It’s been a long year for Tumwater, a politically purple town with 24,852 people and three craft breweries that’s become a pawn in a political chess match over transgender rights.

And the whole year, it’s never gotten far from the paint. It began with a high school basketball game. It was February, and the girls’ JV Tumwater High School Thunderbirds basketball team was playing the Shelton High School Highclimbers.

Fifteen-year-old Thunderbird Frances Staudt was warming up when she noticed a girl on the other team was trans. She later told KOMO that she feared the girl would injure her during the game, and complained. But in Washington, trans girls and boys have played with, and against, cis girls and boys for nearly two decades. The trans girl could play, no matter how much Frances compl

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