In less than a month, Washington voters will decide on whether to approve or reject Let’s Go Washington’s initiatives: IL26-638 (“Protecting Girls’ Sports”) and IL26-001 (“Restoring Parental Rights”).
As LGW — the political action committee founded and funded by MAGA-aligned billionaire Brian Heywood — finishes out its campaign to remove statewide protections for Transgender and other Queer K-12 students in both sports and the issues of privacy for school records, the family of one high school athlete who several times has spoken publicly about opposing Trans inclusion in women’s and girls’ sports has received over $22,000 in payments from the organization.
According to the Washington Public Disclosure Commission, from April to August 2026, LGW had paid a collective $22,236 to Amiee Staudt, parent to 17-year-old Tumwater High School student Frances Staudt.
The SGN has reached out to both the Staudt family and LGW and is still awaiting an initial reply.
Courtside misgendering
In February 2025, Frances Staudt competed in a basketball game against a Shelton High School team with Trans student Andi Rooks. In an interview with KOMO, Staudt said she grew increasingly upset during the game with Rooks’ presence and admitted to misgendering Rooks in front of several people.
“I was put on the spot in the whole entire gym. I looked over and I said, ‘You are a man,’ because that is my First Amendment right,” she said.
Both Aimee Staudt and her daughter also said they believe female-born players should always be notified when there is a Trans person competing, and should be given the option not to compete if so.
“If [the school district] would’ve given the families the opportunity in private and said, ‘Look, we realize this was a volatile issue,’ then we wouldn’t have played that day,” Aimee Staudt said.
After the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association ruled Staudt violated its code of ethics for misgendering Rooks, she and her family filed a civil rights complaint with the US Department of Education.
Aimee and Frances Staudt appeared on Fox News together on Feb. 27, 2025, to tell their side of the story. Frances shared that she didn’t know there was a Trans student on the other team until she heard her mother discussing it with her varsity coach.
“My mom said, ‘That’s a boy on the other team” Frances said.
When asked to give her reaction, Aimee Staudt said that the 18-year-old Rooks was “a grown man playing on a JV girls basketball team.”
She also said the coach told her the school district did not discriminate on the basis of gender identity, to which she responded, “Well, President Trump yesterday just signed an executive order saying there [are] no boys and men in women’s or girls’ sports.”
In March 2025, the DoE announced it would launch a probe into the Tumwater School District “amid allegations that it continues to violate Title IX by allowing male athletes to compete in girls’ interscholastic athletics.”
On September 28, 2026, the DoE announced it had formally rescinded Biden-era Title IX protections that protected students on the basis of gender identity and expression. DoE Secretary Linda McMahon said in a press release that the Trump administration would continue to “hold accountable any school or college that violates the rights, privacy, or athletic opportunities of our women and girls.”
Speeches and interviews
Frances Staudt has since made numerous other public appearances on conservative media programs and in-person LGW events, condemning LGBTQIA+-affirming lawmakers in Washington and calling on them to oppose Trans inclusion in school sports.
In December 2025, Staudt spoke at an LGW event at an elementary school in Tumwater.
“I’m here because I am mad. I am mad that this is being allowed to happen to me and to other girls,” she said to a crowd of 250 people, according to The Center Square.
She also claimed the Tumwater School District had targeted her for speaking out against Trans athletes, and said, “There are only two genders, and that is male and female.”
In April 2026, Frances Staudt, along with East Wenatchee high school student Annaleigh Wilson, met with Washington Superintendent Chris Reykdal to address their concerns about “letting boys in girls’ sports.”
“You know, it is pretty disappointing that this is who our state superintendent is, and that he is doing absolutely nothing to support us girls but rather the ‘Transgender’ athletes,” Staudt said to Kruse, using her fingers to air-quote the word ‘Transgender’.
At the August 8 LGW campaign kickoff in Olympia, Frances Staudt refuted criticism that IL26-638 would require medical professionals to do invasive genital examinations to determine if a student’s sex assigned at birth is female.
“As a 17-year-old female my entire life, I can confidently say my doctor has known I’m a female since the day my mom first brought me into the doctor’s office. There has never been a genital exam required for me to participate in a school sport, ever,” she said. “The real perversion is allowing situations where females are put at a disadvantage.”
According to section 1 of IL26-638, the measure would “[leverage] the existing physical examination process to verify biological sex.” In section 3, it describes the process as relying on a “student’s personal health care provider” to conduct “a health examination and consent form” to verify a student’s biological sex as female by using “the student’s reproductive anatomy, genetic makeup, or normal endogenously produced testosterone levels.”
Frances Staudt most recently gave a speech at an LGW event at the Firmly Planted Family Homeschool Resource Center (an alternative Christian education facility) in Vancouver, Washington, on October 3.
“There should be no reason why an 18-year-old man is in my locker room. Why is he competing in girls’ basketball and taking opportunities that were made for girls like me?” she said.
In an interview on KIRO in September, she was asked by John Crowley what she would do if IL26-638 is rejected by voters. She said, “I’ll keep fighting so that next time, girls can be protected. This isn’t over until every girl can go into their locker room or bathroom or go into their sport and know that they’re going to be safe and competing against other girls.”
Editor’s note: this article does not examine, nor make claims, about the legality of contributions and expenditures made by Let’s Go Washington.
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