Politics

Democrats face an inflection point on trans issues after Newsom comments on sports

Published

2 years ago

March 6, 2025

Gavin Newsom’s provocative new position on trans athletes on Thursday reopened a rift in the Democratic Party that could serve as one of the earliest flash points in the party’s 2028 primary.

Within hours of the California governor condemning trans athletes playing in female sports — shocking his party in his home state — some Democrats unloaded on the likely presidential contender.

“It’s disgusting,” said Lori Lightfoot, the former Chicago mayor. “There are kids waking up today in California with this news thinking that their governor hates them, and rightly so.” Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) urged Democrats to “not take the bait and give in to their anti trans people rhetoric,” though she hadn’t seen Newsom’s comments.

Major LGBTQ+ organizations immediately made clear they’re looking at trans athletes as a litmus test for ambitious Democrats. “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,” said Human Rights Campaign President Kelley Robinson.

But to moderates, Newsom was offering a lifeline for a party plagued by the culture wars and the polarizing politics of trans women in sports. His comments were the latest from a field of potential contenders seeking to distance themselves from the identity politics of 2024. In recent weeks, former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg criticized some approaches to promoting diversity as responsible for how “Trump Republicans are made,” while Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker cited a coming budget deficit for a proposal to cut a health care benefit for some noncitizen immigrants.

“We just stepped too far out of the bounds and let the far left drive the narrative,” said a Democratic strategist from a swing state, who was granted anonymity to speak freely. “Our own voters don’t agree with trans athletes in youth or college sports.”

The strategist said, “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.”

Still, Newsom was staking out controversial ground — and potentially alienating whole swaths of activists ahead of 2028. In the hours after saying in a discussion with conservative activist Charlie Kirk on Newsom’s new podcast that it’s “deeply unfair” for trans athletes to play on female sports teams, no other Democrats with 2028 presidential ambitions were willing to back him publicly.

Trans rights has been a difficult subject for Democrats since Trump turned the issue into a potent weapon in his 2024 campaign, unloading millions of dollars in attack ads on Kamala Harris, including one with the tagline, “Kamala’s For They/Them. President Trump is for you.” In the aftermath, many moderates argued the Democratic Party had shifted too far into identity politics and ideological litmus tests.

Newsom, in the same interview with Kirk, said he considered those ads — going after Harris’ support for taxpayer-funded transition-related medical care for detained immigrants and federal prisoners — to be Trump’s most effective political attack against the former vice president.

Some Republicans cast Newsom as craven for bucking most other Democrats. On X, Trump ally Richard Grennell said the California governor should be seen as having “Flip-Flopped on Trans Athletes in Sports after viewing the polling.”

Recent polling supports moderating on the issue. While the majority of American adults support policies protecting trans people from discrimination, 66 percent of those surveyed favor requiring trans athletes to compete on teams that match their sex assigned at birth, and 56 percent support banning health care professionals from providing care related to gender transitions for minors, according to Pew Research.

On Capitol Hill, most Democrats said they hadn’t directly seen Newsom’s comments but greeted the revelation he had interviewing Kirk on his podcast with somewhat of an eye roll. They refrained from directly critiquing the governor even as they disagreed with the sentiment.

“I just saw the headline. I haven’t read it but I know where I stand,” said Rep. Lateefah Simon (D-Calif.). “We don’t mess with our young people, our young people, we got to bring them in, we don’t want to exclude them.”

Democrats had almost unanimously voted against legislation earlier this year that would bar transgender athletes from competing in women’s or girls sports. Although some lawmakers leading up to the vote like Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) had generally said they opposed letting transgender athletes play girls sports, they ultimately chose to vote against the legislation and said it was overbroad.

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

Asked Thursday about Newsom’s comments, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said he hadn’t seen them but said Democrats opposed “unleashing sexual predators on girls throughout the United States of America.” Democratic leaders had dubbed the transgender sports bill the “Child Predator Empowerment Act” and argued it would lead to adults inspecting childrens’ genitals to assess their eligibility for sports.

