Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said Democrats should approach transgender rights, including eligibility requirements for trans athletes, “with compassion” during an interview aired early Monday with NPR’s “Morning Edition.”
Buttigieg, who confirmed in May that he is weighing a bid for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination after passing on a Senate run in Michigan, was asked about his messaging on transgender rights in response to remarks from former Obama White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel that diminished trans identities.
Emanuel, a Democrat and former Chicago mayor, has also said he is considering a 2028 presidential bid.
“Your approach starts with compassion — compassion for transgender people, compassion for families, especially young people who are going through this, and also empathy for people who are not sure what all of this means for them,” Buttigieg, who ran unsuccessfully for the 2020 Democratic nomination, told host Steve Inskeep on Monday.
“And I think when you do that, that does call into question some of the past orthodoxies in my party, for example, around sports, where I think most reasonable people would recognize that there are serious fairness issues if you just treat this as not mattering when a trans athlete wants to compete in women’s sports,” Buttigieg said.
“Meaning the parent who has complained about this has a case,” Inskeep interjected.
“Sure,” Buttigieg said. “And that’s why I think these decisions should be in the hands of sports leagues and school boards and not politicians. Least of all, politicians in Washington trying to use this as a political pawn.”
Buttigieg’s stance on transgender athletes echoes that of other potential Democratic candidates for the 2028 presidential election. In May, Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) said the party should be more open to hearing legitimate concerns about trans students participating in girls’ and women’s sports, similarly advocating for compassion and a hands-off approach from Washington.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), seen as a top contender for the 2028 nomination, said in March that he found transgender girls and women competing on female sports teams “deeply unfair.” He later said he would be open to a conversation about limiting their participation in California if such a discussion were conducted “in a way that’s respectful and responsible and could find a kind of balance.”
Newsom applauded a pilot program announced last month by the California Interscholastic Federation, which governs high school sports in the state, allowing more girls to qualify for California’s track-and-field championship in events where a transgender student-athlete also qualified.
The issue is likely to play out on the campaign trail. Roughly two-thirds of Americans said in a recent Gallup poll that they support policies preventing transgender people from participating on sports teams that match their gender identity.
On Monday, Buttigieg said he disagrees with the Trump administration’s approach to transgender athletes, which includes a sweeping executive order stating that the U.S. opposes “male competitive participation in women’s sports” and more than two dozen federal investigations into states, universities, school districts and athletic associations that continue to allow trans women and girls to compete on teams that match their gender identity.
The U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee updated its eligibility rules last week to exclude transgender female athletes, citing Trump’s order. The NCAA barred trans women from competition in February, shortly after Trump issued the order on trans athletes.
President Trump and administration officials have refused to use the word “transgender” in orders and policies related to transgender Americans, routinely referring to trans women as “biological males” and “men.” An executive order Trump signed on his first day back in office proclaims the federal government recognizes only two unchangeable sexes, male and female.
“I think that chess is different from weightlifting, and weightlifting is different from volleyball, and, you know, middle school is different from the Olympics,” Buttigieg said on Monday. “So, that’s exactly why I think that we shouldn’t be grandstanding on this as politicians. We should be empowering communities and organizations and schools to make the right decisions.”
Buttigieg, who is gay, has criticized other recent moves by the Trump administration that target transgender Americans, including a Department of Defense policy that took effect last month barring trans people from serving openly in the military.
“Deep down, I have to believe that most Americans get that whatever group happens to be disfavored at the moment, and it’s always somebody, that the kinds of politicians — left, right or center — that get ahead by stepping on their faces, nothing good comes of that,” Buttigieg said at a VoteVets Action Fund town hall in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in May, responding to a question about Democratic messaging on transgender rights.
In February, Iowa became the first state to remove anti-discrimination protections for a previously protected class when it struck safeguards for transgender people from its civil rights code.
“There’s a perception that Democrats became so focused on identity that we no longer had a message that could actually speak to people across the board, or that we were only for you if you fit into a certain identity bucket,” Buttigieg said on Monday. “And the tragedy of that is that I believe the right kind of Democratic vision is one that lifts everybody up — it pays specific attention to discrimination or mistreatment of people because they’re Black or because they’re women or LGBTQ or whatever reason that might be. But you don’t have to be in this particular combination of categories to benefit from what we have to offer.”
