Kamala Harris’ Transgender Dystopia

• Kamala Harris now hides from her past stances on transgender policies

• Her and Tim Walz’ record undermine her efforts to keep quiet on these stances

• Media narratives portray Trump as the more extreme candidate, though most Americans align with him

The story

Vice President Kamala Harris’ radical gender views are in the spotlight, thanks to the story of a transgender murderer who benefitted from her advocacy as a California prosecutor.

John Jacobson Jr. is serving a life sentence in California for stealing a yacht from a couple, tying them to its anchor, and throwing them overboard to their deaths in 2004. Jacobson has confessed that he was motivated by a desire to steal from them to pay for a sex change surgery.

The inmate recently revealed to the Washington Free Beacon that he got his wish in prison last year with a surgery that taxpayers paid for. The outlet noted that Harris once bragged about pressuring officials to adopt this policy as California’s attorney general.

"I made sure they changed the policy in the state of California,” Harris said on the campaign trail in 2019, “so that every transgender inmate in the prison system would have access to the medical care that they desired and need.”

Jacobson, who now awaits transfer to a women’s prison, is symbolic of the radical gender ideology that would likely shape the policies of a Harris presidential administration.

The politics

Kamala Harris oversees the most pro-transgender administration in US history under President Joe Biden. Their boldest move this election year was to declare that a 1972 sex discrimination law protects “gender identity,” ordering federally funded schools to adopt pronoun rules and let males into female spaces. The Supreme Court temporarily blocked the policy in August.

Harris also called on Congress to pass the Equality Act, a bill that would have banned “discrimination” based on gender identity in numerous public and private institutions.

Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D), have gone out of their way to appeal to LGBT voters during their campaign. Last month, Walz spoke at an event for the Human Rights Campaign, a powerful lobbying group that endorses sex changes for minors. Walz said LGBT rights are “not to be debated.”

For his part, Walz passed a law last year that made Minnesota a “refuge” state that legally protects parents who travel out of state to transition their children.

Former President Donald Trump — who called it “discriminatory” to keep men out of women’s bathrooms in 2016 — seeks to ride the wave of backlash against the transgender movement this election cycle.

Trump’s “Gender Insanity” plan includes banning child sex changes nationwide, removing transgender messaging from federal agencies and schools, legally recognizing only two genders, and investigating the “horrific long-term side effects of sex transitions.”

Trump’s campaign frequently portrays Team Harris as radical and out-of-touch on these issues. “Kamala’s for they/them. President Trump is for you,” the campaign said in one swing state attack ad.

Misrepresented in the media

Left-wing media suggest Trump’s anti-transgender vision would bring an apocalyptic “rollback” of “civil rights” and pose “a literal threat to vulnerable young people.” Their dramatic articles ignore the fact that Americans likely view Harris, not Trump, as the more radical candidate on these topics.

Polling consistently shows more opposition than support for transgender policies regarding bathrooms, sports teams, prisons, and pronouns. Support for banning child sex changes has fluctuated in the past few years, though most Americans believe trying to change one’s gender is “morally wrong,” a June poll indicates.

When Trump began mentioning Harris’ history of endorsing transgender “care” for prisoners, media outlets reacted with fact-check pieces saying this claim “needs context” — in other words, it’s true.

The fact-checks point out that Harris is not explicitly running on this policy as in the last election. Rather than portraying it favorably, media outlets have no defense for this aspect of Harris’ record.

Why it matters

The two presidential campaigns show that, in addition to other high-stakes issues, the very meaning of “man” and “woman” in public life is on the ballot this November.

This comes as the transgender movement gains ground among young people, with an unprecedented five percent of high schoolers in the US questioning or switching gender identities.

Harris has pragmatically stayed silent on specific transgender policies as the election nears, to the frustration of some on the left. But her running mate and political history leading up to her presidential run signal the hardline approach a Harris-Walz administration would take.