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Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz speaks at a town hall meeting in Youngstown, Ohio, in April
The price of eggs has nothing to do with a person's gender, the former vice-presidential nominee says.
When rehashing last year’s presidential election, there are those who’ve claimed that support for transgender rights was a losing issue for the Democrats. But Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who was the Democratic nominee for vice president, says the party shouldn’t abandon trans people.
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Donald Trump made opposition to trans equality and even existence a centerpiece of his campaign and has gone on to issue several anti-trans executive orders as president. Some prominent Democrats have backed away from support for trans people, at least for trans female athletes, such as California Gov. Gavin Newsom and, during last year’s campaigns, U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Texas U.S. Senate candidate Colin Allred, both of whom lost their races anyway. Walz, however, says abandoning trans people would be a mistake.
“I think we have to figure out how to not get sucked in and allow that to be the focal point only, and that we can multitask, and we can hold several things simultaneously,” Walz recently told The Independent.
“We can protect LGBTQ rights and basic human rights at the same time we can make sure that we hold drug companies accountable for high prices,” he said.
“And here’s the thing: We need to tell people your cost of eggs, your health care being denied, your homeowner’s insurance, your lack of getting warning on tornadoes coming has nothing to do with someone’s gender,” Walz added.
Walz has been a champion of trans people and the broader LGBTQ+ community as governor. In 2023, he signed an executive order directing state agencies to take action to protect and support access to gender-affirming care. Shortly afterward, he signed a bill to put this protection into law, shielding Minnesotans from legal action that may be brought by other states.
Minnesota also lets the state take “temporary emergency jurisdiction” in child custody cases where a child has been abandoned, abused, or denied gender-affirming care. During the presidential campaign, Trump and running mate JD Vance claimed that Minnesota was allowing the “kidnapping” of children for the purpose of making them trans.
Temporary emergency jurisdiction “does not equate to taking custody of the child; rather, it allows a judge to hear a case in a custody dispute where one parent resides in a state that criminalizes trans care and the other in a state where such care is legal,” trans journalist Erin Reed wrote in a column last August. “Notably, it does not even tell the judge who should be awarded custody, it merely allows a court in Minnesota to hear such a custody dispute.”
Walz frequently defended trans people during the campaign and has continued to do so post-election. When Sam Nordquist, a trans man from Minnesota, was tortured and killed in upstate New York this year, Walz called it an “unthinkable crime.”
