In search of debate fodder, CNN pushes an anti-trans Kamala Harris hit piece

CNN turned a 2019 Harris answer about whether transgender people should receive necessary medical care when in government custody into an engagement-bait trifecta of hate.

On Monday afternoon, CNN published an anti-transgender hit piece on Vice President Kamala Harris based off a 2019 ACLU questionnaire that she filled out during her presidential run.

In the 10-page response to the group’s 18 questions, Harris made clear — in answering a specific question — that she supported providing appropriate medical care to those transgender people who “rely on the state for care,” including those in prison and immigration detention, and that medically necessary transition-related care can and does at times include surgical care.

And yet, this is how CNN headlined their pre-2024 debate coverage of this 2019 questionnaire response:

Before we get to Monday’s hit piece, which was authored by my former BuzzFeed News colleague Andrew Kaczynski, let’s make a few things clear.

This had not been not some out-of-nowhere question at the time, and it was not some on-the-fly answer. This was an issue that had been coming up more frequently and, specifically, it had been an issue that Harris had dealt with in 2015 in a transgender inmate’s case while attorney general in California. Harris later faced questions about her handling of Michelle-Lael Norsworthy’s case, who only got the necessary surgery after being paroled.

This is also not a particularly complicated issue. The government has obligations to provide necessary medical care for those who it forces under its control — whether due to imprisonment or immigration detention — and often faces challenges related to the failure to provide needed care. When deemed medically necessary treatment for a person’s gender dysphoria (the medical diagnosis that reflects a person’s longstanding mismatch between their gender identity and their gender assigned at birth), gender-affirming medical care is, at the end of the day, medical care.

As such, one only reaches the conclusion that gender-affirming medical care should not be provided when called for if one starts from an anti-transgender perspective.

Or, posed as a question: Unless you want to exclude transgender people from care, why would you exclude transgender people’s care?

Now, it is true that politicians have regularly pushed back against providing such coverage, even where recommended, but I suspect that has been done in not insignificant part due to fear of the very sort of reporting like that Kaczynski produced for CNN and its global audience on Monday.

So, what happened?

Here’s the ACLU’s 2019 question, and Harris’s yes “X” and explanation:

Here is what Kaczynski did to that on Monday at CNN:

This is absolute trash.

Kaczynski turned a question and answer about whether transgender people should receive necessary medical care when in government custody into an engagement-bait trifecta of hate. The framing is anti-transgender, anti-immigrant, and anti-criminal justice reform. It is based on a baked-in premise that it is a “left-wing cause[]” to provide necessary medical care to transgender people, detained immigrants, or those in prison.

Then, CNN’s Erin Burnett put Kaczynski on the air on Monday evening, spouting the same bullshit to the TV audience on her debate-eve show.

Kaczynski reiterated the headline and his lede, talking about Harris “support[ing] taxpayer-funded gender-transition surgeries for detained migrants.“

Burnett repeated that, then incredulously added, “She actually said she supported that?“

Kaczynski shot back, “She both wrote and answered in the affirmative when she was asked this.”

Burnett closed off that section of their discussion by declaring that it “would be hard to think” such medical care would be taxpayer-funded.

The mere fact that Kaczynski and Burnett were so self-satisfied and proud of themselves in this segment itself says a lot about the dramatic downward shift in public discussions about transgender people’s lives over the past five years.

In 2019, despite the Trump administration, the country was, in many ways, still progressing on LGBTQ issues — including transgender issues. There were, though, certainly challenges from Donald Trump on down — and the beginning signs of the coming wave of anti-trans hate that would be promoted in culture and in politics.

And yet, in 2019, there were no bans on any medical treatments recommended for transgender people. Five years later, about half of the states in the country have bans on gender-affirming medical care for minors, multiple federal appeals courts have held that those bans are likely constitutional, and the U.S. Supreme Court has taken up the issue. One federal appeals court last month even allowed Florida to enforce a ban includes restrictions on adult care during the state’s appeal of a loss below.

The fact that CNN decided to eagerly — and repeatedly — encourage the sort of hateful attitudes that it encouraged on Monday is appalling.

Is it surprising?

It should be.

Is it? You’d have to ask them.