California Gov. Gavin NewsomA potential Democratic presidential candidate in 2028, used the inaugural episode of his new podcast to break with progressives by expressing authorization to allow women and transgender girls to compete in female sports.
Newsom made his declaration in a prolonged conversation with a conservative activist Charlie Kirkthe 31 -year -old man who built the influential organization of Turnout Point USA who helped the president Donald Trump Increase your support last fall among the youngest generation of voters. Kirk, like Trump, was a vocal opponent to allow transgender women and girls to participate.
“I think it’s a problem of equity, I fully agree with you. It is a problem of equity – it is deeply unfair, “said Newsom to Kirk on” It’s Gavin Newsom “.
“I do not fight with the problem of equity,” continued Newsom, who played university baseball as a student. “I totally agree with you. … I worship sport. Thus, the question of equity is completely legitimate. »»
The governor’s comments are the last efforts of the Democrats to reconcile an election in 2024 which returned Trump to the White House and gave the Republicans control of the two chambers of the Congress. Among the disagreements since November, the quantity of cultural problems – as opposed to economic policy and other questions – explain the losses of the party.
Overall, polls suggest that allowing transgender female athletes to play in female teams is not largely popular. Even most Democrats – around 7 out of 10 – oppose the transgender female athletes to participate in female sports, according to a January New York Times / Ipsos survey. A Gallup 2023 survey also noted that the Democrats were divided on the question of whether transgender people should be able to play in sports teams that correspond to their current gender identity.
Newsom, who has long positioned himself as a social progressive, attracted reprimands from LGBTQ +defenders.
“Sometimes Gavin Newsom opts for the profile of courage, sometimes not,” said the assembly of California Chris Ward and the state senator Carolina Menjivar, who heads the state legislative caucus of the state. “We woke up deeply talented and frustrated by these remarks.”
Tony Hoang, executive director of Equality California, said that he was “disappointed and angry” by Newsom’s statements and that they “added to sorrow and fear” that the transgender community feels under the Trump administration.
“Currently, young transgender people, their families, their doctors and their teachers face unprecedented attacks of extremist politicians who want to avoid their civil rights and erase them from public life,” said Hoang. “They need leaders who will fight unequivocally for them.”
California’s law, promulgated before Newsom became governor, obliges state schools to allow transgender athletes to play in school sports teams in accordance with their gender identity. The legislators of the Republican State presented this year the bills in the Legislative Assembly to prohibit this practice, but they would be difficult to pass into the State House dominated by the Democrats. The governor’s office refused to comment on the proposals, saying that Newsom is not generally weighing on pending legislation.
Beyond questions on athletics, there is less public support for broader restrictions on transgender rights and questions such as medical care for transgender people, especially among Democrats.
According to Voting, 55% of voters in the 2024 elections said that support for transgender rights in the government and the company went too far, while about 2 out of 10 said it was almost appropriate and a similar part said it had not been far away. Voters were also slightly more likely to oppose than promoting laws that prohibit medical treatment affirming sex, such as puberty blockers and hormone therapy, for minors who identify as transgender.
But the republicans nevertheless sought to capitalize on the cultural touchstone that sports represent in America.
Trump regularly hammered the Democratic candidate Vice-President Kamala HarrisNewsom Fellow Californian, for supporting LGBTQ +rights. Trump promised his gatherings to “make the transgender madness of the hell of our schools” and to “keep men away from female sports”. His campaign also spent tens of millions of dollars on television and digital advertisements with striking summons: “Kamala is for them / them. President Trump is for you.
“Boy, I saw how you could arm him,” Newsom told Kirk, before giving in to Kirk’s protest and say that advertisements were an effective “culmination” during the campaign.
Since he took office, t RUMP threatened to retain federal money Schools that allow transgender athletes to participate in the female events of “girls”. He declared the victory over the issue recently when the NCAA, which governs college athletics in the United States, has changed its policy To restrict the sporting events of women to athletes who were assigned the female sex to birth. Previously, the NCAA had a sports policy by sport determined by the national or international guidelines of respective sports.
Ward and Menjivar, California legislators, said that playing in a team compatible with his sex was not a problem “until Donald Trump begins to obsess him.”
Kirk, Not Newsom, spoke of the overall problem during their one hour conversation, which has partially focused on how democrats can reconstruct a wider coalition of voters. Kirk has scored Newsom on the question of whether he would be expressed in opposition to transgender female athletes in competition.
The governor tried to mitigate his comments, saying that the discussion concerns more than a competitive advantage.
“There is also a humility and a grace that these poor are more likely to commit suicide, to have anxiety and depression, and the way people speak to vulnerable communities is a problem with which I find it difficult to know,” said Newsom. “So the two things I can hold in my hand. How can we solve this problem with the type of decency which, I think, is inherent in you, but not always expressed on the question and at the same time treating injustice. »»
However, the approach of Newsom marks a political approach different from that which he took homosexual marriage more than two decades ago. As mayor of San Francisco in 2004, Newsom drew national attention for the first time by ordering the city clerk to start delivering homosexual marriage licenses.
This decision provoked legal action which led to a 2008 decision of the Supreme Court of California legalizing homosexual marriage in the greatest state of the country. This decision occurred seven years before the United States Supreme Court established homosexual marriage as national law. –
Barrow reported to Atlanta. The editor-in-chief of the Associated Press Amelia Thomson-Deveaux and the writers of the AP Michael Blood, Tran Nguyen and Sophie Austin contributed to the reports.