California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), an LGBTQ+-rights pioneer who is widely considered to have presidential ambitions, recently told MAGA influencer Charlie Kirk that it’s “deeply unfair” to allow transgender female athletes to compete against other girls and women. Newsom also agreed that Trump’s 2024 campaign ad criticizing then-Vice President Kamala Harris’ support of taxpayer-funded gender-affirming surgeries for trans inmates was “devastating” on her presidential bid.

Newsom’s response echoes other post-election Democrats who say that supporting trans athletes and prisoners alienates voters. His comment also comes on the heels of President Donald Trump issuing executive orders banning trans athletes, restricting gender-affirming care, and ending all federal recognition of trans identities (including rights for trans inmates).

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“I think [the trans athlete question is] an issue of fairness, I completely agree with you on that…. it’s deeply unfair,” Newsom told Kirk, the first guest of his new podcast This is Gavin Newsom. “I am not wrestling with the fairness issue. I totally agree with you.”

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Newsom also noted that one of Trump’s 2024 campaign ads, which showed Harris explaining her support of gender-affirming surgeries for trans inmates, was “devastating.” A majority of Americans oppose such government-funded surgeries, a February 2024 YouGov poll showed, though Newsom suggested that nearly 90% of Americans disagreed with Harris’ position.

Trump‘s ad accused Harris of supporting “taxpayer-funded sex-changes for prisoners and illegal aliens” — a crude restatement of her 2019 ACLU questionnaire answer that all federal prisoners, including trans immigrants detained by border agents, deserve medically necessary care, which includes gender-affirming care and surgeries. The Constitution requires U.S. prisons and detainment facilities to provide such care. Courts have upheld this requirement, and it remained federal policy during Trump‘s first presidential administration.

“She didn’t even react to it, which was even more devastating,” Newsom said of the ad. “Then you had the video [of Harris] as a validator. Brutal… It was a great ad.”

Later on in Newsom’s discussion with Kirk, Newsom — who famously ordered San Francisco county clerks to issue same-sex marriage licenses in 2004, 11 years before the U.S. Supreme Court legalized the unions nationwide — compared his position on trans athletes to conservatives who oppose same-sex marriage on principle, Politico reported. Newsom praised Kirk and other conservatives for continuing to oppose same-sex marriage despite the widespread legal and social acceptance of such unions.

Newsom also spoke to Kirk about book bans spearheaded by the anti-LGBTQ+ parents’ rights group Moms for Liberty. In a clip of the discussion posted on Newsom’s X account, he largely agreed with Kirk’s framing on the issue that the group sought to ban “pornography” from libraries and doesn’t mention that Moms for Liberty generally refers to non-pornographic titles that are inclusive of LGBTQ+ people and non-white racial identities as pornography in order to drum up support for banning them.

The Human Rights Campaign President Kelley Robinson criticized Newsom for his statement, writing, “When LGBTQ+ lives are under attack, real leaders don’t hedge — they fight. Across this country, extremists are stripping away rights, banning books, and targeting trans kids just for being who they are. This is not the time for political calculations or playing it safe — it’s time to be bold, to stand up, and to say unequivocally: We will protect LGBTQ+ people with everything we’ve got.”

“Our message to Gov. Newsom and all leaders across the country is simple: The path to 2028 isn’t paved with the betrayal of vulnerable communities — it’s built on the courage to stand up for what’s right and do the hard work to actually help the American people…. The fight for equality has never been easy, but history doesn’t remember those who waver — it remembers those who refuse to back down.”

Responding to Newsom’s comments, Lori Lightfoot, the lesbian former Chicago mayor said, “It’s disgusting. There are kids waking up today in California with this news thinking that their governor hates them, and rightly so.”

Rep. Sarah Jacobs (D-CA), vice chair of the Congressional Equality Caucus, said, “What’s unfair is the targeting of transgender kids and politicians abandoning them for political expediency.”

The progressive-leaning publication Mother Jones noted that Newsom’s podcast promises to feature MAGA figures that he “fundamentally disagrees with.” However, the publication opined that Newsom seems to fundamentally agree with Kirk on this issue.

Kirk is the founder of Turning Point USA, an organization for young conservatives that is generally anti-LGBTQ+ and pro-Trump.

Trump’s ad caused some Democrats to oppose trans rights

“We just stepped too far out of the bounds and let the far left drive the narrative,” an anonymous Democratic strategist from a swing state told Politico in an article about Newsom’s comments. “Our own voters don’t agree with trans athletes in youth or college sports.”

“To have the governor of one of the bluest states come out and say this, saying our party has gone too far left, then it’s a permission structure for other Democrats to do this, too — to start saying publicly what people have been saying privately,” the strategist said.

Republicans invested about $215 million into airing anti-trans TV ads that repeated claims about Democrats wanting “boys to play girls sports” and supporting taxpayer-funded gender-affirming surgeries for inmates. One ad — aired repeatedly during football games to reach male voters and suburban women — showed pictures of Harris next to a drag queen, a trans woman, and a nonbinary person and ended with the tagline, “Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you.”

