Congress
Christina Gagnier’s bid for Congress is about standing up to bullies
Democrat hopes to flip her seat to help her party re-take control of the House
For several election cycles, Democrats have been gunning for California’s 40th Congressional District, a purplish area encompassing inland Orange County and neighboring San Bernardino and Riverside Counties that could help deliver the party control of the House if Republican U.S. Rep. Young Kim is ousted.
Privacy lawyer and former Chino Valley school board member Christina Gagnier spoke with the Washington Blade recently about her campaign for the seat, which draws from years of experience “standing up to bullies” throughout her life and career.
In 2021, she lost her school board seat by voting to defend the LGBTQ community against attacks by groups like Moms for Liberty and the Proud Boys, as well as a policy of forced outing in the district.
At the same time, “despite all the culture war-laden headlines, we created dual immersion programs. We worked on STEM education. We opened new schools. We opened a bioscience academy. We did all these wonderful things that unfortunately didn’t make the headlines, but [it was] the things that parents care about.”
Likewise, she told the Blade, “the issues in this campaign are kitchen table issues. Through Our Schools, USA,” a group that she founded to advance public education, “I’m talking to public school parents every day, and they are worried about being able to buy groceries.”
Gagnier continued, “I just spoke with a mom who took out a loan to buy groceries and supplies for a month because of how they’re getting hit. I’ve talked to business owners who have just lost government contracts and might be going into debt because the government just cut off the contract.”
Here is where the rubber meets the road in terms of how the new administration’s work in Washington is harming the lives of everyday people, she said.
“People are realizing that while Young Kim masquerades as a moderate, she’s voting 100% in lockstep with Mike Johnson’s MAGA majority,” Gagnier said, referring to the Republican House speaker.
“We see families in this district suffering, and they’re contacting their representative, and she’s not doing anything,” she said, adding that constituents are likely to continue suffering as “Donald Trump is cutting funding and doing things that are impacting their day-to-day lives.”
The president and his Republican allies on Capitol Hill are bullying people, Gagnier stressed. About 82,000 people in CA-40 will be harmed by proposed cuts to Medicaid, she said. “The issues in this campaign are kitchen table issues.”
Represented by Republican U.S. Rep. Young Kim since 2021, the district is home to small businesses that provide its “lifeblood,” she said, and the owners of these enterprises are “already feeling the impacts” of “the tariffs” as well as “the cuts coming out of D.C.”
“I speak to veterans who are also business owners, and you know, they’re losing opportunities and support left and right,” Gagnier added.
Additionally, she said, “the other thing that is getting attacked is choice: Families being able to make their own private medical decisions, women being able to have the rights that they should have.”
“I’m putting in the work to make sure that we have the resources and the message and we’re reaching voters so that we can actually flip the seat,” Gagnier said. “So, you know, I think this is absolutely doable.”
CA-40 is the GOP-held seat in California that Donald Trump won by the smallest margin in 2024, and last year Kim defended her seat with 1.5 points less than the margin she won in 2022, despite the rest of the country moving toward the right during that time period.
Looking ahead to the Democratic primary election, “There’s a couple other candidates that have thrown their hat in the ring, but, you know, I’m 100% laser-focused on my campaign, making sure that I’m communicating with our families, our business owners, our veterans, and our seniors, and that I’m doing the work I need to do,” Gagnier said.
Trump is “destroying the Department of Education,” Gagnier said, and he selected a nominee to lead the agency, Linda McMahon, who represents “chaos and destruction.”
The newly confirmed secretary was picked not to “reform the Department of Education,” not to “fix things that might be issues at the Department of Education,” but rather is “coming in to destroy” the agency.
Gagnier said “Trump and Musk are already inside of the Department of Education, gutting it, and the end result of that is already being felt by public school families.” For example, she said, “We work with a lot of special education parents. I have parents that are frightened that their children are no longer going to be able to go to public school because they won’t have resources. That’s not okay.”
“We have teachers that are getting fired already because the grants and programs that come from Department of Education are being taken away,” she continued. “We have really talented educators who love kids, who love helping kids, getting unemployed.”
Returning to her election, Gagnier stressed “this is why this race is so important. We have to flip the house. We have to get in there and make sure that these cuts are stopped and we restore all these valuable funding sources that are impacting families.”
“In flipping the house, what that means is we’re able to restore these programs,” she said. “We’re able to make sure that these protections and funding that’s in place to support America’s families, that they’re reinstituted.”
“Donald Trump is a bully. Donald Trump is not going to stop being a bully. He’s going to keep going in and cutting things that America’s families, that the families of CA-40, rely on,” Gagnier said.
