Democrats and Trans Rights
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Rep. Sarah McBride suggests Democratic Party overplayed their hand on transgender issues | Fox News Video
Rep. Sarah McBride suggested on Tuesday that the Democratic Party overplayed their hand on transgender issues over the 2024 election cycle, arguing they were too far ahead public opinion.
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Democrats’ wary response to the transgender ruling shows the party’s retreat.
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A flag with blue, pink and white stripes flies in front of the U.S. Capitol, with gray clouds in the background.
A rally in support of transgender rights in Washington this year.Credit...Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters
Leading Democrats offered a slow trickle of critical reaction on Wednesday to the Supreme Court’s decision upholding a state ban on some transgender care for youths, underscoring the new discomfort on the issue from a party that has long seen itself as a champion of L.G.B.T.Q. Americans.
Hours after the ruling arrived, some top Democrats like Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader, had denounced the decision as part of a “cruel crusade against trans Americans.”
But many others, including key players in the 2028 shadow primary race, had yet to weigh in. Gov. Gavin Newsom of California was posting on social media about the National Guard. Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania had thoughts about housing. Gov. Wes Moore of Maryland shared a celebration of Pride — but said nothing about the major new court ruling. Asked for comment, representatives for all three governors said they were not issuing any statements on the decision for now.
Even Democrats who condemned the ruling tried to turn the focus to other issues. Mr. Schumer suggested on X that Republicans were using the topic “to divert attention from ripping health care away from millions of Americans.”
The careful calculus reflected how the fraught topic of transgender issues has tormented Democrats for months, with Republicans putting them firmly on the back foot. Many party leaders now believe that liberal politicians took positions in recent years that deviated too far from the beliefs of the average voter.
Last year, Donald J. Trump painted Vice President Kamala Harris as too far to the left by pointing to her past positions on transgender care, including support for taxpayer-funded transition surgeries for prisoners and migrants, which she expressed on a questionnaire in 2019. (Mr. Trump elided the fact that appointees in his first administration provided gender-affirming care for a small group of inmates.)
“Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you,” declared a widely circulated Trump ad. The line of attack was considered by some Democrats to be one of the most effective against Ms. Harris.
Since her loss, they have made some efforts to pivot, conscious of polling like a New York Times survey in February that found that nearly 80 percent of Americans — including 67 percent of Democrats — believed that transgender female athletes should not be allowed to participate in women’s sports. A survey from SCOTUSPoll in April found that 64 percent of Americans, including 38 percent of Democrats, supported states’ being able to ban certain treatments for transgender minors.
But many elected Democrats still see themselves as important defenders of transgender Americans, and plenty of rank-and-file lawmakers had full-throated condemnations of the ruling on Wednesday.
“Trans youth and their health care are under attack — and now our highest court has joined in on the assault,” Representative Summer Lee of Pennsylvania wrote on social media.
Representative Brittany Pettersen of Colorado added: “As a mom, I can’t imagine the pain these families navigate as they’re denied the care their children need. Trans kids, like all kids, deserve the freedom to reach their greatest potential.”
Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois, who has a transgender cousin, appeared to be the most forthcoming of the party’s potential 2028 contenders, writing on X that “Illinois has enshrined protections to meet this very moment.”
“In a time of increasing overreach and hateful rhetoric, it’s more important than ever to reaffirm our commitment to the rights and dignity of the LGBTQ+ community,” he added. “You have a home here always.”
In recent months, other ambitious Democrats have sounded a different tune, with Mr. Newsom making headlines in March when he suggested that transgender athletes’ participation in women’s sports was “deeply unfair.”
Pete Buttigieg, who ran for president in 2020 and later served as transportation secretary, offered a nuanced answer at a town hall in Iowa last month when asked about transgender rights.
“While I think we do need to revisit some of the things that we have had to say policy-wise that haven’t kept up with the times as a party, that doesn’t mean, ever, throwing vulnerable people under the bus,” said Mr. Buttigieg, who is gay.
Asked whether Mr. Buttigieg had spoken about the ruling or would issue a statement, a spokesman for him replied, “He has not.”
