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\n

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\u2019s 2028 primary.<\/p>\n

Within hours of the California governor condemning trans athletes<\/a> playing in female sports \u2014 shocking his party in his home state \u2014 some Democrats unloaded on the likely presidential contender.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s disgusting,\u201d said Lori Lightfoot, the former Chicago mayor. \u201cThere are kids waking up today in California with this news thinking that their governor hates them, and rightly so.\u201d Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) urged Democrats to \u201cnot take the bait and give in to their anti trans people rhetoric,” though she hadn’t seen Newsom’s comments.<\/p>\n

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 \u2014it’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.<\/p>\n

But to moderates, Newsom was offering a lifeline for a party plagued by the culture wars and the polarizing politics of trans women<\/a> 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 \u201cTrump Republicans are made<\/a>,\u201d while Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker cited a coming budget deficit for a proposal to cut a health care benefit for some noncitizen immigrants.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe just stepped too far out of the bounds and let the far left drive the narrative,\u201d said a Democratic strategist from a swing state, who was granted anonymity to speak freely. \u201cOur own voters don’t agree with trans athletes in youth or college sports.\u201d<\/p>\n

The strategist said, \u201cTo have the governor of one of the bluest states come out and say this, saying our party has gone too far left, then it\u2019s a permission structure for other Democrats to do this, too \u2014 to start saying publicly what people have been saying privately.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, Newsom was staking out controversial ground \u2014 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\u2019s new podcast that it\u2019s \u201cdeeply unfair\u201d for trans athletes to play on female sports teams, no other Democrats with 2028 presidential ambitions were willing to back him publicly.<\/p>\n

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, \u201cKamala\u2019s For They\/Them. President Trump is for you.\u201d In the aftermath, many moderates argued the Democratic Party had shifted too far into identity politics and ideological litmus tests.<\/p>\n

Newsom, in the same interview with Kirk, said he considered those ads \u2014 going after Harris\u2019 support for taxpayer-funded transition-related medical care for detained immigrants and federal prisoners \u2014 to be Trump\u2019s most effective political attack against the former vice president.<\/p>\n

Some Republicans cast Newsom as craven for bucking most other Democrats. On X, Trump ally Richard Grennell said the California governor<\/a> should be seen as having \u201cFlip-Flopped on Trans Athletes in Sports after viewing the polling.\u201d<\/p>\n

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<\/a>.<\/p>\n

On Capitol Hill, most Democrats said they hadn\u2019t directly seen Newsom\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just saw the headline. I haven’t read it but I know where I stand,\u201d said Rep. Lateefah Simon (D-Calif.). \u201cWe don’t mess with our young people, our young people, we got to bring them in, we don’t want to exclude them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Democrats had almost unanimously voted against legislation earlier this year that would bar transgender athletes from competing in women\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s unfair is the targeting of transgender kids and politicians abandoning them for political expediency,\u201d said Rep. Sarah Jacobs (D-Calif.), vice chair of the Congressional Equality Caucus.<\/p>\n

Asked Thursday about Newsom\u2019s comments, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said he hadn\u2019t seen them but said Democrats opposed \u201cunleashing sexual predators on girls throughout the United States of America.\u201d Democratic leaders had dubbed the transgender sports bill the \u201cChild Predator Empowerment Act\u201d and argued it would lead to adults inspecting childrens\u2019 genitals to assess their eligibility for sports.<\/p>\n

In California, Democratic lawmakers in Sacramento described Newsom\u2019s 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<\/p>\n

\u201cWe 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,\u201d said Assembly member Chris Ward, a gay San Diego Democrat who has sparred with conservatives over trans issues. \u201cLook, this is playing into a lot of the conversation that Donald Trump is obsessing about in order to distract us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mia McCarthy, Amanda Friedman and Jeremy White contributed to this report.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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\u2019s 2028 primary. Within hours of the California governor condemning trans athletes playing in female sports \u2014 shocking his party in his home state \u2014 some […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6983","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6983","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6983"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6983\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}