Overview
- Matt Calkins resigned from The Seattle Times on Thursday, Aug. 20, 2026, and immediately posted the rejected column on his Substack under the headline arguing that opposing male participation in women’s sports is not automatically transphobic.
- Calkins says he wrote the piece after interviewing two Washington student-athletes at a July 28 rally for Indiana Fever guard Sophie Cunningham and after one teen, Ahnaleigh Wilson, was allegedly confronted courtside by Seattle Storm co-owner Celeste Keaton.
- The WNBA disciplined Keaton by suspending her from five home games and fining her for the arena incident, an episode Calkins says motivated his column and raised questions about how young athletes who oppose trans participation are treated.
- Calkins told colleagues the rejected Storm column was one of several opinion pieces the paper had declined in recent years, and The Seattle Times had not offered a public response to his resignation in initial coverage.
- Hours after he quit, OutKick founder Clay Travis publicly offered Calkins a potential job, a fast recruitment that illustrates how local newsroom disputes over hot-button topics can be amplified by partisan media and shift writers to alternative platforms.