Even Democrats without evident presidential aspirations have shifted on transgender issues this year. As Senator Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada voted against a bill barring transgender women and girls from participating on girls’ sports teams, she said she supported “fair play and safety” but not “transgender athletes competing in girls’ and women’s sports when it compromises those principles.”
And Representative Seth Moulton of Massachusetts, one of the first to break with his party on transgender athletes, faced a backlash in November when he said in an interview: “I have two little girls. I don’t want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete.”
Representative Sarah McBride of Delaware, the first openly transgender member of Congress, has focused less on her identity and more on issues like paid family leave and the minimum wage. In a statement on Wednesday, she said that the Supreme Court ruling “undermines doctors” and that “politicians and judges are inserting themselves in exam rooms.”
In a podcast interview this week with Ezra Klein, a New York Times opinion columnist, Ms. McBride suggested that activists took their feet off the gas after gay marriage was legalized and public perception shifted in favor of L.G.B.T.Q. rights. That has allowed, she added, “for the misinformation, the disinformation — that well-coordinated, well-funded campaign — to really take advantage of that lack of understanding.”
Representative Becca Balint of Vermont, who has been outspoken about defending transgender rights, said in an interview on Wednesday that Republicans were winning the messaging battle. As a result, she said, she has had to educate and reassure Democratic colleagues who were feeling unsure about how to talk about the transgender community.
“For any member who doesn’t have someone close to them who is a transgender American,” Ms. Balint said, “there’s a lack of confidence there in talking about the issue.”
But was she frustrated that more Democrats had not been vocal about protecting transgender rights?
“Look — I’m a queer American. I get frustrated a lot by how my community is attacked,” Ms. Balint said. “But I really try to take it in stride and perspective, which is: I know that underneath so much of this is about fear.”
Jay Brown, the chief of staff for the Human Rights Campaign, an L.G.B.T.Q. advocacy group, said several hundred people had shown up at a rally near the Supreme Court building in Washington on Wednesday afternoon, including Senators Jeff Merkley of Oregon and Edward Markey of Massachusetts, who both gave speeches.
But he acknowledged that his group had also had plenty of conversations with Democrats this spring who had expressed hesitancy on various aspects of transgender rights.
Mr. Brown compared the current challenge to the movement to legalize gay marriage, which confronted setbacks for years as it worked to change hearts and minds before eventually breaking through.
“The question there that was facing the movement was, ‘Are you pushing too hard for marriage equality?’ We didn’t give up,” he said. “We’ve got to do the work, and we’ve got real champions that are going to stand with us — and for those who aren’t there yet, we’ll get there.”
A member of the Supreme Court, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, was perhaps the most prominent voice defending transgender people on Wednesday.
In her dissent, Justice Sotomayor wrote that “the court abandons transgender children and their families to political whims.”
Michael Gold and Megan Mineiro contributed reporting from Washington.
What Has Medical Research Found on Gender Treatments for Trans Youth?
The Supreme Court cited the uncertainty in the scientific evidence when upholding Tennessee’s ban on the treatments.
June 18, 2025
A medical professional holding a syringe.
Puberty blockers are prescribed to prevent the permanent physical changes of puberty.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York Times
In Wednesday’s Supreme Court ruling, the chief justice made many references to the medical research on gender treatments for minors, arguing that the scientific uncertainty in the field justified Tennessee’s ban.
“This case carries with it the weight of fierce scientific and policy debates about the safety, efficacy and propriety of medical treatments in an evolving field,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote in the majority opinion. He argued that these questions should be resolved by “the people, their elected representatives and the democratic process.”
Countries across the world have grappled in recent years with thorny questions over the care for adolescents, which can include puberty-blocking drugs, hormones and, in rarer cases, surgeries. While the published medical evidence in support of such care is limited, many clinicians who provide these treatments and some families of transgender children say they can be beneficial and even lifesaving.
Systematic reviews commissioned by international health bodies have consistently found that the evidence of the benefits of the treatments is weak, as is the evidence on the potential harms. Small studies have suggested that hormonal treatments can improve mental health outcomes and well-being in some adolescents, while preventing the physical changes of puberty that might make it more difficult to live as the opposite sex. But few have followed children in the long term.
