Megan Rapinoe blasts Sophie Cunningham, Riley Gaines over women’s sports stance

Megan Rapinoe used the debut episode of her new podcast to accuse Indiana Fever guard Sophie Cunningham and OutKick host Riley Gaines of “villainizing” transgender athletes, extending a weekslong controversy that has followed the WNBA season.

Ms. Rapinoe, a former U.S. women’s national soccer team star and longtime advocate for transgender inclusion in sports, focused her criticism on a courtside photo Ms. Cunningham took with Ms. Gaines after the Fever’s Sunday loss to the Minnesota Lynx. Ms. Gaines attended the game holding a sign thanking Ms. Cunningham; she said an arena staffer told her to lower it because it contained Ms. Cunningham’s name. Target Center’s published signage policy does not bar signs for containing a player’s name, and the Minnesota Lynx did not respond to a request for comment on the incident.

“I don’t know Sophie, so I can only project what I see about her beliefs based on her actions,” Ms. Rapinoe said on the debut episode of “Why Are You Like This?,” a new interview podcast from the Vox Media Podcast Network, “and seeing a picture of her with Riley Gaines after the game told me everything I need to know about what’s happening.”

Ms. Cunningham’s comments trace back to a July 21 ESPN profile, in which she said she wants to “protect young girls in a locker room” from competing against biological males. The remarks touched off rallies outside multiple Fever road games. During the Aug. 2 game, Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve wore a “Trans kids belong” shirt on the sideline.

Ms. Rapinoe went on to criticize Ms. Gaines directly, saying she has made excluding transgender people from public life “her life’s mission” and linking her to the Heritage Foundation, which she said had published a report calling for Title IX to be repealed. The Heritage report, published in July by senior fellow Scott Yenor, does not call for repealing the 1972 law outright. It argues for eliminating Title IX’s proportionality requirements — the standard used to measure equal athletic opportunity between men and women — in favor of a model that “accommodates” what it describes as natural differences in athletic interest between the sexes. Ms. Gaines previously ran a separate organization, the Riley Gaines Center, at the Leadership Institute; she left that role in 2025 and is now under a multiyear deal with OutKick and Fox News Media.

Ms. Rapinoe also argued that laws restricting transgender athletes misrepresent who they affect. “It villainizes trans girls as if they’re somehow magically older than their peers,” she said, according to Pro Football Network, which reported that several Republican senators, including Ted Cruz of Texas and Eric Schmitt of Missouri, have publicly backed Ms. Cunningham’s position on social media.

Neither Ms. Cunningham nor Ms. Gaines had directly responded to Ms. Rapinoe’s podcast comments as of this writing. Ms. Cunningham has said repeatedly that she believes “there is room for absolutely everyone here” and has asked to shift attention back to basketball.