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 Bills

Democrats cannot run from trans rights

The 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 says such state-level attacks have escalated dramatically since 2015.

Jayapal sees that escalation as a civil rights emergency and a governing strategy. “The misinformation and the hatred that the right is driving of a tiny community that has literally done nothing to hurt anybody,” she said, “has just been really, really hard and cruel and awful to have to watch and to have to fight every single day.”

The central midterm question, she believes, is whether Democrats can defend transgender people without letting Republicans dictate the terms. “I think people want fighters,” she said, “and they want fighters who will build big coalitions to take on the real villains.”

Related: House Democrats Introduce Transgender Bill of Rights

The Transgender Bill of Rights as a roadmap

Jayapal, who represents Seattle and the surrounding areas in Washington’s 7th District, is chair emerita of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and a co-chair of the Congressional Equality Caucus’s Transgender Equality Task Force. In February, she reintroduced the Transgender Bill of Rights with Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts and Reps. Sara Jacobs and Mark Takano of California.

The resolution frames federal protection for transgender and nonbinary people in affirmative terms rather than as an endless series of emergency responses, calling on the government to advance protections so people can live authentically and with dignity.

“I’ve also laid out a vision in my Trans Bill of Rights of what it really means to get to full trans equality,” she said. “When I first introduced the bill many sessions ago, I worked on it with leading trans activists and advocates from around the country. We really saw it as a roadmap forward.” It began with about 20 co-sponsors; it now has 107, and she expects that number to keep climbing.

“There are many civil rights protections that we need to embed and reaffirm, even though we thought that maybe they were there,” she said, “but we’re seeing where the attacks are.”

Related: Rep. Jayapal's Emotional Speech About Gender-Nonconforming Child

Washington puts trans rights before voters

In Washington, the fight has moved onto the ballot. Voters are expected to decide two measures in November: IL26-001, a parental-rights measure concerning public schools, and IL26-638, which would bar students it defines as “biologically male” from certain athletic activities designated for female students. According to the Washington House Republican Caucus, IL26-001 would repeal amendments to a state parental rights law and restore it to its original form, while IL26-638 would require health care providers to verify a person’s sex assigned at birth for participation in girls’ sports.

Both measures are supported by Let’s Go Washington, a political committee sponsored by Brian Heywood, a hedge fund manager, according to Washington Public Disclosure Commission records. Opponents organized under the No Hate in WA State banner, which argues that the measures would threaten student safety and privacy. The campaign says IL26-001 could give parents under investigation or charged with harming their child access to sensitive information, while IL26-638 could subject girls to invasive genital exams to play school sports. No Hate in WA State lists its top five contributors as the ACLU of Washington, the Washington Education Association, the SEIU 775 Ballot Fund, the Gender Justice League, and Pro-Choice Washington.

Jayapal, who is working with the coalition, warned that passage in a state as progressive as Washington would echo nationally. “We know that if they were to pass in Washington state, it would be a green light for people to do it across the country,” she said. “So we’re going to defeat them in Washington state.”

She sees a broader design at work, pointing to a “hedge fund Republican donor,” she says, who is funding both the anti-trans measures and an effort to overturn a tax on millionaires. “I think it’s a distraction measure,” she said. “This is about trying to just generate fury amongst the right-wing base so that they turn out to vote.” The real story, she argues, is “the largest transfer of wealth from working people to the wealthiest.” Republicans, she said, “just find something that they think they can use to divide even us. There is no division here.”

Related: Congressional Democrats commemorate Transgender Day of Remembrance amid anti-trans GOP push

Answering fear with privacy and humanity

Jayapal’s prescription is to explain transgender rights with more force, patience, and humanity. On sports, she said Democrats should make clear that athletics benefit all children and that conservative policies would require invasive enforcement. “I think we have to counter the misinformation that’s out there about trans kids in sports and make it clear that all our kids get to play sports,” she said.

She also wants Democrats to talk about privacy. “I don’t think they want their daughters to be surveilled in school and have to have incredibly invasive examinations of their private parts to determine whether or not they’re women,” she said. “That’s the only way that these policies get implemented.”

Still, she distinguishes between operatives pushing the laws and parents who are confused or afraid. With parents, the work begins with listening. “Just because somebody may have an initial different opinion from me, it doesn’t mean that they don’t have valid concerns,” she said. Most of the time, she finds common ground. “We’re parents, we’re worried about our kids, we want the best for our kids,” she said.

Patience, though, is not silence. “I also don’t think that means we can’t call out hate when we see it,” she explained. “I want other kids to be happy and free to be who they are because I want my kid to be happy and free to be who they are.” Jayapal, who has spoken before about having a transgender child, said the era’s rhetoric is personally painful and that she lets people see both her control and her anger. “It’s hurtful to me as a parent.”

She also insists on joy. “All the trans people I know don’t always want to be called trans and identified,” she said. “They’re like, ‘I’m so much more than that. I’m a singer, I’m an athlete, I’m a meteorologist.”

Related: University of Washington creates memorial scholarship for Juniper Blessing

Remembering Juniper Blessing

Jayapal recently joined Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández of New Mexico in a floor speech honoring Juniper Blessing, a 19-year-old transgender University of Washington student whose killing shook LGBTQ+ communities in Seattle and Santa Fe.

Blessing was found stabbed to death on May 10 in the laundry room of an off-campus apartment building near campus. Christopher Leahy, 31, has been charged with murder; King County prosecutors said they had no evidence the killing was a hate crime but left open the possibility of further charges. A 2024 graduate of the New Mexico School for the Arts, Blessing studied atmospheric and climate science and was remembered for her musical talent and, as one teacher put it, a “magnificent” voice.

“Juniper had an incredible voice,” Jayapal said. “She was an amazing actor. She loved the same things that so many of our kids love.” Such stories, she said, undo a central aim of anti-trans politics, turning people into abstractions. “These are not folks who are different from us. They are the same in human qualities.”

Allyship means sharing the burden

That principle shapes how she talks about Rep. Sarah McBride of Delaware, the first out transgender member of Congress. Allies, Jayapal said, must help carry the load. “It shouldn’t be incumbent just on Sarah to call these things out. That’s why I’m happy to be an ally in that fight.” McBride, she said, has endured repeated disrespect from Republican colleagues and sometimes simply asks allies to be present. “How do we stand in support of and alongside so that it’s not coming to the only trans woman in Congress to be the one who’s always standing up? She deserves to be who she fully is.”

If Democrats retake the House, Jayapal said, they must do more than reverse Trump’s policies — they must deliver on housing, food, health care, and affordability, with legislation that explicitly includes transgender people. She pointed to her Medicare for All bill and its inclusion of protections for transgender care. “We need to pass those kinds of comprehensive, inclusive policies.”

She said that people who can’t afford the basics are more vulnerable to scapegoating. “People are going to be much more likely to blame somebody else if they can’t get their own housing,” she said. The Democratic answer, then, must pair economic populism with civil rights.

Asked what she would tell transgender people who wonder whether anyone in Congress sees them, she said, “I see you. I love you. I’m going to fight for you. I’m not going to throw you under the bus. Your freedom is not a threat to anyone else’s.”

She added, “Don’t give up, because hopelessness and powerlessness are tools of the oppressor.”