The drugs have risks, including the loss of fertility and the possibility that adolescents may come to regret the treatments, some of which are irreversible. An estimated 5 to 10 percent of patients choose to stop or reverse their treatments, a process known as detransition.
As demand for the treatments has risen, countries have chosen different ways to respond. Health agencies in England, Sweden, Finland and Denmark have limited the treatments to extreme cases or allowed them only in clinical trials. Medical groups drafting guidelines in Germany recently acknowledged the uncertain evidence but cautiously endorsed the treatments, citing the clinical consensus and the lack of effective alternatives.
“The Finnish, Swedish and U.K. approaches have some shortcomings in my opinion in answering what to do instead,” said Dr. George Romer, a child and adolescent psychiatrist who led the development of the German guidelines. “To conclude that because of the evidence you cannot treat would be very unusual in any other field of medicine.”
In his majority opinion for the Court, Chief Justice Roberts cited the changes in Europe as evidence of the uncertainty in the field. “The voices in these debates raise sincere concerns,” he wrote. “The implications for all are profound.”
He noted that last spring, the National Health Service in England published an independent review into the country’s youth gender services — known as the Cass Review, after Dr. Hilary Cass, who led it. That report concluded that the evidence to support the treatments in adolescents was “remarkably weak” and noted that “results of studies are exaggerated or misrepresented by people on all sides of the debate.”
In December, Britain announced that it was banning the use of puberty blockers in all children except for those enrolled in a government-sponsored clinical trial. That study, which will run until January 2031, will analyze the physical, social and emotional well-being of children prescribed puberty blockers over the course of two years.
In the United States, the issue has primarily played out in statehouses and the courts. Twenty-five American states have banned gender transition treatments for minors, laws that are now be protected as a result of the Supreme Court’s ruling. But American medical groups have continued to endorse gender transition treatments, largely sidestepping the debates about the evidence while firmly condemning the bans.
“Gender-affirming care is medically necessary for treating gender dysphoria and is backed by decades of peer-reviewed research, clinical experience and scientific consensus,” said Dr. Susan J. Kressly, the president of the American Academy of Pediatrics. The World Professional Association of Transgender Health and its American affiliate noted that bans on care “will make it much more difficult to create an evidence base to support access to health care of this kind.”
The A.A.P. announced that it was conducting its own review of the evidence in 2023 while continuing to reaffirm its endorsement of the treatments. That review is still underway.
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What to Know About the Transgender Rights Movement’s Supreme Court Gamble
A Times examination shows how a landmark case about gender-affirming care for minors was built on flawed politics and uncertain science.
June 19, 2025
A protester carrying a pink-and-blue flag in front of the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court’s decision on Wednesday allowing Tennessee and other states to ban gender-affirming care for minors was a crushing blow for the trans rights movement.
For some trans activists and their allies, the case, known as United States v. Skrmetti, was the culmination of a powerful Trump-era backlash against trans people, artfully stoked by right-wing politicians and abetted by biased media coverage. But some civil rights experts and veterans of the L.G.B.T.Q. movement view the Skrmetti case as a tragic gamble built on flawed politics and uncertain science.
An examination by The New York Times found that over the last decade, the movement was consumed by theories of sex and gender that most voters didn’t grasp or support, radicalizing and calcifying its politics just as the culture wars reignited. The decision by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Biden administration to take Skrmetti to the Supreme Court was “one of the biggest mistakes in the history of trans activism,” said Brianna Wu, a trans woman who serves on the board of Rebellion PAC, a Democratic political-action committee.
Here are six takeaways from the full Magazine article:
Some L.G.B.T.Q. activists and legal experts have long expected a defeat in Skrmetti.
In private meetings of L.G.B.T.Q. legal-advocacy groups, many lawyers expected a loss almost from the moment the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case, according to one person briefed on the conversations. On the outside, many experts considered the case an extraordinary risk. Not only was there little chance that the conservative-dominated court would expand heightened constitutional protections to trans people; a defeat in Skrmetti could open the door to other losses. “If you can’t win a challenge to strike down a gender-affirming-care ban, it’s going to be hard to win other cases around trans rights,” said Michael Ulrich, a professor of health law and human rights at Boston University.
