Harris points out that Trump also backed gender-affirming care for trans prisoners
Presidential candidate Kamala Harris has pointed out that Donald Trump’s administration backed gender-affirming care for trans prison inmates when he was in office, despite what his recent attack ads suggest.
Speaking to Fox News host Bret Baier, Harris responded to the Trump campaign’s anti-trans ads which criticised her support for gender-affirming care for prisoners.
The ads, which have been branded “trans panic” by social media users, show Harris with LGBTQ+ members of the Biden administration, activists and drag queens, and ends with the tagline: “Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you.”
Trump’s previous claim that his rival for the White House wants to carry out “transgender operations on “illegal aliens” is repeated in the ads – an allegation which followed Republicans bizarrely saying that teachers were performing transition surgery on children during the school day.
“I will follow the law, and it’s a law that Donald Trump actually followed,” Harris told Baier.
Justice Department documents from 2018, during Trump’s presidential term, show that the Bureau of Prisons acknowledged it had a “statutory mandate to provide basic medical and mental-health care”, and determining that that could include trans healthcare.
“Medical care may include pharmaceutical interventions (e.g. cross-gender hormone therapy), hair removal and surgery (if individualised assessment indicates surgical intervention is applicable),” the document reads.
Harris went on to say: “I think [Trump] spent $20 million (£15 million) on those ads, trying to create a sense of fear in the voters because he actually has no plan in this election that is about focusing on the needs of the American people.
“$20 million on that ad, on an issue that, as it relates to the biggest issues that affect the American people, it’s really quite remote. And again, his policy was no different.”
Commenting on the interview, Human Rights Campaign national press secretary Brandon Wolf told The Advocate: “Vice-president Harris is right: Donald Trump is peddling transphobia because he doesn’t even have a concept of a plan for making life better for the American people.
“Voters are looking for leaders with solutions and a vision for moving this country forward, not a bully who has nothing to offer but division and chaos. It’s time to turn the page on the Trump agenda of hate.”
Harris’ campaign later shared two screenshots on social media, one showing a CBS headline about the millions her rival had spent on the adverts and the second a headline from The New York Times noting gender-affirming care access under Trump. This move, however, has angered some members of the transgender community, who felt it only extending the use of gender-affirming care as a political sledgehammer.
“Chappell Roan was right,” one X/Twitter user wrote, referring to the singer’s recent comments that there were “problems on both sides” of politics.
Another asked: “Whose side is this on, I genuinely can’t figure out?” Someone else said: “The best time for you to have deleted this was immediately before you posted it. The next best time is right now.”
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