Pramila Jayapal warns Democrats: Don't throw trans people under the bus

For U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal, the fight over transgender rights has become a test of whether Democrats understand the stakes of this political moment.The Washington Democrat believes the attacks on transgender people are following a familiar pattern. She sees a powerful political movement targeting a vulnerable community to distract from the failures of those already in power. Before transgender people, she says, Republicans went after immigrants and, before that, marriage equality. The target changes. The tactic endures.As the country moves toward the midterms, with President Donald Trump again using the federal government to narrow the rights of LGBTQ+ people, Jayapal is urging Democrats to hold their ground. Running from transgender people abandons those who need protection while doing little to shield Democrats from Republican attacks, she said.“I have critiques of my own party because I think often what we do is we tend to move away from whatever feels controversial,” Jayapal told The Advocate. “So in this case, LGBTQIA rights, it’s like, OK, don’t talk about trans folks too much, don’t give a defense, be reasonable, be moderate.”She rejects that premise. “I happen to think it is reasonable and moderate to stand up for any marginalized community,” she said, “trans people being at the center of so many of those attacks today.”Related: Democrats Reintroduce Transgender Bill of Rights Amid Flood of Anti-Trans BillsDemocrats cannot run from trans rightsThe scale of the campaign is hard to dismiss. The American Civil Liberties Union’s 2026 state legislative tracker is monitoring 530 anti-LGBTQ+ bills this year, many aimed squarely at transgender people. They span nearly every arena of public life: gender-affirming care, school sports, bathrooms, identity documents, forced outing in schools, curriculum censorship, and efforts to redefine sex in law in ways that exclude transgender and nonbinary people from civil rights protections. The ACLU s