Asked what the Democratic Party writ large should do following last year’s electoral defeat, she said “we need a reset on generally as a party is the way we communicate with everyday people,” which will involve being “better listeners” rather than doing “one-way communication.”
“We need to start listening to voters, not tweeting at them,” Gagnier explained. “We need to make it clear to voters that we respect them, and that’s what I’m doing. I respect them, no matter who they voted for [as] president, I respect them. I’m listening to them. I’m here to advocate for them.”
This focus deviates from the tactics used by her Republican opponent who, Gagnier said, “can’t even take simple votes like supporting same-sex marriage” and whose voting record is no different from U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-Ga.).
“Young Kim has taken an oppositional stance to protecting basic rights, like whether it’s for the LGBTQIA+ community or a woman’s right to choice and to make their own healthcare decisions, she literally has taken an oppositional stance to protecting basic rights,” she added. “We’re going to communicate that, but I think that people need to be aware that her voting record is no different than the rest of the MAGA majority.”
Standing up to bullies
“What keeps parents up at night, families up at night, are prices at the grocery store, not culture wars,” Gagnier said. “And so I’m going to do my part in this campaign to gear my messaging back toward those kitchen table issues.”
By contrast, Republicans like Kim have prioritized trans issues that most parents and constituents in CA-40 do not really care about, she said. “They’re worried about their kids having access to college and career opportunities. When they’re going home at night after working all day, commuting, pick up and drop off, [trans issues] are not the issues that they’re concerned about.”
“I lost a school board seat,” Gagnier said. “And I would do it again and again and again, because I’m going to stand up to bullies, and I was not going to allow those students to be bullied in the school district I represented.”
Nor do other parents approve of kids being bullied in schools, neither theirs nor anyone else’s, she said. “They don’t like kids getting singled out. They don’t like schools being less safe.”
Gagnier added, “we see a lot of noise out there but parents love their public schools, and I think that we need to focus on school safety. And part of this is school safety. If kids at school don’t feel safe going to school, don’t feel safe while they’re at school, and they’re being targeted, that makes the school unsafe for every other kid, too.”
The bioscience academy she helped to spearhead as a school board member is a “four-year program for high school students” that — “in addition to the regular things high school kids have in the classroom” — affords them the opportunity to explore “careers in bioscience, biotechnology, the medical field, engineering.”
Gagnier continued, “So it just really gives these kids this very career-technical education focused exposure to these fields. And I’m very proud that we launched that program while I was on the school board, and families love the program, and so I’m just so blessed that we were able to provide that for the students and their families.”
Congress
Eight Democrats break with party as House advances ‘Don’t Say Trans’ bill
Measure not expected to pass in Senate
The U.S. House of Representatives passed a federal “Don’t Say Trans” bill on Wednesday, attempting to force teachers to out transgender students nationwide.
The bill, House Resolution 2616, also called the “Stopping Indoctrination and Protecting Kids Act,” would require schools to get parental consent before allowing students to use their preferred, rather than originally assigned, gender markers, pronouns, or preferred name on any school form, and to use any sex-based accommodations, including locker rooms or bathrooms.
The bill amends Section 8526 of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, legislation that allows for federal aid to help elementary and secondary education programs — particularly those under its lowest-income Title I-A program — to stop allocating funds to any education that teaches concepts “related to gender ideology.”
This is directly related to Executive Order 14168, also known as the “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government” order, one of President Donald Trump’s first executive orders of his second term. It requires the federal government to recognize only sex assigned at birth and dismiss gender identity rather than sex.
The bill was sponsored by U.S. Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.) and passed by a 217-198 margin. The vote fell mostly along party lines; however, eight Democrats voted for its passage. They were U.S. Reps. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), Donald Davis (D-N.C.), Cleo Fields (D-La.), Laura Gillen (D-N.Y.), Vicente Gonzalez (D-Texas), Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio), Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-Wash.), and Eugene Vindman (D-Va.).
Proponents of the bill argue a child’s gender identity should be directed by parents at home rather than in public schools.
Critics say this is dangerous and will force students to be outed by their teachers to parents — some of whom may not be supportive of their gender identity — which could lead to violence or possibly conversion therapy.
California Congressman Mark Takano, chair of the Congressional Equality Caucus, spoke on the House floor while the bill was being debated.
