Unpacking Trump Debate Claim Kamala Harris will perform transgender operations on prisoners

Kamala Harris reacts to Trumps Transgender Surgery rant

Debate fact check: Trump says Harris wants to perform ‘transgender operations on illegal aliens’ in prison.

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“She did things that nobody would ever think of,” Trump claimed in the Sept. 10 debate. “Now she wants to do transgender operations on illegal aliens that are in prison. This is a radical left liberal that would do this. She wants to confiscate your guns, and she will never allow fracking in Pennsylvania. If she won the election, fracking in Pennsylvania will end on day one.”

Harris, in 2015 as California Attorney General sought to deny a transgender woman who was incarcerated gender-affirming health care.

Kamala Harris as San Fransico District Attorney General opposed the decriminalization of sex work, which in 2015 many trans people resorted to to survive. Harris's presidential campaign website makes no mention of transgender rights.

Evidently, Kamala Harris has evolved.

Trump’s claim about “transgender operations” can likely be traced back to a 2019 survey from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which the organization says it sent to all presidential candidates that year, CNN’s KFILE reported on Monday. In that survey, candidates were asked if they would use presidential authority to ensure that all trans people, including incarcerated people and undocumented immigrants, received “comprehensive treatment” for their transition “including all necessary surgical care.” Harris said she would do so.

The Eighth Amendment prohibits cruel and unusual treatment of prisoners.

Source: American Medical Association Journal of Ethics: As outlined in Estelle v Gamble (1976), the 8th Amendment to the US Constitution requires that states provide adequate care for people who are incarcerated—but what constitutes “acceptable” care under professional guidelines is frequently at odds with the standard of care used by clinicians outside of carceral facilities. Outright denial of standard care runs afoul of the Constitutional prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.

Trump keeps pushing anti-trans horror stories at his rallies #Project2025 #transgender https://t.co/EgVINfYeMo via @msnbc

— Planet Trans (@kellibusey) September 11, 2024

Evidently. Trump has devolved. He was once a uge transgender supporter.

In 2012 Trump advanced transgender rights immeasurably when he overruled the rejection of a transgender beauty queen. Businessman Donald Trump overturned a decision by the Miss Universe Organization, which he owned, to disqualify a Canadian transgender beauty pageant contestant because she was not a "naturally born" female. Jenna Talackova, a tall blonde who underwent gender-reassignment surgery at age 19 and holds legal documents affirming her identity as a woman, wants pageant organizers to go further and drop eligibility rules she calls discriminatory.

On the claim that Harris "wants to confiscate your guns,” fact-checking site, PolitiFact, which has partnered with PBS News this election season, says the claim is mostly false. In 2019, Harris said that she supports "a mandatory gun buyback program" for assault weapons. but not all weapons.