Anti-trans CNN segment targets Harris’s support for providing gender-affirming care to those incarcerated

CNN’s Erin Burnett is under fire for platforming a segment on her show, Out Front, Monday evening that critics described as “fearmongering election-season sensationalism” at the expense of the transgender community.

The segment, a discussion with CNN reporter Andrew Kaczynski, focused on answers Vice President Kamala Harris gave to a 2019 American Civil Liberties Union survey for candidates running in the 2020 election.

Kaczynski and Burnett briefly mentioned Harris’s “much more liberal stances” during that campaign before pivoting to her support of medical care for people in the government’s custody.

“She said she supported taxpayer-funded gender transition surgeries for detained migrants,” Kacyznski said.

“Taxpayer-funded gender transition surgeries for detained migrants,” Burnett repeated. “She actually said she supported that.”

Kaczynski continued, “She wrote, both wrote and answered in the affirmative when she was asked this, and she said she also supported it for federal prisoners.”

Federal law requires that federal prisoners be provided with medical and psychiatric care.

“As President, will you use your executive authority to ensure that transgender and nonbinary people who rely on the state for medical care — including those in prison and immigration detention — will have access to comprehensive treatment associated with gender transition, including all necessary surgical care?” the questionnaire asked.

Harris responded by checking the box “yes” and writing, “It is important that transgender individuals who rely on the state for care receive the treatment they need, which includes access to treatment associated with gender transition.”

Harris noted that as attorney general in California, she pushed the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to provide gender-affirming care to state inmates. “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 wrote, adding, “Transition treatment is a medical necessity, and I will direct all federal agencies responsible for providing essential medical care to deliver transition treatment.”

Burnett responded to Harris’s position with incredulity. “These are things that it would be hard to think that you would come up with taxpayer funding, gender transitions for detained migrants. And yet this, as you say, written and verbally.”

GLAAD president and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis excoriated CNN’s coverage in a statement to The Advocate.

“Health care is a human right, and as legal experts quickly noted, it is the law to provide it for detained people. Gender-affirming care, or put more simply, health care for transgender people, is evidence-based, best-practice medical care supported by every major medical association,” Ellis said. “It is a disservice to viewers and inaccurate for CNN to insinuate there is something amiss with following the law as well as treating people with respect and dignity. Transgender people and migrants are being baselessly scapegoated at every turn. Responsible media should include trans voices in accurate coverage about their lives and related issues of basic human rights.”

Prominent transgender rights activists on social media also pounced on the segment.

“I have so much respect for your reporting and I hope that someday you feel ashamed to have contributed to this kind of fear-mongering election-season sensationalism,” wrote Ari Drennen of Media Matters for America on X (formerly Twitter.)

Harvard Law School Cyberlaw clinical instructor Alejandra Caraballo was also highly critical of CNN, writing, “Stop fearmongering off of our community.”

Pediatric psychiatrist Dr. Jack Turban pointed out that medical care in the United States is a right afforded to those in need.

“There’s a long recognized Constitutional right of incarcerated people to have access to standard of care healthcare. This isn’t news. It’s bad reporting,” he wrote.

A CNN spokesperson did not respond to The Advocate’s request for comment.