“Republicans claim to be the party of small government, but they have no problem bringing the full force of the federal government down against children. The GOP thinks they can legislate transgender people out of existence with this inhumane Don’t Say Trans bill, but all they’re doing is making life worse for a small minority of already-vulnerable children,” Takano said. “I spent 24 years as an educator where I worked with hundreds of high school students and their parents. Most children go to their parents when they need help or are struggling — including transgender children — but not all parents are accepting. The forced outing provision of this bill puts teachers in an impossible situation by requiring them to out trans kids to their parents in certain situations — even if the teacher knows the student will likely face physical abuse. Students like these are who Republicans want to put in immediate physical danger with this bill.”
The Washington Blade talked to Tyler Heck, founder and executive director of the trans advocacy organization and Christopher Street Project PAC, following the bill’s passage.
“Most queer kids go to their families when they are figuring out who they are, and then not all queer kids have that option,” Heck told the Blade. “If this became law, it would harm those already vulnerable kids who rely on school as a safe place and might not have a safe place at home.”
They explained this is not about protecting parents’ rights to know what is going on with their children, but rather the weaponization of trans identity that has become a mainstream Republican ideal pushed by the Trump-Vance administration.
“Young people deserve the space to figure out who they are without the federal government interfering in their lives,” they said. “It is beyond the pale, or rather it should be beyond the pale, and has become a norm for Republicans in Congress to villainize kids, because I mean, this bill targets kids, it’s in the name of the bill, and it’s in the implications.”
Heck continued, saying that amid the rising cost of everyday necessities — from gas to groceries — and while the Trump-Vance administration continues to defund programs intended to help the most vulnerable Americans while creating slush funds for political allies, this is not what Congress should be focusing on.
“At a time when people are really struggling, and politicians need to be focused on lowering costs, they’re using queer and trans kids as political pawns,” Heck said. “They want to divide and conquer this country, and we need to stand up against them and unite behind values of inclusion and of trust in our teachers.”
David Stacy, the Human Rights Campaign’s vice president of government affairs, provided a statement to the Blade.
“Trans kids are not a political agenda — they are students who deserve safety and affirmation at school like anyone else,” Stacy said. “Despite the many pressing issues facing our nation, House Republicans continue their bizarre obsession with trans people. HR 2616 does not protect children. It targets them. This bill is cruel, and we’ll continue to fight to ensure it never becomes law.”
The bill will move to the U.S. Senate in the coming days and weeks, but it must first be reviewed by a Senate committee before leadership schedules it for a floor vote, where it will need 60 votes to pass.
Congress
Bill seeks to block global gag rule expansion
Policy now bans US foreign aid to groups promoting ‘gender ideology’
Lawmakers on Wednesday introduced a bill that would block the expansion of the global gag rule.
President Ronald Reagan in 1985 implemented the global gag rule, also known as the “Mexico City” policy, which bans U.S. foreign aid for groups that support abortion and/or offer abortion-related services.
Trump reinstated the rule during his first administration. The Biden-Harris administration shortly after it took office in 2021 rescinded it.
The Trump-Vance administration earlier this year expanded the global gag rule to ban U.S. foreign aid for groups that promote “gender ideology.” The expansion took effect on Feb. 26.
U.S. Sens. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) and Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.) introduced the Protecting Human Rights and Public Health in Foreign Assistance Act in the U.S. Senate. U.S. Reps. Grace Meng (D-N.Y.), Lois Frankel (D-Fla.), Diana DeGette (D-Colo.), Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.), and Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.) introduced it in the U.S. House of Representatives.
“Using taxpayer money to export the Trump administration’s anti-trans, anti-science, and anti-abortion ideological agenda isn’t just immoral — it’s antithetical to efficient, effective, and rights-based foreign assistance,” said Council for Global Equality Senior Policy Fellow Beirne Roose-Snyder on Wednesday in a press release.
Meng added the Trump-Vance administration’s “crusade against healthcare and global aid is putting millions of lives at risk worldwide.”
“No one will flourish under the new expanded global gag rule,” said the New York Democrat. “These policies weaponize foreign aid and will result in greater harm, particularly for women and girls, marginalized communities, and LGBTQI+ individuals.”
“They should never have been implemented at all, let alone without even a basic public comment process,” she added. “This legislation will reverse these dangerous policies.”
Congress
Top Democrats re-introduce trans bill of rights
Lawmakers spoke outside US Capitol on Wednesday
U.S. Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and U.S. Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), and Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.) announced the reintroduction of a “Trans Bill of Rights” on Wednesday.
Despite chilling winds and snow on the ground, transgender activists, LGBTQ rights advocates, and trans-supporting lawmakers gathered outside the U.S. Capitol to announce the reintroduction of the “Transgender Bill of Rights” resolution to protect trans Americans, as the Trump-Vance administration continues to target LGBTQ Americans.
