FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
News from Progress Michigan
November 21, 2025
Contact: Denzel McCampbell, denzel@progressmichigan.org
Most Hated Woman in Michigan Financially Supports Professional Loser Riley Gaines
DeVos Foundation associations reaffirm that anti-trans fearmongering is a calculated, hateful attempt to undermine public education so the wealthy can profit
MICHIGAN – In Michigan, a person does not have to look far to find the DeVos Family meddling in politics and funding people and operations that spread hate in an attempt to divide our communities, especially when it comes to public education. This time, Betsy DeVos, who has been hated by the nation since she became Trump’s education secretary in 2017 and by Michiganders far longer, has been caught paying six figures to support Riley Gaines’s work, which includes bullying, harassing, and threatening literal children for the crime of being trans and wanting to participate in extracurricular activities with their friends.
The following response to DeVos and Gaines’s antics can be attributed to Denzel McCampbell, managing director of Progress Michigan:
“Fearmongering about marginalized communities has long been a strategy employed by the right to divide and distract us from the fact that we’re all being robbed by billionaires and corporate greed. And in today’s digital world, the rise of right-wing influencers who seem like grassroots activists but are actually propped up by the wealthy, is key to their strategy to break our communities by making us fight one another instead of fighting wealth inequality.
“It’s been clear for a long time to those of us who are in touch with reality that Professional Loser Riley Gaines is nothing more than a cynical opportunist who saw a chance to acquire fame and money without doing any real work by making her tie for fifth place in a swimming competition everyone else’s problem. Gaines, a fully grown adult, has used her public platform to relentlessly bully and mock trans children, who already face high rates of harassment, violent threats, mental health issues, and suicidal ideation, merely for participating in sports with their friends.
“Gaines’s connection to the DeVos family also shines light on an overarching motivation behind the calculated effort to incite anti-trans panic: this is just one more attempt by the right to undermine trust in public schools so that they can step in and make a profit on what is supposed to be a public good. If the Betsy DeVoses and Riley Gaineses of the right really cared about women’s and girls’ sports, there are a million productive ways they could use their money and time to support them. Their decision to forgo all of those options and instead focus on enriching themselves through spreading politically-motivated, anti-trans propaganda is pure loser behavior, and more embarrassing than any placement in a sports competition could ever be. Shame on them.”
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