko’s bill defines sex as the biological sex, either male or female, at birth. It also defines women and girls in reference to human females, and man and boy in reference to human males. Likewise, mother is defined as a “parent of the female sex,” and father is defined as a “parent of the male sex.”
“[T]here are important reasons to distinguish between the sexes with respect to athletics, prisons, domestic violence shelters, restrooms, and other areas, particularly where biology, safety, and privacy are implicated,” states the resolution.
Gaines lamented that modern political discourse has come to reckon anyone as “brave” for speaking the truth of biological reality out loud.
“In my mind, I can’t fathom how it is brave to say that men and women are different. I can’t fathom that requires courage. When I think of courage, I think of people on the front lines,” said Gaines.
Lesko noted that in one of her local school districts, two of the board members have fought to prevent boys from gaining access to girls’ bathrooms. However, the board members of the unnamed district were in the minority. Lesko noted that there have been violent assaults and rapes of girls and women in bathrooms by males pretending to be female.
“The left has declared a war on women,” said Lesko. “It is now more important than ever to affirm the biological differences between men and women to protect women’s hard-fought rights and ensure women have spaces reserved for them in society.”
Gaines also stressed that women’s feelings, privacy, safety, and self-esteem were sacrificed to spare the feelings of men suffering from gender dysphoria.
“What mattered to the left was protecting the feelings of a male at the expense of our own,” stated Gaines. “It’s 2023, we have the right to vote as women, we can own property. But we have to plead and beg for privacy in our locker rooms so we’re not violated. And when you do plead and beg, you’re called a ‘bigot,’ you’re called ‘transphobic’ for wanting safety.”
Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ-05) has also cosponsored the bill.
The 25 other cosponsors of the bill, titled the Women’s Bill of Rights, are Reps. Diana Harshbarger (R-TN-01), Mary Miller (R-IL-15), Kevin Hern (R-OK-01), Claudia Tenney (R-NY-24), Robert Aderholt (R-AL-04), Andrew Clyde (R-GA-09), Randy Weber (R-TX-14), Michael Guest (R-MS-03), George Santos (R-NY-03), Andrew Ogles (R-TN-05), Virginia Foxx (R-NC-05), Ralph Norman (R-SC-05), Burgess Owens (R-UT-04), Ronny Jackson (R-TX-13), Harriet Hageman (R-WY), Jeff Duncan (R-SC-03), Jake Ellzey (R-TX-06), Jim Banks (R-IN-03), Buddy Carter (R-GA-01), Greg Steube (R-FL-17), Ben Cline (R-VA-06), Doug LaMalfa (R-CA-01), Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL-13), Michael Burgess (R-TX-26), and Brian Babin (R-TX-36). The bill hasn’t gone further than its introduction in February.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
A BASIS Peoria high school student won one of this year’s congressional app development challenges for her app enabling parents to exchange or donate their children’s toys.
Rep. Debbie Lesko (R-AZ-08) featured the winner, Molly Budhiraja, and her app, “Project Toy Exchange,” in her weekly newsletter issued last Saturday.
Budhiraja’s app will be displayed on the Congressional App Challenge website and in the U.S. Capitol, along with other winners nationwide. Budhiraja will have the opportunity to showcase her app to Congress during the annual #HouseofCode festival, a large science fair.
“I am so pleased to congratulate Molly Budhiraja for winning this year’s Congressional App Challenge,” stated Lesko in a press release. “Project Toy Exchange is a great app that connects parents with each other and encourages people to donate toys to children in the community. It is an honor to represent so many bright students, and it is wonderful to see how they use their talents and creativity through these apps to help others!”
Budhiraja thanked the congresswoman in a LinkedIn post, expressing excitement about the future of her app.
“I was honored to meet such an enthusiastic and intelligent woman leader in our community, who not only does remarkable work for our state, but our nation as well,” stated Budhiraja. “It was a pleasure to talk about my app and my future goals with the congresswoman and her team.”
The second-place winners were Mountain Ridge High School students Apramey Akkiraju and Rohan Agrawal. The teens created a “COVID-19 Tracker” app that provided color-coded maps detailing case count concentrations in the Western part of the country, as well as data on case and death counts.
Third-place winners were Challenge Charter School students Alexandra Acuna and Tori Lugo. The pair created the “Math4Life2” app, which helps children with multiplication problems and seeks to make math more fun.
All three apps proposed creative solutions to real issues facing Arizonans: rising costs of toys due to the inflation crisis, advising concerned Arizonans about COVID-19 spread, and fostering a positive relationship with math amid declining test scores.
One of the second-place winners, Agrawal, was last year’s champion, along with Dens Sumesh, a BASIS Peoria student. The pair created the app “DebateEV,” a website that collects existing debate card evidence and makes it accessible via a search format similar to Google’s. Agrawal and Sumesh stated that forced transition to remote learning, coupled with their ongoing involvement in their high school debate club, inspired the app.
Last year, Reps. Ann Kirkpatrick (D-02), Andy Biggs (R-04), David Schweikert (R-06), and Ruben Gallego (D-07) also hosted challenges and named winners.
Kirkpatrick awarded first place to “Memolog” by Gregory School students Erik Wisnom, Chris Allen, Ted Roberts, and Karl Ramus. Their app applied memorization techniques to any piece a student needed to memorize.
Biggs’ winner was an artificial intelligence-based wildfire prevention system by Hamilton High School student Prisha Shroff.
Schweikert awarded first place to “Zubin’s Dungeon Quest” by BASIS Scottsdale student Zubin Sidhu, a video game that blended education with entertainment.
Gallego’s winner was “Surviving the Pandemic While Back-to-School” by University High School students Kamille Cuison, Liana Kay De Guzman, and Nathan Caldwell-Meeks. Their app informed students about the background, treatment options, and safety protocols for COVID-19.
The 2021 Congressional App Challenge reported producing over 2,100 fully functioning apps. Over 7,100 students entered the competition through 340 congressmens’ challenges.
The annual Congressional App Challenge is funded by the Omidyar Network, Amazon (Web Services), theCoderSchool, Facebook, Replit, Accenture, Rise, ACT: the App Association, Comcast NBCUniversal, and CGI.
In addition to Lesko, Kirkpatrick, Biggs, Schweikert, and Gallego, Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-03) is also hosting a challenge this year.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
