Powerful Democratic think tank's reset on transgender rights alarms advocates

A leading Democratic-aligned think tank is urging political leaders to defend transgender people from discrimination while accepting that restrictions on their participation in sports “may be appropriate under some circumstances,” a proposed political reset that is already drawing criticism from within the LGBTQ+ community.

The Center for American Progress published the six-page report, “Ending the Backlash on LGBTQI+ Issues,” on Thursday. Written by Caleb Smith, CAP’s director of LGBTQI+ health policy, and Winnie Stachelberg, a longtime LGBTQ+ policy strategist who founded the organization’s LGBTQI+ policy program, the document offers Democrats a framework for responding to Republican attacks on transgender health care, athletics and military service.

Smith, who is trans, said the paper is intended to give leaders a clear, accessible way to discuss issues that the political right has saturated with misinformation.

The goal, he told The Advocate, is to “turn down the temperature” while “aggressively holding the line” on civil rights for transgender people and the broader LGBTQ+ community. The paper is not meant to prescribe every policy, Smith said, but to establish principles that remain unchanged by elections or polling.

Stachelberg said the report is also designed to prevent Republicans from continuing to define the debate. Republicans around the country have focused their attention on stripping rights from transgender people, a group that represents less than 2 percent of the U.S. population.

“The backlash here, the attacks by the far right, the hundreds of millions of dollars of ads fueled by the far right are threatening hard-won civil rights protections and really some of the most vulnerable in our society,” she said. Its purpose, she added, is partly to “take the issue off the table as a Republican attack line.”

A reset shaped by political headwinds

The report declares that civil rights are inalienable and should not depend on “shifting parties in power or the latest polling results.” It calls for passage of the Equality Act, condemns political interference in gender-affirming health care, and supports transgender people serving openly in the military.

But it also urges LGBTQ+ supporters to “reckon with the defensive environment” confronting the community. The authors write, “We all know there are differences between men and women,” note that LGBTQ+ issues are not among most voters’ leading priorities, and say political leaders must “regain their foothold.”

Polling helps explain the political pressure behind that language.

A Gallup survey conducted in May 2025 found that 69 percent of U.S. adults said transgender athletes should compete only on teams matching their sex assigned at birth, while 24 percent supported participation based on gender identity. Among Democrats, 45 percent supported participation based on gender identity, down from 55 percent in 2021.

Pew Research Center similarly found in February 2025 that 66 percent of adults favored policies requiring transgender athletes to compete based on sex assigned at birth. Yet the same survey found that 56 percent supported protections for transgender people against discrimination in employment, housing and public accommodations — the kind of split CAP’s report attempts to navigate.

The report’s most consequential departure from the position of many LGBTQ+ organizations comes in its discussion of transgender athletes.

CAP leaves room for sports restrictions

CAP argues that eligibility rules should be determined by schools, communities, and athletic governing bodies rather than elected officials. Policies may appropriately differ depending on the sport, athletes’ ages, and the level of competition, the authors write.

They cite two sharply different examples. The National Intramural-Recreational Sports Association allows participants to compete according to their gender identity. The NCAA, by contrast, changed its policy after President Donald Trump’s executive action targeting transgender athletes and now bars transgender women from competing on women’s teams.

“This is where these decisions appropriately lie: with sports’ governing bodies or schools themselves rather than with politicians,” the report says. “While local bodies and associations should minimize unnecessary exclusion, restrictions may be appropriate under some circumstances.”

Asked what would constitute a necessary exclusion, Smith declined to identify a specific policy CAP would endorse. “That’s exactly what is not in our purview,” they said. “We’re not giving them some sort of eligibility roadmap because these are the sports associations and schools that have that information.”

Stachelberg drew a clearer distinction between competitive athletics and ordinary childhood participation. “Sports restrictions may be appropriate, but based only on the level of competition,” she said, adding that eligibility rules for the most competitive sports are “vastly different from kids playing in recess or at the elementary school or even middle school level.”

CAP wants institutions to minimize exclusion while giving elected officials language that acknowledges those differences, she said.

Why the NCAA example matters

Smith said the NCAA was included because it is a prominent governing body, not necessarily because CAP endorses its current rule. Trump’s intervention, he said, demonstrated precisely the political interference the report opposes.

“We’re not necessarily speaking directly to their policy because we’re making the point that politics should not be part of the process,” Smith said. “We should not have politicians trying to interject themselves into school board meetings about sports policy.”

Alejandra Caraballo, a civil rights attorney and clinical instructor at Harvard Law School’s Cyberlaw Clinic, said that explanation does not resolve the problem. By presenting the NCAA rule as one legitimate outcome of institutional decision-making, she said, CAP is normalizing a policy adopted under Trump administration pressure.

“They’re essentially legitimizing a Trump-directed action,” Caraballo, who is trans, told The Advocate. She noted that the NCAA policy reaches beyond elite Division I competitors to students in lower divisions who may play largely for exercise, friendship, and campus involvement.

“To legitimize the NCAA ban was just like, it is just a slap in the face,” she said.

Caraballo also called CAP’s approach legally incoherent. The organization supports broad nondiscrimination laws, she said, but exclusionary sports policies could violate state civil rights protections covering education. “You can’t on one hand say you support anti-discrimination protections and then on the other say you’re going to support the NCAA ban,” she said.

Smith rejected the idea that the report provides intellectual cover for discrimination. CAP opposes categorical state and federal bans, he said, while acknowledging that advocates have reason to scrutinize any language allowing exclusion.

“I really get folks wanting us to all get this right,” Smith said. “And I think we’re all trying to do that together.”

On health care and military service, CAP draws a harder line

Beyond sports, the report says parents and physicians, not politicians, should make decisions about transgender medical care for minors. It condemns bans on transgender military service and says transgender veterans must retain the benefits they earned.

Stachelberg said Democrats should answer anti-transgender attacks rather than leaving a vacuum their opponents can fill.

“One of the things to avoid is to say nothing,” she said.

But after answering, she said, leaders should connect LGBTQ+ equality to the economic pressures affecting millions of families, including housing, prescriptions, and medical bills. Republicans elevate transgender issues, she argued, because they would rather not discuss affordability or their governing record.

The unresolved question

That strategy seeks to make LGBTQ+ people visible as parents, workers, neighbors, and members of families facing the same economic pressures as everyone else. Yet the report leaves unresolved where legitimate athletic regulation ends and discrimination begins.

Smith said CAP’s foundational principles are meant to prevent concessions from spreading to other areas of transgender life. “There are certain core freedoms that we believe are inherent to people,” he said, regardless of polling or “political machinations.”

The disagreement now is whether CAP’s sports framework holds that line — or begins moving it.