Conservatives find their fighter in Sophie Cunningham

Indiana is in many ways a liminal state, the place you pass through between scruffy Cleveland and business-like Chicago, with little to inspire romantic odes to home. Its glacial flatness doesn’t lend itself to crusades, or to impressive scenes like a man on horseback silhouetted against the sunset. But Sophie Cunningham has let the state turn her into a combination of Sancho Panza and Don Quixote, willing to joust with a windmill. 

The reserve for the WNBA’s Indiana Fever comes off the bench for the latter-day contenders, spelling for star Caitlin Clark and averaging a respectable eight points per game. When then-Connecticut Sun guard Jacy Sheldon poked Clark in the eye during a particularly physical play in 2025, Cunningham avenged the perceived slight with a headlock during a later play. Her reputation as Clark’s right-hand and enforcer spread along with the viral clip.  

Since Clark’s days as a national college basketball player for the Iowa Hawkeyes, the right-wing grievance machine has tried to make Clark their Great White Hope. This seemed to accelerate in 2024 after she joined the WNBA, a league in which over 81% of the players are women of color. Clark, an inveterate trash-talker and hyper-competitive athlete, has seemed completely uninterested in courting controversy away from the hardwood. She’s avoided joining any conservative crusades and has done little to stoke the support of her most MAGA fans.

Enter Cunningham. In wide-ranging ESPN profile, she said she was concerned about the idea of trans women participating in women’s sports and wanted to “protect young girls in the locker room.” The Fever enforcer also worried that the next generation would have to “go against biological men.”

Cunningham doubled down in a press conference the next day, adding that her views were “common sense.”

“I said what I said,” she told reporters.

Republicans have spent years building a trans panic in the United States. When they heard their own talking points out of the mouth of a popular professional athlete, they pounced.

Republicans have spent years building a trans panic in the United States. When they heard their own talking points out of the mouth of a popular professional athlete, they pounced. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz rushed to applaud Cunningham. Fox News has spent the weeks since her inflammatory interview dissecting every questionable call against the second-stringer, as protests and counterprotests became a regular fixture at Fever games. Earlier this week, Vice President JD Vance encouraged her to keep up the fight.

“Sometimes when you’re courageous in this country, some of the worst people in the world try to attack you,” he shared with Fox News’ Laura Ingraham. “You are inspiring a dozen people for every person that criticizes you.” 

It’s not hard to see why conservatives raised their banners for Cunningham. In the tall, slight and blonde athlete, they had found a noble hero to fight against the tides of modernity in service of some older ideal. It doesn’t hurt that she could easily slot into Fox News’ afternoon lineup.

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The calculation from Cunningham’s end, if there is one, is also not difficult to understand. She wouldn’t be the first athlete who took a hard look at the calendar and their pocketbook and decided to get onboard the right-wing gravy train before they aged out of the league. Former collegiate swimmer Riley Gaines and former NBA player Enes Kanter Freedom have fashioned second acts out of their willingness to say what MAGA wants to hear. ESPN reshaped their entire network around Pat McAffee, sort of the Joe Rogan of former punters. 

For Cunningham’s supporters, it doesn’t matter that her opponents, as in “Don Quixote,” are not fierce giants but windmills posing no threat. Transgender people are a remarkably small share of the population, and the portion of them who chose to participate in organized sports is even smaller still. Frequently, when states pass laws barring transgender athletes from competition, the result can feel overwhelmingly personal to those affected, since the number of people excluded in a given state can be counted on your fingers. A West Virginia law barring public schools from allowing trans athletes to compete alongside students of the same gender was upheld by the Supreme Court this year. It applied to exactly one teenager. 

Cunningham’s fears are of her own making. There are no trans athletes competing in the top-tier of any major professional sport in the United States. The stories that anti-trans legislators and commentators tell are always hypothetical. Cunningham proclaims herself as a warrior for “common sense” by fighting off a scourge that no one can see. 

On the bright side, it looks like Cunningham might not have the fortitude for the life of a crusader. On Wednesday, she told reporters that she wants “to get back to basketball.” Whether that decision to “shut up and dribble” will hold as she enters the back half of her career remains to be seen. 

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