Underlying Skrmetti was a broader cultural battle over how to understand — and describe — human identity.
In recent years, many L.G.B.T.Q. activists came to believe that gender identity should supplant older understandings of physical sex. In this view, all people have the right to determine their own gender, regardless of how they dressed or whether they opted for medical transition. This self-identified gender — not your physical body — should determine what appears on your driver’s license, which bathrooms you could access and what sports teams you could play on. When Joe Biden was elected in 2020, his administration embraced much of that worldview, directing government agencies to interpret old civil rights laws against sex discrimination to include this more novel — and more contested — concept of gender identity.
Protesters holdings signs reading “Bans Off Our Bodies” and “Trans Pride.”
Opponents of the Tennessee ban demonstrated outside the Supreme Court when the Skrmetti case was heard in December.Rhiannon Adam for The New York Times
Skrmetti marked a departure from the L.G.B.T.Q. movement’s winning political playbook.
For years, the movement pursued incremental legal and regulatory wins that, ultimately, sparked deep social change. Beginning in the 2010s, gay people won the right to marry and, along with trans people, serve openly in the military. The movement defeated “bathroom bills” aimed at trans people in states like North Carolina and Texas. Just five years ago, in Bostock v. Clayton County, the Supreme Court ruled that employees could not be fired for being gay or transgender. But with Skrmetti, a case originally filed by a team led by the A.C.L.U., the movement bet its future on a far more fraught question: whether children have a constitutional right to medical treatments that allow them to live and appear as a different sex.
Just as the L.G.B.T.Q. movement dug in on pediatric gender medicine, several European countries began moving away.
As Skrmetti and other lawsuits made their way through federal courts, some of the central medical claims girding the legal case for pediatric gender treatments — that decades of thorough study had found them to be safe and effective — began to unravel amid growing scrutiny by other doctors and experts. Studies known as systematic reviews raised doubt about whether gender-affirming treatments delivered the health benefits to young people that gender clinicians and L.G.B.T.Q. advocates were claiming in court. Finland, Sweden and Britain all restricted minors’ access to puberty blockers and hormones, even as many doctors, guided by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), continued to endorse the treatments.
Dueling cases over pediatric gender care raised questions about medical standards at the heart of the arguments in Skrmetti.
In a separate lawsuit against a similar ban in Alabama, state officials were able to obtain thousands of internal documents showing how WPATH developed its standards for gender medicine. Alabama’s lawyers argued that the documents showed that WPATH had drafted its guidelines in part to aid lawyers and activists working to expand access to transition care — and were aware that the care they were strongly endorsing for adolescents was backed by limited scientific evidence.
Democrats and their L.G.B.T.Q. allies misread the Supreme Court.
In Bostock, the Supreme Court cemented an important civil right for gay and trans people, ruling that a law barring job discrimination on the basis of characteristics like race and sex also protected trans and gay people. But Chase Strangio, who argued Skrmetti for the A.C.L.U., and other left-leaning policy and legal officials in the Biden administration became confident that Bostock could be leveraged into other areas of civil rights law. They hoped to advance a revolution in trans rights that had eluded them in Congress and many state legislatures. The court did not rule directly on whether Bostock could be applied to other statutes or the Constitution — but found that Tennessee’s ban would have survived Bostock’s legal logic.
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What Sarah McBride Gets Wrong
Congresswoman Sarah McBride recently interviewed with Ezra Klein at the New York Times, where she advocated for a politics of appeasement when it comes to transgender people.
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Pull Up the Roots
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After Getting The Ruling It Wanted, New York Times Publishes 6 Anti-Trans Articles
The paper has lost all claim to objectivity on transgender people.
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trans propaganda from a useless lying advocateAfter Getting The Ruling It Wanted, New York Times Publishes 6 Anti-Trans Articles
The paper has lost all claim to objectivity on transgender people.
no one is swayed by “Erin Reed” autogynophile tractsWhat Sarah McBride Gets Wrong
Congresswoman Sarah McBride recently interviewed with Ezra Klein at the New York Times, where she advocated for a politics of appeasement when it comes to transgender people.
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