Former White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Tuesday questioned the popularity of taxpayer-funded sex-change surgeries for illegal immigrants in federal custody—a policy that Vice President Kamala Harris supported and that advocates have called a “fundamental right.”
“There was an ad that was run that was effective about Kamala Harris’s answer to an ACLU questionnaire and her answer for, like, a couple of months in 2019 about supporting the funding, paying for, gender-affirming care for undocumented immigrants in prison, right?” Psaki said on the Bulwark Podcast with Tim Miller.
“First of all, I don’t—I don’t know who supports that. Why would most people support that? So let’s just be clear about that,” Psaki continued.
During the 2020 Democratic primary, Harris wrote in response to an ACLU questionnaire that, if elected, she would use her executive authority to ensure that “transgender and nonbinary people,” including “those in prison and immigration detention,” have access to “comprehensive treatment associated with gender transition.”
“I support policies ensuring that federal prisoners and detainees are able to obtain medically necessary care for gender transition, including surgical care, while incarcerated or detained,” Harris added. “Transition treatment is a medical necessity, and I will direct all federal agencies responsible for providing essential medical care to deliver transition treatment.”
President-elect Donald Trump’s campaign ran an ad in the weeks leading up to the 2024 election, calling out Harris’s position. It included a clip of the vice president saying that “every transgender inmate in the prison system would have access.”
Other Democrats have supported similar measures. California in 2015 passed legislation that required taxpayers to bankroll sex-change surgeries for prisoners. And in Congress, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D., Wash.) in 2022 and 2023 sponsored the Transgender Bill of Rights, which said that “transgender and nonbinary people detained in jails, prisons, and immigration detention centers are especially vulnerable to violence and abuse and are often deprived of gender-affirming resources and health care.” The legislation, which twice failed to pass, would have ensured “transgender and nonbinary people have equal access to services and public accommodations that align with their gender identity.”
The American Medical Association argued that transgender prisoners have a “fundamental right to appropriate care.”
“Prisoners have a fundamental right to access necessary and effective medical care, and that includes the full range of treatments for gender dysphoria,” the group wrote in 2019. Other organizations, including the ACLU, have been involved in lawsuits fighting to force prisons to provide interventions, such as sex-change surgeries, for transgender inmates.
Psaki did stress, however, that Democrats shouldn’t avoid gender issues entirely.
“That doesn’t mean that you can’t say, ‘You know what? There are kids out there who are struggling through mental health issues, who were born in a body they don’t feel like is their own,'” Psaki told Miller. “And we can be humane and support that as a society.”
Trans issues have divided the Democrats since Trump’s decisive election victory. Rep. Seth Moulton (D., Mass.), for example, told the New York Times that he has “two little girls” and doesn’t “want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete.” He later added on MSNBC that the Democratic Party is “out of touch” on the issue. Moulton has since faced significant backlash, including a primary threat and left-wing protests outside his district office.
Psaki herself took aim at Moulton both on her MSNBC show and during her appearance on the Bulwark Podcast.
“Echoing and adopting the panic from the other side is not leading,” Psaki said on her Sunday show. “It’s not meeting people where they are. It’s simply falling prey to right-wing propaganda without checking the facts first.”
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