Democratic politicians may still be struggling to respond to anti-trans attacks from Republicans, a report in Axios suggests.

Anti-trans politics dominated the 2024 election season when Donald Trump painted former Vice President Kamala Harris as too far to the left on the issue and spent hundreds of millions of dollars on ads to hammer the message: “Kamala Harris is for they/them, President Trump is for you.”

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The Harris-Walz campaign largely tried to avoid the issue, perhaps hoping voters would believe that Harris’ position on trans rights was not that important in determining who should be president.

Perhaps the Harris-Walz campaign was caught off guard, and it’s possible that Democrats have spent the past year developing a better response. Axios sent three questions to 11 possible 2028 Democratic presidential candidates to test how they would respond now. The questions were:

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• “Should transgender girls be able to participate in girls’ sports?”
• “Do you believe transgender youths under age 18 should be able to be placed on puberty blockers and hormones?”
• “And what is your response to the question: ‘Can a man become a woman?'”

The first two questions are about the two policy issues where Republicans have found the most success, since they decided to start a moral panic about trans rights in the aftermath of their losses in 2020.

A 2025 Pew Research Center poll found that majorities of U.S. adults favor policies that ban trans girls and women from playing in women’s sports and allow minors to access gender-affirming health care. On the other hand, most Americans supported trans rights when it came to anti-discrimination legislation, and less than 50% of people said they supported “Don’t Say Trans” bills or bathroom bills.

Most elected Democrats, on the other hand, support trans rights – even as some raise questions about sports participation – and that position will likely be necessary to win the 2028 primary.

Of the Democrats they asked, Axios received responses only from the staff of former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel, and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro. Harris, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY), Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, Sen. Cory Booker (NJ), Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, Sen. Chris Murphy (CT), Rep. Ro Khanna (CA), and California Gov. Gavin Newsom did not answer.

Buttigieg’s staff didn’t answer the questions individually but instead pointed Axios to a July 2025 NPR interview where he said that trans rights issues should be handled with “compassion for transgender people” and “empathy for people who are not sure what all of this means for them.” He said that there were “serious fairness issues” when it came to sports participation that have to be answered, but that “decisions should be in the hands of sports leagues and school boards and not politicians.”

Emanuel said he would answer “no” to the question of whether “a man can become a woman” and to the sports question, but that decisions about health care should be left to families.

Shapiro pointed reporters to an interview with The Atlantic where he said that local sports officials should make decisions about sports participation, but also said that trans people don’t “deserve an unfair advantage on the playing field,” something that the science is not clear about.

A recent publication by the Human Rights Campaign entitled “One Year Out” is trying to help Democrats with messaging on trans issues for the 2026 midterms and heaps praise on Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger’s (D) approach in the 2025 off-year elections.

Spanberger faced constant attacks from her opponent, former Lieutenant Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears (R), who said that Spanberger supported “men in girls’ sports, bathrooms, and locker rooms.” Spanberger called the attacks “lies” and said, “We need to get politics out of our schools.” She also attacked Earle-Sears for her opposition to equal rights for LGBTQ+ people, including her statements that firing someone for being LGBTQ+ is not a form of discrimination. Spanberger won by a large margin.

HRC said that Spanberger was “attacked relentlessly,” but she “did not flinch.”

“Governor Abigail Spanberger did not stay silent. Her preparation and responses were swift and strong,” the HRC’s guide says. “She introduced herself and her values to voters long before the attacks came, launched her own ad to counter the message, and called out Earle-Sears directly on the debate stage.”

HRC also pointed out that Spanberger stressed that she’s a “mom to three girls in public school” in her first statement about Earle-Sears’ attacks on trans rights.

Republican lawmakers are still trying to pass bills attacking trans rights and they’re still trying to attach anti-trans riders to federal appropriations bills, which shows that they still believe the issue is salient for them. The 2026 midterms will likely be the next test of Democratic messaging on the issue.

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