In California, Democratic lawmakers in Sacramento described Newsom’s remarks ricocheting between their phones, trailed by incredulity and outrage at a governor who built his national political profile on recognizing same-sex marriage aligning himself with right-wing opposition to trans rights. As mayor of San Francisco, Newsom defied federal and state law by issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples

“We woke up profoundly disappointed and sickened, when you have someone who has been thoughtful and has been a very unwavering ally release a statement like that,” said Assembly member Chris Ward, a gay San Diego Democrat who has sparred with conservatives over trans issues. “Look, this is playing into a lot of the conversation that Donald Trump is obsessing about in order to distract us.”

Mia McCarthy, Amanda Friedman and Jeremy White contributed to this report.

Politics

How SNAP could crunch the midterms

Published

7 hours ago

October 10, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Under the political radar, the country’s food stamps program is undergoing a slow-motion transformation. The ramifications could bubble up into the midterms.

Changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program from Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill Act are rolling out in phases, from tougher work requirements to restrictions on non-citizens. Food stamp rolls already shrank by more than 5 million people nationwide as of this summer, as the hardest-hit state, Arizona, saw an outright majority of its food stamp recipients lose benefits.

The latest alteration clicked into place Oct. 1, when the share of administrative costs states and counties have to pay rose to 75% from 50%. An even bigger financial shift looms in a year, when states with high payment error rates will have to assume some benefit costs for the first time, a scenario that’s already rippling through state and local budget planning.

It all adds up to a new era in federal-state relations — and in the size and nature of the welfare state.

In a year when affordability worries top voters’ priority lists and grocery prices strain their wallets, Democrats think the SNAP shift gives them an opening to make Republicans pay politically after the GOP used social safety net cuts to food aid and Medicaid to help pay for last year’s tax cuts.

“People are getting kicked off these programs at the very moment they’re going to the polls to vote,” House Agriculture ranking member Angie Craig (D-Minn.) said. “I sure wouldn’t want to be a Republican headed into the November ballot.”

But Republicans think they have a compelling story to tell voters, trying to right-size a program that spends millions of dollars on erroneous payments. The SNAP changes align with the Trump administration’s broader push to crack down on fraud and make the government smaller or more efficient. Implementing stricter work requirements for welfare often polls well, and trying to move people toward work gets at the root causes of poverty, they argue.

“The premise is simple: Let’s make sure that this program is preserved for those truly in need, and that we aren’t squandering taxpayer dollars,” a senior USDA official told Playbook in an interview. “And let’s make sure that if folks are able-bodied, they are work training or volunteering for 20 hours per week.”

That doesn’t mean Republicans in competitive races are putting SNAP and Medicaid cuts front and center on the campaign trail. When they tout last year’s megalaw, new tax breaks typically lead the messaging. And 10 frontline GOP House campaigns didn’t respond to requests for interviews about how they can win on SNAP.

At the state and county level, some governments are scrambling to prepare for a massive cost shift, hitting at the same time as significant Medicaid changes. The resulting bureaucratic jumble has contributed to some of the SNAP losses this year, as recipients struggled to get through overtaxed call centers, some states cut staff, and others tightened their processes.

“It really sets up a change in the federal responsibility, and I view it as a slippery slope,” warned Barbara Guinn, New York’s commissioner of the Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance. Her state is staring down a possible $1 billion added burden next year, though they’re advocating for a repeal of the benefits change. “Once they implement any kind of cost shift, I think it will be easier for them to take similar actions in the future.”

Whether to delay next year’s cost shift has already generated tensions over the farm bill in the Senate, where Democrats are demanding a longer postponement than Republicans’ offer of one year. Some Minnesota counties are considering significant property tax increases to pay for the extra costs, Craig said: “We’re going to be pushing hard for a two-year delay — at the request of, frankly, many of my Republican county commissioners, not just Democrats.”

