Where the national Democratic party stands on trans issues right now was most clearly illustrated at a recent budget committee meeting for the GOP’s so-called One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB) ahead of a July 4 passage deadline dictated by the president.
During a committee mark-up in May, House Democrats did not contest a provision in the Republicans’ reconciliation bill that bans Medicaid funds from being used for gender-affirming care for trans people of all ages.
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Support for trans sports participation dropped since states started passing sports bans
While Democrats remain more supportive of trans people, support for trans sports participation has dropped since 2021.
Democrats “didn’t offer an amendment” to get rid of it, Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX), who led the ban effort, told NOTUS. “They offered an amendment for practically every provision, so this was telling. I think deep down they know they’ve lost the issue.”
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That provision marked the first time a federal restriction on gender-affirming care for adults has passed a full chamber of Congress.
Months after Republicans pounded Democrats and their standard bearer, Kamala Harris, during the 2024 presidential election over trans rights, Democrats have retrenched and are just looking to cope with Republican dominance on the issue.
They’re also confronting a self-reinforcing cycle of unfavorable news on trans rights, driving poll numbers in support ever downward.
Support for trans student-athletes participating in school sports has dropped since states started passing legislation to bar their participation, and the more the president talks about the issue, the more negative the polling becomes.
About 52% of Americans now approve of how the administration is handling transgender issues, according to a May poll by the Associated Press and the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
At the same time, fewer people support trans people in the military, bans on outing trans and nonbinary students to their parents, and gender-affirming care.
The same poll found that most adults oppose “public health insurance programs like Medicare or Medicaid from covering gender-affirming medical treatment.”
The Supreme Court’s recent decision in U.S. v Skrmetti that upheld a Tennessee ban on gender-affirming care for minors would have once occasioned Democrats to rally around a civil rights cause at the heart of their agenda, as they did with the high court’s decision to overturn Roe v Wade.
But rather than galvanizing opposition to gender-affirming care bans around the country, the decision has been largely met by Democrats with qualified opposition or silence.
Rep. Julie Johnson (D-TX), a co-chair of the Congressional Equality Caucus, said she believes “health care should be at the right and the role of the parent,” and the court “should have had a different decision.”
But, she added, “The Supreme Court has ruled. We’re either a party that supports the rule of law or not.”
By ruling that gender-affirming care for minors is a states’ rights issue, the U.S. will have a patchwork of rules around it. That’s the reality Johnson says we have to live with.
Trans Rep. Sarah McBride (D-DE), the first openly transgender member of Congress, said recently that Democrats have to “negotiate” with the drop in public support for transgender people.
“We shouldn’t treat the public like they’re Republican politicians,” she told The New York Times.
“The best thing for trans people in this moment is for all of us to wake up to the fact that we have to grapple with the world as it is, that we have to grapple with where public opinion is right now, and that we need all of the allies that we can get,” McBride said, explaining that Democrats need to create “room for disagreement.”
Like the Supreme Court’s ruling in Skrmetti, there is a patchwork of responses to trans issues among Democrats, who are carefully reading their constituencies as they calibrate their positions.
Nationally, though, they are at a loss, as seen in House Minority Whip Katherine Clark’s (D-MA) contortions to arrive at a position on the issue.
“We are listening very closely to what the American people are telling us, and they’re telling us they’re in an affordability crisis — and we never help people afford housing or health care or childcare by taking away rights from a very, very small group of people.”
“Republicans continue to push this issue as one to divide us,” she said.
Charlotte Clymer, a trans activist and Democratic strategist, was clearer. “We’ve been largely abandoned by the Democratic Party,” she said.
“Looking at the past six months or so, it’s become pretty clear that most federal Democratic lawmakers have no clear or obvious intention in standing beside trans people in this critical moment.”
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