About 30 people gathered outside to hear from legislators and individuals impacted by recent White House policies.
“Today we say loud and clear that trans rights are human rights, and they must be protected every single day of every single year,” Markey told the crowd. “We stand together in solidarity with the trans community and with those who have too often been left behind by a system that refuses to recognize their humanity. We are here to ensure that every trans and gender-diverse person in America can live freely and safely and authentically. That’s what the Trans Bill of Rights is all about.”
Markey is leading the resolution on the Senate side, while Jayapal is pushing it forward in the House.
“With the Trans Bill of Rights, we are laying out a comprehensive vision to provide protections for transgender and nonbinary people — a vision that ensures every single person has a chance to thrive,” Jayapal said. “A vision that says: you are us, you belong, and you are worthy of the same rights as everyone else. This bill supports amending the Civil Rights Act to ensure that trans people have the same rights and protections as all other Americans. It creates a level playing field where trans people no longer have to fight tooth and nail to get the same treatment as their cisgender friends.”
The resolution for House and the Senate reads:
“Recognizing that it is the duty of the federal government to develop and implement a Transgender Bill of Rights to protect and codify the rights of transgender and nonbinary people under the law and ensure their access to medical care, shelter, safety, and economic security.”
Trans Legislation Tracker, an independent research organization that collects data on anti-trans legislation from the hyper-local level to the floor of the U.S. Senate, found that in 2025, 1,022 measures were proposed across the country to restrict the rights of trans Americans — from health care removals to bathroom bans.
Markey directly called out those lawmakers for what he described as discriminatory actions taken against trans Americans who, as he pointed out, are fighting for rights that everyone else is inherently given.
“Trump and MAGA Republicans have used the power of government to spread fear and hate across our country. They have tried to ban lifesaving and medically necessary health care, strip anti-discrimination protections, and turn trans lives into political talking points for their benefit. Well, we have a message for them: we are louder, we are stronger, and we are not going anywhere. We’re in this fight for the long term,” the Massachusetts senator said.
Jacobs, a co-chair of the Transgender Equality Task Force within the Congressional Equality Caucus, also spoke at the event.
“Trans Americans are being targeted just for being who they are — by laws and court decisions that try to erase them from classrooms, from courts and fields, from health care and public life. These attacks aren’t about safety or fairness,” Jacobs said. “They’re about hatred and instilling fear. And we know how quickly fear can warp into suspicion and violence with deadly consequences.”
In addition to lawmakers, trans Americans and supporters spoke.
Olivia Hunt from Advocates for Trans Equality, LaLa Zannell from the American Civil Liberties Union, as well as three additional people who have been actively harmed by the ongoing wave of anti-trans legislation, shared their stories.
Hunt emphasized the staggeringly high number of anti-trans bills being introduced in statehouses across the country — despite trans adults making up less than 1 percent of the population, according to the Williams Institute’s 2025 data.
“Since 2020, thousands of anti-LGBTQIA+ bills have been introduced in statehouses across the country,” Hunt said. “It’s a veritable tidal wave of political bullying disguised as legislation, and most of these bills specifically target transgender and nonbinary people — especially trans youth and their families. This is a moment that demands action.”
Hunt, who is trans, helps trans people in D.C. obtain legal documents that match their gender identity — something the Trump-Vance administration has stopped.
“Trans youth deserve to be protected by their government. They shouldn’t have to be protected from their government,” she said. “It’s long past time that our federal laws reflect and protect the reality and dignity of all people. Trans people have always existed — we are your neighbors, your family members, your community — and we belong.”
Zannell, who spoke proudly about her trans identity, explained why the bill is necessary and how it would protect trans people in all facets of their lives.
“I stand here as an unapologetic Black trans woman who has led this movement for over a decade to get us to moments like this. The reintroduction of the Trans Bill of Rights will aim to protect access to gender-affirming care, prevent discrimination in housing and public spaces, and preserve legal recognition,” Zannell said. “My hope is that this affirms our government’s duty to protect all trans and nonbinary people.”
The Transgender Bill of Rights is cosponsored in the Senate by U.S. Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), and Peter Welch (D-Vt.).
In the U.S. House of Representatives, the resolution is led by Jayapal, co-led by Jacobs and U.S. Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.), with nearly 100 other representatives signing on as co-sponsors.
“To all trans people across the United States: you are seen, you are valued, and you are loved,” said Markey. “And I want you to know there are people who will fight for you every single day on the floor of the House and Senate to win those rights for you.”
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