Senate Democrats are still waffling when asked about trans rights

The Senate has been deadlocked on President Donald Trump’s priority voting bill, the SAVE America Act, for months. The measure hasn’t seen much floor action; the latest was a March amendment vote stemming from the president’s suggested change to prohibit transgender athletes from participating in girls’ or women’s sports.

“It feels like Groundhog Day in here — this is the fourth time I’ve had this bill on the floor,” Sen. Tommy Tuberville, the Alabama Republican who helmed the amendment, said in an eight-minute floor speech. “I’ll continue to try until I’m gone. I can’t believe this is even an issue. … Every time we’ve voted on this, I’ve got not one single Democrat to vote for it.”

The same happened later that day: Democrats voted down the amendment 49-41. But no one spoke on the floor against the provision, either.

Democrats already made floor speeches against Tuberville’s earlier introduction of the legislation as a standalone bill last year. And they have consistently voted against restrictions on trans rights when they have come up in both the House and the Senate. 

But those votes come as the party internally battles over how much to speak publicly — and proactively — about their support for trans people ahead of a contentious battle for control of the Senate. The 19th asked nearly a dozen senators about Trump’s insistence on tackling trans youth in sports and gender-affirming care for youth in an elections bill that they already don’t support.

Some senators were more outspoken or have otherwise been proactive with policy. Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey has led the upper chamber in presenting pro-trans bills, like his Transgender Bill of Rights resolution, reintroduced in February with eight other sponsors in the Senate. 

But many others changed the subject. They pivoted away from discussing the specifics of how Trump’s proposed additions to the SAVE America Act would affect trans individuals, often hedging their statements by including other marginalized groups or instead deeming the president’s efforts as a distraction from his unpopular policy positions.

“There are a lot of issues we do not talk about enough,” said Sen. Mark Kelly, an Arizona Democrat, when asked if party members are discussing trans issues enough. “One of the problems is there’s a lot of challenges in our country, a lot of problems in the world. There are certain things that always stand out — the war in Iran being one of them right now, and costs rising.”

Retiring Sen. Tina Smith was more specific in her criticism of the anti-trans measures. The Minnesota Democrat said she could only speak for herself but that it’s crucial to “speak out against these discriminatory attacks on a group of people as if they are somehow a threat, when that is just so not the case.”

Several Democrats stopped short of faulting their colleagues, including Sen. John Hickenlooper of Colorado, who has introduced several LGBTQ+ protections bills while in Congress and as a former governor.

“I am a big believer that we need to be unified as a party before we’re ever going to win again — so I’m not going to criticize my fellow party members. They know what I think. I’ve been pretty straightforward,” Hickenlooper said.

Senators may not be inclined to speak about Trump’s tacked-on proposals in the SAVE America Act because his additions, including a wider ban on mail-in voting, are not in the current legislation that has been held up for months, sources said, knowing the whole thing is a long shot. Several members said they were against all aspects of the bill when specifically asked about the anti-trans provisions.

“Well, we clearly voted it down, and now the focus is obviously stopping the SAVE Act,” Arizona Sen. Ruben Gallego said of Tuberville’s trans youth in sports ban amendment.

The bill’s passage itself, much less the more extreme amendments, is up in the air. Most Democrats are quicker to discuss the legislation’s most visible targets as currently written — married women who have changed their name, for instance, or the half of Americans who don’t own a passport — while slamming the White House over the economy. 

“Democrats are going to vote against everything that’s on the SAVE Act, because the SAVE Act is bad, so trying to pin them down in this way isn’t really pinning them down at all,” said Lanae Erickson, senior vice president for social policy, education and politics at Third Way, a center-left think tank. “I was a little surprised at the lack of engagement, but I think it’s because it was just so transparent that this was a … political theater thing for Trump. More of them spoke on it when they voted for the bill last year and engaged with the substance.” 

But as Hill lawmakers chart their messaging path, anti-trans policies are moving quickly at the national and local level. Kansas in February invalidated the drivers licenses of 1,700 trans residents. Utah is considering removing trans people from anti-discrimination protections. The U.S. Supreme Court has overturned a ban on conversion therapy and is set to rule on a ban concerning trans athletes. And voters in several states are likely to vote on their own sports bans this November in ballot measures.

Following the 2024 election, some consultants and think tanks started urging candidates to avoid messaging on trans issues altogether, insisting silence or pivoting are stronger strategies than ceding room to Republicans’ attempts to chip away at trans rights and drive the national conversation.

“We don’t think increasing salience of this issue is a good thing for Democrats or for trans people,” said Charlotte Swasey, director of analytics at the Searchlight Institute, a think tank focused on pushing Democrats toward the most broadly popular policy positions. She cited recent survey results that showed voters have tired of hearing policy discourse about trans rights from both parties over more core issues like the economy.

