Alejandra Caraballo is far from enchanted by Kamala Harris, but the prominent trans activist hopes more than anything that the vice president makes it into the Oval Office. 

Harris has long been an active advocate for the LGBTQ+ community. But her silence on trans issues throughout her presidential campaign has been a disappointment to many, especially as the Trump campaign’s anti-trans attacks grow more vicious by the day. 

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Caraballo, a civil rights attorney and clinical instructor at the Harvard Law School Cyberlaw Clinic, knows there are a number of strategic reasons the Harris campaign may be avoiding trans issues. While it doesn’t necessarily signify a lack of belief in trans rights, she worries it could suggest a growing willingness of politicians to leave trans people behind. 

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Nevertheless, Caraballo emphasizes that a Harris victory is the trans community’s best (and only) hope for a brighter future, explaining that if voters prove anti-trans platforms won’t win, Democrats will undoubtedly feel more empowered to fight for trans rights. 

Caraballo also knows it’s not easy to inspire voters by simply saying the alternative is worse, but today’s circumstances are so dire that it’s worth communicating just how much worse that alternative will be. 

Caraballo spoke with LGBTQ Nation about how in this monumental presidential election, there is only one possible choice. 

During Harris’ Fox News interview, she defended her support of gender-affirming care for trans inmates by saying the Trump administration had the same policy. You have criticized her campaign for using this argument in the past. Do you wish she had responded differently? 

It was better than the way her campaign framed it on Twitter. Because that way is scandalizing trans people’s healthcare, particularly very vulnerable trans people.

Years ago, I worked at the New York Legal Assistance Group, providing legal assistance to trans immigrants. I represented people who had been detained, and the stories I heard of abuse by the guards, abuse by fellow detainees, the purposeful withholding of medications, even just basic HIV medication, it was horrendous.

That’s where I come from when I hear this. They try to make this a gotcha or scandalize our healthcare instead of defending the principle that if people are held in the custody of the state, the state is responsible for providing healthcare. That is a neutral principle to stand behind. 

So it could have been a bit better, but she thankfully deflected and did help frame some of this as, people don’t care about this issue.

The Trump campaign spent 20 million dollars messaging this… to try and stir more animosity. People don’t care about this. The fact that the campaign is making this a centerpiece is just kind of absurd. It was helpful for her to have brought that up. 

The campaign handling this was not as great. She hasn’t mentioned trans issues, she doesn’t have any trans or even broadly LGBTQ policies on her platform on her campaign site. The DNC was the first since 2012 to not feature a trans person. 

It is kind of this purposeful avoidance of even acknowledging our community or defending our community when we’ve been subjected to literally the worst of the political backlash over the last two to three years.

Why this purposeful avoidance? Do Democrats think they have a better chance of winning if they don’t talk about trans people?

It’s such a low-salience issue. You’re not going to gain any votes and you’re not going to lose any votes on it. 

And I think sometimes politicians like Harris forget that they’re not just barometers of public opinion. They have the ability to shape public opinion. People look to political leaders to orient themselves around what’s politically palatable. 

A classic example of this was Biden in 2012 ahead of the reelection campaign forcing Obama to support marriage equality. Overnight, there was about a 10-point jump in support for marriage equality. 

Unfortunately, there are probably pollsters and advisers who see the polling on some of this, particularly trans sports, and think, this is political poison, don’t even bother. I think they’re just trying to avoid unforced errors.

But LGBTQ people are such a huge part of the coalition of the Democratic Party that [it’s unacceptable to] not even acknowledge us in any real, meaningful way. They think they can minimize attacks on this if they don’t bring it up, but they are going to attack us anyway.

Fox News brought it up right after immigration [during its interview with Harris]. There was immigration and trans. They clearly view this as a pressure point where they can attack Kamala, and in some ways they can also drive a wedge between her base by forcing her to distance herself from the trans community. 

The contrast between the intensity with which the GOP talks about it and the silence from the Democrats is becoming more and more apparent. It’s completely lopsided. 

We know this is a political loser. They tried this in 2022, and it was a huge losing issue. But they know it still drives down support for the trans community, so they view it as a win-win. It creates awkward moments for their political opponents, as we saw with Colin Allred and Sherrod Brown, and it also drives up negatives on trans people, which they want to do anyway. 

