TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) – Republicans and Democrats in Kansas agree that concerns about the economy led voters to support President Donald Trump by a 16% margin.
They also know that ads by Trump and others targeting transgender rights resonated with voters. While Republicans in Kansas say property tax cuts are their top priority, they are also pushing to ban gender-affirming care for newborn people, including puberty blockers, hormones and, although infrequent for minors, surgery. They say this is also very popular with voters.
“It has so much more emotional weight,” said Republican Rep. Ron Bryce, a doctor from southeast Kansas. “We talk about children and our future.”
While legislatures have begun sessions in many states, Republicans are broadly encouraged by Republicans’ electoral successes to continue pushing state-level bills to restrict transgender rights.
As in 2023 and 2024, dozens of bills are pending in predominantly red states addressing issues such as which restrooms transgender people can operate in public buildings, whether transgender people can operate their gender identity on their driver’s license, and whether transgender people are transgender girls can play on girls’ sports teams. In Texas alone, Republicans have submitted more than 30 measures.
The Democrats are expecting a backlash from voters, but are not giving up on what they see as a civil rights issue.
Kansas state Rep. John Carmichael, a Democrat from Wichita, said it was challenging to conclude that Kansas voters support transgender rights after Republicans won three House seats and two Senate seats in the state have.
Republicans in the state expect to be able to ban gender-affirming youth care this year after previously failing because the addition of Republican members would allow them to override a veto by Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly.
“Transgender people will face discrimination at the national level for four years,” Carmichael said Tuesday. “I’m sure some of my colleagues in the Kansas Legislature will try to find a way to even surpass what Donald Trump has done.”
Trump’s first acts in office
Trump, who placed anti-transgender issues at the center of his campaign, signed executive orders on his first day in office on Monday declaring that the federal government would recognize only two genders: men and women.
Federal prisons and shelters for migrants and rape survivors are segregated by gender under the regulation, and federal tax dollars cannot be used to fund “transition services” that appear to apply to people incarcerated in federal prisons.
The Williams Institute, an LGBTQ+ research center at the UCLA School of Law, estimates that about 300,000 youth ages 13 to 17, or 1.4%, are transgender in the United States. Among adults, that number is 0.5%, with 1.3 million transgender Americans 18 years aged or older.
At the state level, lawmakers are awaiting a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that bans on gender-affirming care are constitutional. The court heard arguments in December on a Tennessee law that bans gender-specific care for minors. It appeared the judges would uphold the law, but a ruling is not expected until the summer.
About half of voters in the 2024 election said support for transgender rights in government and society has gone too far, while about two in 10 said it is about right and a similar share said it does not go far enough gone, according to AP VoteCast.
Voters disagreed on at least one specific proposal. AP VoteCast found that just over half of voters opposed laws banning gender-affirming medical treatments such as puberty blockers and hormone therapy for transgender minors, while slightly less than half were in favor.
Gender-equitable care for newborn people
At least 26 states have banned or restricted gender-affirming care for people under 18.
Harleigh Walker, a 17-year-old transgender high school senior in Alabama, where fostering is banned, said it’s astonishing that states are considering laws that harm voters like her. She said she will likely leave the South to go to college and her family is also considering a move.
“We’re not hurting anyone,” Walker said in a telephone interview. “Our existence and our right to health care, use of toilets, etc. do no harm to anyone.”
Every major medical group in the U.S., including the American Medical Association, has opposed the bans, saying gender-affirming treatments may be medically necessary and supported by evidence. Doctors, parents and teens say such care reduces depression and suicidal thoughts among transgender youth.
Still, conservatives often describe nursing as potentially harmful. Kansas House Speaker Dan Hawkins said lawmakers are trying to protect newborn people.
“Children under 18 do not have the knowledge or maturity to make a decision that will have a lasting impact on the rest of their lives,” he said in a newsletter earlier this month.
LGBTQ+ rights advocates fear the next step will be restrictions on adult care. Florida is the only state to have done so, as there have been proposals in at least two other states.
Mo Jenkins, a 25-year-old transgender woman who unsuccessfully ran for a Texas House seat in Houston last year, described the possibility as frightening. Her state banned gender-specific care for minors in 2023.
“It would never stop with the kids,” she said.
Democrats say they are defending civil rights
The discussions among Democrats in red or swing states reflect memories of Trump ads that described their presidential candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris, as “for them/them” while “President Trump is for you.”
Democratic Kansas state Sen. Cindy Holscher focused her re-election campaign in the wealthy Kansas City suburbs on education and taxes, winning 61% of the vote.
“Democrats tend to lean on these social issues, but those are not necessarily winning issues,” she said.
Holscher, Carmichael and other Democrats say they will continue to oppose measures restricting transgender rights.
“Civil rights are in the Democratic DNA,” said Joan Wagnon, former chairwoman of the Kansas Democratic Party, state lawmaker and mayor of Topeka.
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DeMillo reported from Little Rock, Arkansas, and Lathan reported from Austin, Texas. Associated Press writer Kimberly Chandler in Montgomery, Ala., contributed to this report.
