U.S. women have had phenomenal success at the Olympic Games in Paris. Simone Biles has won more Olympic medals than any other American gymnast. Katie Ledecky has won more Olympic medals than any other American woman in any sport. Lee Keifer became a three-time gold medalist in fencing and competed against Lauren Scruggs in “the first All-American final in the individual foil in Olympic history.” U.S. women also won their “first-ever team fencing gold in women’s foil” and their first medal in rugby.

At this writing, more than two dozen women competing for the U.S. have won medals in events ranging from cycling to diving, shooting, and canoeing. Laura Kraut became “the oldest American woman to win an Olympic medal since 1904” as part of a team equestrian event. More medals are likely coming in swimming and gymnastics, and the track and field events are just getting started.

Instead of celebrating the successes of American women in France, Iowa Republicans joined the stampede of conservatives who used a boxing match between an Algerian and an Italian to push their anti-trans agenda.

Full disclosure: I love the Olympics. I bought a television to watch the Summer Olympics in 1996 after living without a tv for more than a year. When my children were little, we abandoned our otherwise strict screen time limits during the Summer or Winter Games.

When possible, I will watch for hours a day, from the marquee events to sports rarely acknowledged outside Olympic competition. I follow the stars like Biles and Ledecky, but also enjoy the triumphs of athletes I’d never heard of, like “pommel horse guy” Stephen Nedoroscik or Yusuf Dikeç, who just won a silver medal for Turkey in shooting without using any special gear.

One sport I don’t care for is boxing. I understand that great skill and training are involved. I’ve just never wanted to watch people punch each other until someone quits or gets knocked out.

I’m not alone. Boxing is much less popular than it used to be, and women’s boxing has never been a big attraction in the U.S. I’d be surprised if any Iowa politician could have named a single female boxer prior to the Paris Olympics.

That changed on August 1. Conservative outrage exploded after Angela Carini of Italy forfeited her match against Imane Khelif of Algeria. Matt Gertz covered the “hateful frenzy” in an excellent piece for Media Matters. “The U.S. right quickly seized on the match and plugged it into their obsessive anti-trans hysteria, falsely declaring Khelif a man who had beaten up a woman.”

Being transgender is illegal in Algeria. Khelif may have an intersex condition; the details are not known. She has been female on all official documents since birth. She has competed in women’s boxing for years, with “modest success,” losing nine matches.

Yet many Republicans and anti-trans activists declared Khelif is a man with XY chromosomes. As Gertz recounted, Fox News and other conservative outlets prominently covered the boxing controversy, trying to pin it on Vice President Kamala Harris.

Attorney General Brenna Bird was the first prominent Iowan to chime in on the morning the story broke. “Examples like this are exactly why we must end Biden & Harris’s war on women.”

To state the obvious: neither Biden, Harris, nor any other U.S. politician controls how Algeria selects its athletes. The International Olympic Committee’s Boxing Unit cleared Khelif for competition in France. The IOC hasn’t required DNA testing for female athletes since 1996, in part because not everyone with XY chromosomes responds to the male hormone testosterone.

It’s also comical for Bird to decry a “war on women.” Three days before the boxing controversy, hundreds of thousands of Iowa women lost the right to make their own medical decisions, thanks to an abortion ban Republicans enacted and Bird’s office defended in court.

Never mind the facts: the Iowa GOP quickly amplified Bird’s post with the comment, “Kamala’s America.”

Meanwhile, the National Republican Congressional Committee amplified a post by Libs of TikTok, one of the leading purveyors of bigotry against LGBTQ people. Even though Khelif is not transgender, the NRCC connected this controversy to a 2023 U.S. House vote last year on “biological males in women’s sports.”

It didn’t take long for U.S. Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks to share the NRCC’s post, adding that her Democratic challenger Christina Bohannan “would vote the same way.”

Senator Joni Ernst used her official account to share a post from Riley Gaines, who’s built a career railing against transgender participation in sports. Ernst added, “Men do not belong in women’s sports. #IStandWithAngelaCarini“

Naturally, Governor Kim Reynolds got in on the game. She’s been using anti-trans policies to build her brand since 2021 and signed a state law in 2022 banning transgender athletes from playing girls’ or women’s sports. “Men and women are biologically different. It’s as simple as that,” Reynolds asserted this week. “Until everyone adopts common-sense policy to protect women’s sports, like we have in Iowa, women don’t stand a chance.”

Again: Khelif is not transgender. We don’t know her genetic makeup.

As for women not standing a chance, when Iowa’s trans sports ban was pending in the legislature in 2022, I was unable to find a single example of an Iowa girl or woman who had lost a spot on any team, let alone a championship or a scholarship in any sport, because of competition from a transgender peer.

Gertz noted that the boxing outrage erupted on the same day Ledecky won her thirteenth Olympic medal and Biles won her sixth gold medal. He concluded, “This sustained freakout is a perfect example of how the right-wing media has become pickled in its own outrage. They simply cannot let themselves — or anyone else — enjoy good things that normal Americans enjoy, like the dominance of U.S. women at the Olympics. Instead, they build their audiences and make their money by constantly trying to find something they can get mad about.”

Although Iowa GOP politicians don’t personally profit from whipping up fear and loathing about trans people, pushing that button has become as much a crutch for them as it is for conservative media outlets. When state party chair Jeff Kaufmann was trying to convince activists to fall in line behind Donald Trump, he started shouting about “hairy beasts coming into girls’ locker rooms.”

If any of these people care about female Olympians in other contexts, you wouldn’t guess it from their public comments. I haven’t seen the Iowa GOP, Bird, Ernst, or Miller-Meeks post anything on social media about the Paris Olympics, other than their attempts to jump on the boxing bandwagon.

Reynolds was also silent about the Olympics on her social media prior to the boxing controversy—though she did express pride in Karissa Schweizer on August 2, after the Iowan qualified for the women’s final in the 5,000 meters.

My advice to Iowa Republicans is to spend more time watching Olympic excellence and less time looking for any excuse to rile up their base against LGBTQ people.

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Top photo first published on Mariannette Miller-Meeks’ political X/Twitter feed on July 17.