Conservatives see the new calculus as a long overdue change to improve efficiency and incentivize program integrity. Improper payment rates are high in many states (though they comprise both over-payments and under-payments, and error rates are different from fraud). Those that reduce errors enough won’t have to take on paying the benefits. And even opponents of the changes think lower error rates are a worthy goal. SNAP rolls often ebb and flow with the economy, and the recent drop could reflect the job market pulling people out of need — or the removal of people who shouldn’t have been getting food stamps in the first place.

“There needs to be some level of accountability,” the USDA official said. States with high error rates “need to start to have skin in the game.”

But at a time when many households are already squeezed by inflation, the SNAP changes have correlated with higher numbers of Americans turning to charities to ward off hunger. The surge in people losing food aid came more quickly than expected. The unemployment rate hasn’t meaningfully changed. And the vast majority of large food banks in a recent NBC survey said they were grappling with higher demand, in part due to food stamp changes. Another rule kicking in the day after the midterms could lead to many retailers being bumped out of SNAP as places where low-income people can use their benefits.

For state governments, a set of sweeping operational changes are now underway to conform to new policy demands, often requiring more money or staffing at already under-resourced offices. And the budgetary stakes to get error rates lower are sky-high.

“It’s a really complicated, nuanced and confusing time for states who are trying to administer SNAP,” said Lauren Kallins, a senior legislative director at the nonpartisan National Conference of State Legislatures, which has advocated for a delay in the benefits costs shift.

Politics

David Plouffe warns Dems: Don’t take North Carolina for granted

Published

8 hours ago

October 10, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

National Democrats are increasingly shifting their attention away from North Carolina’s Senate race as polls show former Gov. Roy Cooper ahead, eyeing once long-shot races as possible pickups. But a veteran Democratic strategist who helped deliver the party’s last presidential victory in the state is urging donors not to take a win for granted.

David Plouffe, who managed behind Barack Obama’s narrow 2008 victory in North Carolina, urged Democratic donors and supporters not to grow complacent in the final weeks of Roy Cooper’s Senate campaign, according to audio obtained by Blue Light News.

“I think that this race … has I think been the best run race in the country,” Plouffe said on the call. “But that doesn’t mean that we can rest easy.”

He warned about North Carolina’s relatively fixed partisan makeup as a purple state, making it difficult for a candidate to dramatically expand their base of support.

“There’s certain states that elections happen within a bound, and this one will be that way as well,” he said.

In public polling, Cooper leads Republican Michael Whatley, who has struggled to boost his name recognition against the much better-known former governor. And as Democrats grow increasingly bullish on their candidate’s chances of flipping the seat — one of four pickups they need to take control of the Senate — national groups have begun shifting their money and attention to other contests, including most recently to Kansas.

But Plouffe said North Carolina needs to remain a priority.

“We have to win the ones we have to win,” he said on the call to Cooper’s finance committee.

Just days before Plouffe’s remarks, Senate Democrats’ top super PAC pulled back some of its spending in North Carolina, following a much bigger retreat by Republicans’ top super PAC in the state.

Plouffe cautioned that North Carolina has historically been a tough state for Democrats at the federal level, especially in recent years. The party hasn’t won a Senate race there since 2008, when Obama became the last Democratic presidential candidate to carry the state, winning by fewer than 15,000 votes. He lost the state in 2012.

“Even though we carried the electoral votes back then, we only did so by I think 14,000 votes. So it was our narrowest victory,” Plouffe said. “And in 2012, we tried to win North Carolina again with the help of so many people on this phone, and we just couldn’t get it done. And that tells you how difficult the state is.”

Plouffe also cast the stakes of Cooper’s race as extending beyond November, arguing that a Cooper victory could provide a blueprint for the party’s eventual 2028 presidential nominee.

“Democrats need to compete and win in North Carolina in 28,” he said. “And it’s one thing to look how a governor can win a state. The best route, the best scout that you receive, is how someone in a federal race won in a tough state, and that can show you the way.”