A lot of activists have said Allred and Brown should have just ignored the attacks instead of releasing the ads. Do you think they could have acknowledged it but in a better way?

Absolutely. 

There are ways of talking about this that can reframe the issue and also do the pivot that Harris did to say people don’t care about this. They care about how much their groceries cost, the gas bill. They care about housing and how they’re going to make rent. They’re not really considering a 13-year-old trans girl just trying to play volleyball with her friends.

So why do you think that Brown and Allred responded the way that they did – or at all?

I think Allred is just like, it’s Texas. I think he’s right on the edge of potentially getting there to beat Ted Cruz, and I think he really feels like if [Cruz’s anti-trans attacks] even cost him 50,000 votes, that could be the election.

But ultimately he still went with a terrible framing, as opposed to just saying, let’s focus on what Texans actually care about improving.

There’s a deep discomfort among a lot of Democrats because they broadly support trans people, but at the same time, I can almost guarantee you most of these people have not really spoken with trans people. They don’t know a trans person, so they don’t understand, and there’s a deep discomfort about talking about our issues. 

You mentioned Allred may just be trying to win in Texas. Is there any sort of “ends justify the means” here? Is there a scenario where it’s worth doing whatever needs to be done to get hateful Republicans like Cruz out of office? 

The worry is, if you get a candidate to win an election by throwing the trans community under the bus, does that mean they follow Labour in the U.K., where essentially the Democratic Party sees it as, if we strategically cave on trans issues will that help us in some closer elections? So that means we’ll allow for a federal ban on public funding for any gender-affirming care or a federal sports ban or any number of proposals that are circulating.

There’s a real worry that these kinds of caves will really affect people deeply. Those kinds of early warning signs are what started happening with Labour in the U.K. 

So are these ads from Allred and Brown a warning that could be happening?

Potentially. I think it depends how the election shakes out. I think if the Dems overperform and take Congress and keep the Senate, you’ll see them get a new energy around this. 

This is now two elections where Republicans have made this a centerpiece issue, and if they lose, it can then show Democrats they can have a spine on this and it’s not going to cost them votes. 

I’m hopeful, but there have been a lot of warning signs and a lot of strategic ways the Biden administration caved on very key policy issues on the Title IX regulations. Tea leaves are being shown that they’re strategically moving in a certain direction.

Obviously, Trump would be horrible for trans rights, but there are a lot of trans people who feel ignored by the Democrats and Kamala Harris. What would you say to those who are feeling disillusioned about the choices that they have? 

I feel that every day. I would crawl through broken glass to vote for Harris, but that doesn’t stop me from calling her out. I can hold two thoughts – she needs to do better and she needs to earn our votes, but the alternative is a nightmare.

Right now, there’s the Skrmetti Supreme Court case, and if we lose that in combination with a Trump administration, it’s not just health care for trans youth that’s going to get banned, but health care for adults will likely be restricted or banned entirely.

We’re likely going to see full-on public accommodation bathroom bans. It’ll be beyond open season without any ability to limit it in the courts because the Supreme Court will likely green-light open discrimination. You’ll have an administration that is going to want to just completely go after the trans community in every cruel way imaginable.

A Harris administration, while not perfect, at least won’t be targeting the community in that way and will be at least attempting in whatever ways they can to limit that at the state level. Granted, you cannot inspire people to vote based on saying the alternative is an eternal hellscape.

You have to view it as harm reduction. With Harris there’s a possibility to fight for another day and push on these policies. With Trump, there is not, especially in combination with the potential that he replaces another two Supreme Court justices. We’re talking generationally, trans people will be lost in terms of our rights. 

What kind of mobilization needs to happen right now to protect trans people?

Everyone needs to phone bank and canvass, especially if you live in a swing state. If you live close to a swing state, drive over if you can. 

If you can’t stomach it for Harris, there are some key Senate races, there are some key House races. So get involved, and if you don’t have time, donate as much as you can. If you even have more money to donate, donate to the Campaign for Southern Equality’s trans emergency fund. 

Just do whatever you can. 

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