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WASHINGTON (AP) — Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz touted Vice President Kamala Harris' record of defending LGBTQ+ rights on Saturday night, pledging to a supportive crowd that she will advance their cause if elected president.
Walz, the Democratic vice presidential nominee, headlined the national dinner for the Human Rights Campaign, which he praised as “the best party in the nation.” He entered the sprawling ballroom of 3,500 attendees to John Mellencamp's “Small Town” and a boisterous standing ovation from members of the nation’s largest LGBTQ+ organization.
He noted how Harris worked alongside President Joe Biden to issue executive orders protecting the rights of LGBTQ+ people in health care, the military and education.
"And the reason she did it was pretty simple. Kamala Harris believes in equal justice under law, and that means proper, complicated, equal justice under law. It is not to be debated," Walz said. “It’s not that difficult.”
Transgender youth and adults are facing growing restrictions in red states. Last year, HRC declared an emergency for LGBTQ+ people in the United States because of the proliferation of state laws restricting their rights. If elected, Republican Donald Trump has said he would replicate some of those restrictions at the federal level.
Not long after Biden dropped out of the 2024 race and endorsed Harris for president, HRC announced that it, too, would back her. The organization also applauded her selection of Walz as her running mate, citing his own long record of supporting LGBTQ+ youth and backing same-sex marriage.
On Saturday night, Walz recounted how he taught social studies and coached football at a Minnesota high school in the 1990's — and was unexpectedly approached by a student asking him to serve as the faculty adviser of the Gay-Straight Alliance.
He also outlined a litany of Harris's achievements on LGBTQ+ issues, recalling an episode in when, as attorney general of California, she had to personally call a Los Angeles clerk who was declining to issue marriage license to same-sex couples.
“'You must start the marriages immediately,'” Harris told the clerk, according to Walz. “She had the best line then. She told the clerk, ‘Have a good day. It’s going to be a fun one.'”
He urged the crowd to work to help elect Harris, outlining what could happen if Trump got a second term in the White House. Trump's policy proposals would “restrict freedom, bully this community, demonize vulnerable children," Walz said.
Trump has made attacks on transgender people a mainstay of his campaign rhetoric as he seeks his second term in office. It marks an about-face for Trump, who in his 2016 address to the Republican National Convention called for the party to protect LGBTQ+ people.
If reelected, Trump has pledged in his policy platform to stop public schools “from promoting gender transition” and to revoke federal funding from any school that teaches what he calls “radical gender ideology.” In a video posted online last year, Trump also said he would punish doctors who administer gender-affirming care to transgender youth by cutting them off from Medicare and Medicaid and teachers who “suggest to a child that they could be trapped in the wrong body.”
At an event last week for Moms for Liberty, Trump went after Algerian boxer Imane Khelif, continuing to spread misinformation about the Olympic gold medalist being transgender and having an unfair advantage over her competitors. He then pushed the outlandish claim that public schools are performing gender-affirming surgeries.
“Your kid goes to school. And comes home a few days later with an operation,” Trump said at the group’s national summit. He repeated the assertion at a rally Saturday. Transgender youth rarely undergo gender-confirmation surgery anywhere.
Asked about the comments, a campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt could not provide any examples to substantiate his claim. But she pointed to reports that thousands of K-12 schools have rules that bar teachers from telling parents if their child asks to use pronouns that deviate from those on their birth certificate.
“President Trump will ensure all Americans are treated equally under the law regardless of race, gender, or sexual orientation,” Leavitt said. She added that the former president does not believe children should be allowed to have what she called “permanent gender mutilation surgeries."
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