The NYT notices that Kamala Harris was protected from needing to state an opinion on the trans-athlete issue.

The observation is hidden away near the end of "How the War Over Trans Athletes Tore a Volleyball Team Apart.Blaire Fleming was a little-known college player. Then she suddenly became a symbol of injustice — to both sides of the controversy."

It's written like this, as if it was just a fluke that Harris never had to face this difficult, divisive question:

Following Biden’s exit from the presidential race last July, Kamala Harris seemed willing to address the trans-athlete issue. According to three people familiar with Harris’s campaign strategy, the campaign expected that the moderators would ask Harris about transgender children in sports during her September debate with Trump. The answer Harris’s advisers prepared for her, according to a person familiar with her campaign strategy, emphasized that trans children should be made to feel welcome in their schools but also acknowledged the concerns of parents whose kids, especially older ones, play competitive sports and want to make sure the competition is fair. But no one ever asked her, and the candidate didn’t bring it up on her own.

Oh? She "seemed willing"? I think if "no one ever asked her," it was because she never answered questions from the kind of people who would ask, and though she barely answered any substantive questions at any point, she only exposed herself to questions from interviewers who wanted to help her. So I don't think she "seemed willing" to address the issue! That she had an answer worked out, in case the question ever slipped through, proves virtually nothing, but I can imagine her circling around the abstract platitudes of making everyone feel welcome and simultaneously ensuring the competition is fair. The prepared answer is as puzzling as no answer at all.

On the topic of what actually is fair, I found this interesting material in the middle of the article:

Well over a decade ago... [t]he few scientists who did study the topic generally believed that transgender women who had undergone hormone-suppression therapy were, physiologically, more athletically similar to women than to men.

Did they believe that or did they say they believed that? But people tend to believe what they want to believe, and scientists are not immune to wishful thinking. What were these studies?

As more data on trans athletes was collected...

Were the studies just the collection of data? What data? 

... the scientific thinking seemed to indicate...

Seemed. 

... that this was true mainly of transgender women who had undergone hormone-suppression therapy either before puberty or very early in its onset; those who transitioned later and went through male puberty appeared to be, physiologically, more athletically similar to men. 

But in recent years, a growing body of evidence has indicated that differences in athletic performance exist between males and females even before puberty. Scientists have also found evidence, in animal models and cultured human cells, for what’s known as the “muscle memory theory.” 

This theory, as Michael Joyner, a doctor who studies sex differences in human physiology, wrote in a recent article for The Journal of Applied Physiology, posits that “the beneficial effects of high testosterone on skeletal muscle and the response to training are retained even when androgens are absent.” In other words, the physical advantages of having high levels of testosterone are believed to remain long after the testosterone is gone from the body.

All of this has contributed to the concept of “retained male advantage” — the idea that, even after hormone-suppression treatments, and even if those treatments start before puberty, trans athletes are likely to retain physical advantages over those who were born female.....