The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) has released its report revealing the “helplessness” that female athletes face when forced to compete against men who identify as women or transgender women.

On Thursday, Senator Bill Cassidy (R, LA), the ranking member on the HELP committee, released the findings of the committee staff’s investigation into the effects transgender inclusion in women’s sports has had on female athletes. The investigation consisted of dozens of interviews with athletes, parents, coaches, administrators, and others connected and familiar with the issue.

“They feel helpless,” Cassidy said of female athletes in an interview with Fox News Digital.

“This is kind of a theme that we got: ‘Why am I even trying? I don’t have any hope whatsoever.'”

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) leaves a meeting with the Senate Republicans at the U.S. Capitol on November 16, 2022, in Washington, DC. During the meeting Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) overcame a challenge from Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) and was re-elected as the Senate Republican leader for the new Congress. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

The issue of transgender inclusion in women’s sports took on a heightened sense of urgency last year after the Biden Administration sought to expand Title IX – the law designed to prevent sex-based discrimination in education and sports that receive federal funds – to include gender identity along with biological sex.

A move designed to broaden the access of female-identifying males to women’s sports.

According to the HELP committee’s report, that effort has had disastrous effects on the morale and motivation of female athletes.

“It felt unfair and demotivating … to even want to try [or] to want to swim better,” said an anonymous female athlete at Roanoke College in Salem, Virginia.

The sentiment from the unnamed female athlete was so prevalent among the women at Roanoke College that 16 of the 17 members of the women’s swim team wrote a letter to the college’s athletic director saying they felt “manipulated and scared.”

Those feelings of fear and demotivation were not confined to the women’s swim team at Roanoke College. The report also detailed the sense of hopelessness felt by a cyclist at Colorado Mesa University who found herself competing against a trans cyclist.

“I’ve wondered what’s the point in even racing,” the female athlete is revealed to have said.

Notably, the report also contains testimony from two of notorious trans swimmer Lia Thomas’ teammates at the University of Pennsylvania. Thomas gained national headlines in 2022 by shattering female NCAA swimming records after deciding to identify as a woman. The results starkly contrasted with when Lia Thomas was known as Will Thomas and swam under his correct gender as a male. In men’s swimming, Will Thomas was a thoroughly mediocre competitor and a complete unknown. His rise to notoriety on the women’s side thrilled trans activists but left many of his female teammates scarred, as the report reveals.

University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas and Kentucky swimmer Riley Gaines react after finishing tied for fifth in the 200-yard Freestyle finals at the NCAA Swimming and Diving Championships on March 18th, 2022, at the McAuley Aquatic Center in Atlanta, Georgia. (Rich von Biberstein/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

“Our voices as women were completely silenced,” said two of Thomas’ former teammates. “If we wanted privacy and safety and equality, then we were bigots. This has roots in misogyny, and allowing this to go on is misogynistic.”

Senator Cassidy hastened to add that the women interviewed for the report were not pursuing a political or ideological agenda against the trans community.

“This is not bigotry,” Cassidy said. “These people we interviewed stressed they’ve got nothing against transgenders as a group.”

At the time of the rule’s announcement, Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona defended the Biden Administration’s effort to broaden Title IX.

Every student should be able to have the full experience of attending school in America, including participating in athletics, free from discrimination.”

“Being on a sports team is an important part of the school experience for students of all ages,” he said. “Being on a sports team is an important part of the school experience for students of all ages.’

Cassidy, however, sees the efforts at trans inclusion as being counterproductive and discriminatory towards women.

“I find it ironic the Biden administration talks about the mental health of the transgender individuals as a reason why they’re pushing those,” he said.

The senator added, “They’re totally ignoring the mental health and the feelings of fairness of the women who are competing.”

Cassidy, who has referred to Biden’s efforts at trans inclusion as the “death of Title IX,” has joined with fellow HELP committee member and former Auburn football coach Senator Tommy Tuberville (R, AL) have written letters to NCAA President Charlie Baker and Education Secretary Cardona, to delve deeper into how the governing body and administration are handling the incorporation of transgender athletes.