Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, embarking on a personal post-mortem of the failures of his Democratic Party, suggested this week that the participation of transgender athletes in women’s sports was “deeply unfair.”
The comments by Mr. Newsom, who has backed L.G.B.T.Q. causes for decades and was one of the first American elected officials to officiate same-sex weddings, represented a remarkable break from other top Democrats on the issue, and signaled a newly defensive position on transgender rights among many in his party.
Just as surprising as Mr. Newsom’s remarks was the person to whom he made them: Charlie Kirk, a 31-year-old right-wing influencer best known for starting Turning Point USA, the pro-Trump organization that is active on college campuses.
Mr. Newsom invited Mr. Kirk, who has a long history of inflammatory and conspiratorial remarks, onto the debut episode of his new podcast, called This Is Gavin Newsom, for an 81-minute discussion because, the governor said, “people need to understand your success, your influence, what you’ve been up to.” Mr. Newsom spent much of the conversation reflecting on the myriad ways that former Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign failed to reach key voters during the 2024 election, losing ground with young people, men and Hispanic voters.
Mr. Newsom is widely seen as having presidential ambitions in 2028 — something he joked about on the podcast — and until recent months, he had often sought to project an image as one of the leaders of the Democratic Party’s opposition to President Trump. In December, he cursed Mr. Trump’s name in an interview with The New York Times, but shortly after the president’s inauguration, Mr. Newsom traveled to Washington for a meeting with Mr. Trump to discuss funding for wildfire relief.
Mr. Newsom’s most significant revelation on his podcast, which was released on Thursday morning, came when Mr. Kirk pressed the California governor to agree with him that it was unfair for transgender women to compete in women’s sports.
“I think it’s an issue of fairness, I completely agree with you on that,” Mr. Newsom said. “It is an issue of fairness. It’s deeply unfair.”
He also acknowledged the effectiveness of Mr. Trump’s signature campaign ad, which declared: “Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you.”
“It was devastating,” Mr. Newsom said. “And she didn’t even react to it, which was even more devastating.”
Since Democrats’ election loss last year, Mr. Newsom has become the most prominent official in the party to lament its position on transgender participation in sports, but he is hardly the first. Hours after the presidential race was called, Representative Seth Moulton of Massachusetts told The Times that he did not want his young daughters “getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete,” a remark that set off weeks of blowback.
Since taking office, Mr. Trump has taken steps to try to erase transgender people from American life. He has eliminated the T — for transgender — from federal L.G.B.T.Q. policies online and moved to ban transgender people from serving in the military.
On his podcast, Mr. Newsom spoke at length about the political effectiveness of attacking transgender people in the presidential campaign. He called Mr. Trump’s “they/them” commercial “a great ad.” He also mocked the practice of people announcing their preferred pronouns when introducing themselves.
“I had one meeting where people starting going around the table with the pronouns, one,” Mr. Newsom said. “I’m like, ‘What the hell, why is this the biggest issue?’”
At the beginning of Mr. Newsom’s political career, after he was elected mayor of San Francisco in 2003, he officiated at same-sex weddings before they were allowed by law. He routinely participated in the city’s famed Pride parade and for decades has supported expanding rights for L.G.B.T.Q. people.
Last year, as school boards in conservative regions of California passed policies to require educators to notify parents if a child went by a different gender identity at school, Mr. Newsom signed a state law prohibiting such rules.
L.G.B.T.Q. advocates welcomed the law, while conservatives said it infringed on parents’ rights. Elon Musk cited the law as a reason to move the headquarters of his company Space X to Texas from California.
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