College Sports Bill Benched and El-Sayed vs. Rogers - 8/10/26

The battle over girls' sports continues. I'm Josh Mercer, editor of The Loop, and I'm here to take you behind the headlines. Senator Ted Cruz has a bill called the Protect College Sports Act, which sounds good, but in reality is written too vaguely, according to legal scholars and athletes like Riley Gaines, who want to keep men out of women's sports. Thankfully, the Senate has benched the legislation until September, giving senators time to fix a dangerous loophole. The bill, as it currently stands, creates a federal eligibility regime that would preempt state laws that are already in place to keep men out of women's sports.

Alliance Defending Freedom, CatholicVote, and Senators Holly Banks and Tuberville want it fixed. The Senate left town without a vote and returns September 14. Now, in related news, former NBA player Inez Cantor-Freedom is calling the bluff of the WNBA. That's right, he has declared himself eligible. For the 2026 WNBA Draft, testing the vague, inclusive gender identity rules of the Women's Basketball League. Now, the WNBA states that only women can play, but they don't define the term, nor do they address gender identity.

In other words, what happens when a man calls himself a woman? We'll be watching. Meanwhile, over at The Loop, we have a story detailing the growing partisan divide between young men and young women. And the Diocese of Wichita, Kansas is a... Establishing a formal seminary amid massive growth in priestly formation. That's no surprise to me. The Diocese of Wichita has made supporting Catholic education a top priority for Catholics of all ages. Today is the Feast of St. Lawrence, the Roman deacon and martyr who presented the poor as the church's true treasure.

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