On Tuesday, the California legislature failed to pass two bills aimed at protecting girls’ sports from transgender inclusion. During debate on one of the bills, a Democratic state lawmaker compared the proposals to Nazi Germany’s holocaust practices.
California Assembly member Rick Chavez Zbur made the comparison while opposing the first bill, AB 89.
“This reminds me of what happened in Nazi Germany during the 1930s. This country is on its way to becoming an autocratic state. Transgender people were persecuted and excluded from public life in Nazi Germany, according to Zbur.
Mediators then interrupted Zbur, claiming that his comparison was inappropriate. But Zbur continued his analogy.
“This is about this, this bill,” Zbur insisted. “They were excluded from public life. They were detransitioned. They were imprisoned and executed in concentration camps. And the way it started was similar to what is happening in this country under the Trump administration.”
California Republican Assembly member Kate Sanchez, who proposed AB 89, said she heard audible gasps in the assembly chamber during Zbur’s argument, and one attendee had to leave the room.
“There was a lot of gasps and shock,” Sanchez told Fox News Digital.
“It was extremely tone-deaf. A Holocaust survivor had to leave the committee hearing due to its offensive content. She stood up and left because she was very uncomfortable with the situation.”
Several Democratic residents, including a member of the LGBTQ community, appeared on the assembly floor Tuesday to support the bill.
However, the Democratic majority eventually overturned AB 89. However, it will be subject to reconsideration at a later date.
“I am just so disgusted that my Democrat colleagues were unable to stand for the protection of women and girls,” Sanchez told the press. “They are not only ignoring the people’s will, but also the everyday mom, dad, and girl in sports.” They are ignoring what they want.
Avalino Valencia, a Democrat Assembly member, was absent from Tuesday’s vote. In Valencia’s absence, Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas joined the committee to vote. Valencia’s office did not respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
Just moments after Democrats rejected Sanchez’s bill, the committee voted on AB 844, which would prohibit transgender athletes from participating in girls’ sports and was proposed by California Republican Assembly member Bill Essayli. The debate over Essayli’s bill featured testimony from conservative activist and filmmaker Matt Walsh.
Essayli’s bill, like Sanchez’s, was rejected by the Democratic majority. Essayli told Fox News Digital that he believes the Democrats’ opposition to the two bills was intended as a message to Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Last month, Newsom sparked backlash from members of his own party when he said on his podcast that allowing trans athletes in girls’ sports was “deeply unfair,” but defended it anyway.
“I believe there is a civil war brewing within the Democratic Party over how to address these issues.” You have the governor going in one direction, and I believe what you saw today was the leadership of the legislature, which is even more radical and progressive than the governor, taking a completely different approach.
And I believe they wanted to send a message to the governor that they will not budge on this issue,” Essayli said.
“Today they wanted to send a message to their progressive, extremist base that they’re not abandoning them.”
The Democratic majority blocked both bills from passing just days after President Donald Trump’s Education Secretary Linda McMahon issued a formal warning to Newsom and the rest of the state, implying that federal funding could be cut if the state continues to allow transgender athletes to participate in girls’ sports.
“Allowing participation in sex-separated activities based on ‘gender identity’ puts schools at risk of Title IX violations and losing federal funding. “As Governor, you have a duty to inform California school districts about this risk,” McMahon wrote in the letter.
“As Secretary of Education, I am officially requesting that you notify this Department whether you will remind California schools to comply with federal law by protecting sex-separated spaces and activities.”
I am also formally requesting that you publicly assure parents that California teachers will not facilitate the fantasy of ‘gender transitions’ for their children.
The California Interscholastic Federation (CIF), the state’s high school sports association, is currently under federal investigation for potential Title IX violations following a series of controversial incidents involving trans athletes over the last year.
Following Trump’s signing of the “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports” executive order on February 5, the CIF was one of the first state athletic associations to announce that trans athletes would continue to compete alongside girls.
The CIF cited an 11-year-old state law, AB 1266, which has been in effect since 2014 and allows trans athletes to compete in gender categories based on gender identity rather than birth sex, as non-compliant.
Both Sanchez and Essayli told Fox News Digital they expect the Trump administration to amplify its pressure on the state and potentially cut funding in order to enforce the executive order after their bills failed to pass Tuesday.
“I think a lot will come down the pipe over the next week or so,” Sanchez told reporters. “There will be a lot of development from what I’ve been told.”
Essayli envisions a situation in California similar to the one that has occurred in Maine over the last month, where a public feud between Trump and Gov. Janet Mills has resulted in a hostile back-and-forth between state and federal agencies on the issue of trans inclusion.
“None of us really went in thinking the Democrats in the legislature were going to change their position on this today, but what we wanted to do is make a clear record, make our arguments and show the world where they stand, where the Democrats stand on this, expose their position on this,” Essayli told the newspaper. “And I think we accomplished that.”
