In the volatile landscape of Western politics, transgender rights have emerged as a lightning rod—one that has tested the mettle, messaging, and moral compass of both the United States and the United Kingdom’s major center-left parties. Recent developments on both sides of the Atlantic paint a cautionary tale for Democratic strategists, activists, and voters as the 2026 midterms loom, echoing the pitfalls the UK Labour Party stumbled into just months earlier.
According to a 19th News/Survey Monkey survey, 4 in 10 Americans now wish politicians would simply stop focusing on transgender issues. This sentiment cuts evenly across the political spectrum, with both right- and left-leaning respondents expressing fatigue over the seemingly endless debates. Digging deeper, the survey found a nation split: 29% believe politicians should focus on protecting transgender people, while 25% support restricting transgender medical care. The numbers reveal a country not just divided, but weary—tired of political figures using trans issues as a wedge rather than offering substantive solutions, as reported by 19th News.
This weariness, however, hasn’t stopped the right from doubling down. In the wake of the high-profile Charlie Kirk murder, the Heritage Foundation urged the FBI to create a new domestic terrorism category for what it termed “Transgender Ideology-Inspired Violent Extremism.” That same week, former president Donald Trump signed an executive order directing federal law enforcement, including the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Taskforce, to crack down on what he called “domestic terrorism and political violence.” As part of ongoing budget negotiations, several anti-trans policies were inserted into the government spending bill—stripping transgender people from health care access, according to 19th News. Trump amplified the rhetoric on social media, accusing Democrats of wanting to “force taxpayers to fund transgender surgery for minors… allow men to play in women’s sports, and essentially create transgender operations for everybody.”
Yet, while Republicans have made transgender rights a centerpiece of their agenda, Democrats have largely tiptoed around the issue. In the 2025 presidential election, Democratic hopeful Kamala Harris—whose record on transgender rights in California had already left some activists wary—barely addressed the topic on the campaign trail. Her running mate, Tim Walz, was more outspoken, but Harris herself pledged only to “follow the law” on transgender rights, a statement that left many in the community feeling unsupported. As 19th News pointed out, the right pressed the issue relentlessly, while Democrats seemed to hope silence would make it go away.
This strategy of avoidance is not unique to American Democrats. Across the pond, the UK Labour Party—long considered the Democrats’ ideological cousin—has experienced a similar reckoning. In April 2025, LGBT+ Labour, an internal party group, abruptly canceled its Annual General Meeting election after a UK Supreme Court ruling declared that trans women were not legally women under the Equality Act 2010. The group cited "unclear legal guidance" and the "risk of legal action" as reasons for the cancellation, according to emails obtained by LabourList. Councillor Georgia Meadows, a trans woman and candidate for co-chair, told Erin in the Morning, “The current committee decided to cancel the election because they were going to lose it.”
The Labour Party’s troubles didn’t end there. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who in 2022 had unequivocally stated “trans women are women,” reversed course in 2025. When pressed by The Independent, a Starmer spokesperson clarified that he now believed trans women should use men’s restrooms and trans men should use women’s restrooms—a stance echoed by other high-ranking Labour officials who endorsed trans-exclusionary health care policies and appointed a so-called “gender critical” activist to lead the Equality and Human Rights Commission. The result? A wave of defections from Labour to more progressive parties, including the Liberal Democrats and the UK Green Party, and a historic collapse in Labour’s approval ratings.
The parallels with U.S. Democrats are hard to ignore. California Governor Gavin Newsom, considered a rising Democratic star, has reportedly given airtime to anti-trans rhetoric and allegedly blocked pro-LGBTQ legislation behind the scenes. Seventeen Democrats in Congress crossed party lines to support a defense bill with anti-trans provisions, and a dozen New Hampshire Democrats voted for a law restricting health care for transgender youth. These moves, critics argue, reflect a growing willingness among some Democrats to seek “middle ground” on trans rights in hopes of courting centrist or right-leaning voters.
But as UK campaigners warn, this strategy is fraught with peril. Jane fae, a director of TransActual UK, explained to Erin in the Morning that the Alliance Defending Freedom, an American group designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, has poured millions into anti-trans litigation in the UK—using the country as a staging ground for legal tactics and rhetoric that are now being imported back into U.S. discourse. British inventions like the “Cass Review,” led by someone with no clinical experience in gender dysphoria, have been cited by U.S. lawmakers and agencies to justify discrimination, despite their dubious scientific grounding.
Amid these political maneuvers, trans people continue to face disproportionate rates of violence, poverty, and discrimination. Yet, a narrative has taken root that the “mainstream left” has gone “too far” in supporting transgender rights, and the only way to win back the electorate is to retreat. Ezra Klein, a columnist for The New York Times, summed up the dilemma: “I’m not comfortable with the, ‘Let’s just throw trans rights overboard,’ but I think that what you normally do in a movement like this is you decide which things you’re going to fight for and which things you’re maybe not ready to have a fight over.”
The political cost of such equivocation is already evident. Dylan Tippetts, a local Labour official and one of the party’s few openly trans representatives, resigned in 2025, stating, “Labour has thrown transgender people under the bus and has taken us backwards decades. I cannot continue to represent a party that does not support my fundamental rights.” As Labour’s approval ratings plummet, the party is hemorrhaging votes not only to the right, where hardline Conservatives are flocking to the even more extreme Reform Party, but also to the left, as progressive voters defect in protest.
It wasn’t always this way. In 2017, Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May championed trans-friendly reforms, calling for the de-medicalization of the legal transition process and denouncing the idea of transness as a mental illness. Today, such openness is unthinkable among Conservatives, and Labour’s progress has ground to a halt. Councillor Meadows, now LGBT+ Labour’s national Trans Officer, says that even getting the committee to issue a statement is “like pulling teeth.” She adds, “Labour is literally trying to replace [Conservatives], ideologically, and get those voters. They are also hemorrhaging votes from people who support LGBT people.”
For American Democrats, the lesson is stark: attempts to find a “middle ground” on human rights for transgender people risk alienating both core supporters and the very voters they hope to win. As campaigners and activists on both sides of the Atlantic warn, capitulation on civil rights is not just a losing strategy—it’s one that leaves the most vulnerable further isolated and emboldens those who would see their rights rolled back. The path forward, it seems, requires not less courage, but more.