“They’re liberals — they fundamentally want to help people and want them to be protected, and they’re dealing with an issue where their voters and, frankly, people close to them hold these really conflicting views,” Swasey said of Democratic lawmakers. “That’s not a comfortable place to be as a politician. It’s their job, but it’s still not comfortable.”

Caius Willingham, a senior policy analyst at Advocates for Trans Equality, said trans issues are rarely a key priority for voters, and some politicians have been struggling with how to connect the issue to Americans’ broader concerns.

“It makes sense that folks running for office or reelection don’t want to focus a lot on that, but what they should be doing is connecting trans rights to the larger message of affordability and freedom,” Willingham said, comparing Democrats’ coalescing on messages on reproductive health care in recent years to a similar approach to gender-affirming care.

A 19th News analysis of Democratic and independent senators’ X posts over the last three years shows members of the upper chamber are increasingly shying away from the issue online. One example: 20 senators posted something supportive of trans people on the National Trans Day of Visibility in 2024, compared with nine in 2025 — months after Republicans hammered Democrat Kamala Harris over the issue. Eleven senators posted this year with most pointing to the Supreme Court’s ruling on conversion therapy. It has never been the most popular topic among posts from March 31, though: Senators favored discussing gas prices in 2026, the first version of Trump’s election bill in 2025 and Easter in 2024 (to some controversy).

Those on the House side have been more consistently vocal than their Democratic colleagues in the upper chamber. That cohort is younger, more diverse and able to message more specifically to one district compared to a senator’s need to balance statewide appeal. Rep. Becca Balint, Vermont’s first woman and openly LGBTQ+ representative, said politicians on the left need to tap into much simpler messaging: Trans individuals’ decisions are between them, their family and doctors. 

“We have to stand up for everyone’s rights, full stop, and trans people are not responsible for everything that is going wrong in this country right now,” Balint said. “I get so frustrated watching people bob and weave. No. You’ve got a clear home base, go back to that.”

Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton — who’s challenging Markey, one of the upper chamber’s most vocal trans advocates, with a focus on generational change — made waves with a New York Times interview soon after Harris lost the election, saying fellow Democrats were too focused on “trying not to offend anyone rather than being brutally honest about the challenge many Americans face” on the issue of banning trans students from school sports.

Moulton voted against GOP measures to prohibit their participation before and after his Times interview, and says he has done more reflection since his November 2024 comments, telling The 19th his party needs to have more open conversations beyond just voting against bills.

“That’s what I’ve heard from talking to a lot of trans athletes, trans parents — people who are concerned about the fact that Republicans keep putting up bills to attack trans people, and Democrats really have no response other than just voting against these bills,” Moulton said.

Despite leading the campaign and policy war against trans youth and adults, the GOP has been overplaying its hand, lawmakers and consultants said. Trump and his allies have touted the proposed additions to the SAVE America Act as being included simply for their popularity, citing majority percentages of support for restricting trans athletes in youth sports. The president has brought up trans youth repeatedly in unrelated speeches and interviews this year.

“We’re doing this as part of the SAVE America Act because it’s another of these issues that you’ve got 80 percent of the American people, 90 percent, 70 percent of the American people that are for this,” Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn said ahead of last month’s amendment vote.

Negotiations on the SAVE America Act itself are still stalled in the Senate, especially as the Department of Homeland Security shutdown enters its third month over funding disagreements. While Tuberville’s amendment to ban trans youth from sports was knocked down, Republicans in the upper chamber have yet to introduce amendments and vote on restricting surgeries and the other provisions Trump has suggested. And the House is so far unlikely to reintroduce a new proposal that includes those provisions as the Senate continues debate on the current version.

Some in the GOP are frustrated with Trump’s push to saddle the already unpopular bill with more baggage. Rep. Blake Moore, a Utah Republican, told the Deseret News last month that “we can’t be the party that starts doing a bunch of multiple-issue bills, leveraging this to get this. It’s not necessarily the best approach to be able to get some of these key must-pass pieces of legislation done.”

As Democrats gain momentum on issues like the Iran war and the economy, Republican attacks on trans issues, particularly in tight local races, will continue to increase ahead of the midterms. Some candidates for federal offices and local politicians have found their footing — Maine Senate hopeful Graham Platner and Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger among them — but many lawmakers have not figured out their own public position, one way or the other. The consultants and advocacy groups advising them are divided, too.

Those who don’t find a stable opinion on topics like trans youth in sports — supportive or not — will be painted as inauthentic by voters, Erickson said. But Senate Democrats are in a good starting range by batting off unrelated elements to the SAVE America Act, Willingham said. 

“Senate Democrats have held together consistently on trans rights,” he said. “The anti-trans riders are clearly a political distraction that the Senate majority is trying to use to divide Democrats, and they’ve been unsuccessful.”