After Harris lost the election, The New York Times said the ads helped paint her as “dangerously liberal” and out of touch with everyday voters. Trump aired the ads repeatedly during televised sporting events, mostly aiming to reach male voters (including Black and Latino men). After the ad aired, the race shifted 2.7 percentage points in Trump’s favor, according to an analysis by Harris’s leading super PAC Future Forward.

The trans activist speaking with Harris in the ad, Mara Keisling, also called the ad “devastating,” but said it was devastating to trans people.

“Do I think it cost Kamala Harris the election? No. Did it solidify Trump’s attacks that she was a quote ‘San Francisco liberal’? Probably some. But the really scary part about it is how much it terrified children and parents of children,” Keisling said. “I don’t think we’re going to know for years how much $200 million plus in anti-trans ads has hurt trans people. We know it’s hurt us individually, but we don’t know how much it’s set back the movement for our rights.”

An estimated 66% of Americans support policies requiring trans athletes to compete on teams that match their sex assigned at birth, and 56% support banning gender-affirming healthcare for minors, according to Pew Research.

Before the election, two Democratic congressional candidates were criticized for releasing ads clarifying that they don’t support trans athletes: Rep. Colin Allred (D-TX) and Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) — both men lost their congressional races against Republicans who ran transphobic ads.

Since the election, numerous Democrats and pundits claimed that trans issues contributed to Democrats’ Election Night losses. Gilberto Hinojosa, the Texas Democratic Party’s now-former chair for the previous 12 years, said that Democrats lost because they supported trans rights and other cultural issues that a “bulk of our population does not support.” Hinojosa later apologized and resigned, citing Democrats’ “devastating defeats up and down the ballot.”

Reps. Tom Suozzi (D-NY) and Seth Moulton (D-MA) both said that Democrats shouldn’t be defending “biological boys… playing in girls’ sports.” Moulton’s campaign manager and political committee director resigned after Moulton’s comment, but Moulton has doubled down, telling CNN that he “may not have used exactly the right words” but was “speaking authentically as a parent about one of many issues where Democrats are just out of touch with the majority of Americans.”

Joe Scarborough, host of MSNBC’s Morning Joe news talk program, said the anti-trans ads “had a bigger impact than any ad that ran” and said that the issue has even alienated Democratic voters who have daughters playing sports and are afraid of publicly discussing trans athletes for fear of being “canceled” for saying something “politically incorrect.”

Indeed, the attacks occurred in a political climate that has seen increasing right-wing-led reactions against trans people: 26 states have laws banning trans athletes in sports and gender-affirming care for trans youth. 

Trans advocates warn Democrats not to scapegoat trans people for election losses

“Please do not blame trans issues or trans people for why we lost,” Sam Alleman, the Harris campaign’s LGBTQ-engagement director, wrote on X. “Trans folks have been and are going to be a primary target of Project 2025 and need us to have their backs now more than ever.”

Out Rep. Becca Balint (D-VT) said, “No, we’re not going to abandon our support of all Americans, including our trans friends and neighbors and family members. Absolutely not.” Instead, Balint said that Democrats should work on strengthening their coalition of voters.

Brad Pritchett, the interim chief executive of LGBTQ+ advocacy group Equality Texas, cautioned, “This is something that Democrats need to stop and remember what their values are. We live and run campaigns by the values we hold dear.”

He also noted that NBC News exit polls showed that 86% of LGBTQ+ voters supported Harris and that Democrats shouldn’t be “alienating” some of their most loyal supporters.

Echoing Balint’s comment, Sarah Kate Ellis, president and CEO of GLAAD, said, “Trans people and other marginalized communities were unwillingly dragged into a relentless, baseless smear campaign from the right wing throughout this election. Mainstream media should be focusing on the facts: this was an immoral onslaught against a small group of people who just want to be themselves and live safely… The inaccurate fear tactics became a distraction that allowed candidates to dodge accountability for real issues on the minds of voters like economic policies, abortion access, and healthcare.”

Times columnist Philip Elliott wrote that Democrats who are blaming trans issues for Democrats’ election losses are treating trans people as a “scapegoat,” adding, “Rather than ask why Democrats didn’t do more to explain that standing up for trans kids is just the right thing to do, these politicians are trying to absolve their compatriots’ silence.”

MSNBC columnist Hayes Brown noted that Democrats only spent $9 million to refute the GOP’s anti-trans attacks, rebuffing the idea that Democrats lost for embracing trans issues too tightly. Brown noted that numerous trans and nonbinary candidates won historic races on Election Day, rebuffing the idea that voters are transphobic.

As an example of how Democratic candidates could address the issue head-on, trans journalist Erin Reed pointed to Jeff Jackson, a Democrat who recently won his race to become North Carolina’s next attorney general, as an example of how to effectively counter anti-trans messaging: Stand up for the dignity and inclusion of all people, tell Republicans to stop trying to regulate people’s personal medical decisions, and hammer the poor records of their political opponents while acknowledging voters’ economic concerns.

Experts say that the anti-trans stigma created by such political attacks linger long after elections end and harms the mental well-being of trans people (particularly young ones). The attacks have also gotten some Democratic politicians and pundits to argue that Democrats should start opposing trans rights to appeal to more voters.

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