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Trump attacks Harris on her support of tax-funded transgender surgeries for prisoners

Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris arrives to speak on stage during the final day of the Democratic National Convention at the United Center on Aug. 22, 2024, in Chicago. (Credit: Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Oct 14, 2024 / 10:47 am (CNA).

With Election Day less than a month away, former president Donald Trump is running campaign advertisements in swing states that criticize Vice President Kamala Harris over her support for taxpayer-funded transgender surgeries for prisoners.

“It’s hard to believe, but it’s true,” a narrator says in one advertisement while showing Harris standing next to Sam Brinton, a former Department of Energy official who is male but is wearing women’s clothing.

“Even the liberal media was shocked Kamala [Harris] supports taxpayer-funded sex changes for prisoners and illegal aliens,” the narrator continues, adding: “… Kamala’s for they/them. President Trump is for you.”

The advertisement features Harris’ response to a 2019 questionnaire sent out by the American Civil Liberties Union in which she promises to use executive authority to ensure that people in prisons — including immigrants charged with entering the country illegally — can obtain gender transition surgeries through government-provided medical care.

“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 said.

“As [California] attorney general, I pushed the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to provide gender transition surgery to state inmates,” she added.

The advertisement also includes a brief clip from a 2019 interview with the National Center for Transgender Equality Fund in which Harris doubles down on the position.

A second Trump advertisement out this month touches on the same subject and details a case in which convicted murderer Shiloh Quine, who is male, reached a legal settlement with then-California Attorney General Harris to obtain government-funded transgender surgery while in prison.

“He murdered a father of three, sentenced to life in prison,” a narrator says. “Kamala Harris pushed to use tax dollars to pay for his sex change.”

Harris initially represented the Department of Corrections in court, which was refusing to pay for the transgender surgery. However, she ultimately agreed to a settlement in 2015, which required the state to finance the operation.

The settlement made California the first state to pay for a prisoner’s transgender surgery, the Associated Press reported at the time.

In a 2019 news conference Harris said she only defended the department’s policy because she “was obligated” to do so as the attorney general. She said there were times when her clients “took positions that were contrary to [her] beliefs” but that she “worked behind the scenes” to pressure the department to change its policies.

In October 2015, the California Department of Corrections set new guidelines that guarantee government-funded transgender surgeries for prisoners who seek those operations.

Where do the voters stand?

Although public polling on taxpayer-funded transgender surgeries is limited, one poll from America’s New Majority Project this year found that a large majority of Americans oppose tax money paying for those operations.

Nearly two-thirds of Americans surveyed said they do not believe taxpayer-funded health care programs should be required to fund transgender surgeries. Nearly 60% of those surveys went further, saying they would support a law that prohibits tax money from funding those surgeries.

Another poll of likely voters conducted this month showed that a majority of respondents supported a federal ban on transgender procedures for children.

The poll, conducted by Noble Predictive Insights, found that 59% of voters surveyed support a ban, which includes 82% of Republicans, 36% of Democrats, and 56% of independents.

However, issues related to transgenderism and gender ideology rank low on the list of priorities for most Americans heading to the ballot box, according to public polls.

A Gallup poll released last week found that “transgender rights” was the least important issue to registered voters surveyed when presented with 22 election issues.

When asked whether an issue was extremely important, very important, somewhat important, or not important, only two issues were not viewed as extremely or very important by the majority of reporters — climate change and transgender rights.

Only 18% of voters surveyed said transgender rights was “extremely important” and another 20% said the issue was “very important.” Another 25% said the issue was “somewhat important” and 36% said it was not important.

The top issues were the economy, which 90% of voters said was extremely important or very important, and democracy in the United States, which 85% of voters ranked as extremely important or very important.

Other top issues included terrorism and national security, Supreme Court justice picks, immigration, education, and health care.

Apart from transgender rights and climate change, other issues ranking lower on the priority list were trade with other nations, relations with China, race relations, and relations with Russia.


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3 Comments

  1. Things will get really bad of Harris wins the election. The Dem party is now openly anti Christian. See how the Dem governor of Michigan mocks the celebration of Communion. It is redolent of what the French organizers of the Olympics did with the Last Supper. The anti-Christian agenda is global. See this:
    https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2024/10/10/video-michigan-governor-gretchen-whitmer-mocks-catholics-by-feeding-leftist-influencer-doritos-on-her-knees/

    Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer Mocks Catholics by Feeding Leftist Influencer Doritos on Her Knees

    https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2024/10/12/michigan-bishops-protest-gov-whitmers-mockery-holy-communion/
    Michigan Bishops Protest Gov. Whitmer’s Mockery of Holy Communion

  2. The President of the United States is also Commander in Chief of our military and has control over our nuclear arsenal. Any Catholic who votes for an imbecile as President bears responsibility for any catastrophic decisions that affect the lives of millions..

  3. Harris is a fraud, and people are beginning to admit what’s before their eyes.

    The Las Vegas Review-Journal, by no means a right-wing mouthpiece, recently endorsed Trump.

    Their article explaining their stance was brutal — and spot-on. Here’s a chunk of it:

    A vapid, unpopular vice president in an unpopular administration who flamed out spectacularly in her 2020 run for the Oval Office was within weeks recast as a purveyor of “joy” and an amalgamation of Abraham Lincoln, George Washington and Mahatma Gandhi.

    Ms. Harris next began disavowing a host of her previous policy positions. A San Francisco leftist who sympathized with the defund-police movement, raised the prospect of dismantling Immigration and Customs Enforcement and supported sanctuary cities now passes herself off as a tough-on-crime border hawk.

    A progressive once named the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate and who favored abolishing the filibuster, packing the Supreme Court and limiting political speech now shape-shifts into a defender of “democracy” and the nation’s institutions.

    A key component in an administration that openly sought to put fossil fuel providers out of business now claims to be a proponent of fracking.

    A candidate who cast the tie-breaking vote for the spending package that lit the fuse to rampant inflation, devastating American families, now claims to represent the interests of the middle class.

    A politician who says she would have done nothing differently over the past four years wants voters to believe she is an agent for “change.”

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