Only a week after Trump wrested concessions from the University of Pennsylvania that will bar trans-identifying athletes from competing in women’s sports, his administration is facing resistance from state officials who are being subjected to the same hardball strategy in California.

Despite threats of federal enforcement actions from Trump officials, the California Department of Education and the California Interscholastic Federation, the organization that oversees high school sports, are refusing to back down. They said this week that they are not complying with White House demands that the Golden State end the practice of allowing natal males who identify as women to compete in women’s sports.

It’s increasingly clear that recognizing biological sex as objectively real is only skin-deep for progressives who are ideologically committed to maximalist trans rights as a core plank of their political identity. Those committed to trans activism will seek recourse to courts and elections to continue the fight for unconditional transgender inclusivity — a cause viewed by progressives as the civil rights issue of our time.

And these skirmishes, which can take place anywhere from local school boards to federal courts, are likely to continue breaking out for years before the losing side cries uncle, or aunt, as the case may be.

In the case of UPenn, the university took action against transgender swimmer Lia Thomas, a biological male who had previously competed on the men’s team. Not only did they strip Thomas of first-place medals, they also awarded those medals to biological (or “cis”) women. Under the Trump administration’s instruction, the university then issued an apology to the women who were competitively disadvantaged or experienced anxiety as a result of Thomas’s participation.

However, it’s one thing to bring down a university by withholding millions of dollars in federal funds, but it’s another to take on a state government that is committed to “trans rights” as a nonnegotiable civil rights cause. More than 20 states nationwide have similar sports participation policies as California’s, where people born as males who identify as women can compete against natal women, according to The New York Times. This suggests that other states will look to California for guidance on opposing Trump on trans issues.

Trans participation in sport — and trans rights more broadly — is a hill progressives are willing to die on, despite public opinion surveys showing that they’re defending an unpopular position. And often, where California goes, other blue states follow. Another example, Colorado, just passed the Kelly Loving Act, which protects trans people from being “deadnamed” or misgendered, and prohibits Colorado courts from complying with out-of-state legal actions limiting “gender affirming care.”

These are just two examples, but it’s safe to assume that once progressives regain the White House, statehouses or federal judgeships, they will seek to continue this work that was so rudely interrupted by Trump’s election. This standoff will take years to play out in the courts and in the political arena, but if Democrats regain the White House in 2028, Trump’s seeming invincibility as the nation’s Biologist-in-Chief may turn out to be a chimera.