Politics
Inside trainings for trans candidates running for public office
LGBTQ Victory Institute debuts program for trans and gender diverse candidates
When the LGBTQ+ Victory Institute convenes its flagship Candidate and Campaign Training in Los Angeles next month, the agenda will be familiar: four days of workshops, mock campaign plans, and late-night study sessions as aspiring politicians learn the ins and outs of running for office.
For the first time, however, this year transgender, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming candidates will stay in town after the larger group disperses for a two-day extension designed specifically for them.
A collaboration between Victory and Advocates for Trans Equality, the program comes at a pivotal time of ascendant transphobia at the White House, in the Trump-Vance administration more broadly, and across the country as state legislatures have advanced anti-trans bills at a breakneck pace in 2025.
Organizers say the training is meant to build a pipeline — not just of candidates, but of resilient leaders who are prepared for campaigns fought in an era of anti-LGBTQ politics, and polarization fueled or accelerated by online platforms.
A physician steps in
Among those voices is Alexis Hoffkling, a family physician in Colorado who decided last year that her lane of impact needed to expand.
“I’ve cared about politics my whole life, in a not particularly involved kind of way that, in retrospect, is sort of like sitting in the stadium of a sporting event and not being on the field,” she told the Washington Blade during an interview last week.
“For a really long time, I’ve been operating in the mode that the best way to make a positive change in the world is to pick something and do it really well. And for me, that was providing medical care and teaching the next generation of doctors to be good doctors without losing their humanity.”
That work, she added, comes with a political education of its own. “You can’t provide safety net primary care with an open mind and an open heart without being a little radicalized by it.”
What pushed her to run, she said, was not any single policy change but a deeper recognition of the stakes.
“It became really clear that this is not a business-as-usual kind of moment in history,” Hoffkling said. “I just woke up one morning and said, ‘OK, I have to be able to say, in 20 years, if I haven’t been disappeared, that I did everything I could when history called for it.’ And I’m convinced that this is the way to do that. Never mind work-life balance.”
Hoffkling brings the daily realities of her patients with her into the political arena.
“Every day is full of stories,” she said. “My patients are wonderful and resilient and thoughtful people whose life stories really clearly demonstrate the consequences of policy decisions.”
The most immediate threat, she argued, is the federal government’s push to cut Medicaid.
“People are going to die. Many, many people are going to die,” she said. “And many more people are going to have their lives devastated by the costs of care, directly and indirectly. Communities are going to suffer. Rural hospitals are going to close, and they’re not going to reopen after they close.”
She worries, too, about the erosion of scientific authority and the exodus of biomedical research talent abroad. “Conceivably, we could restore Medicaid funding. We could even do something more than restore it. But it’s going to take a lot of work to rebuild trust in public institutions when they are being used in a corrupt, anti-scientific and persecutory fashion.”
On gender-affirming care, she is unequivocal: “This is healthcare. This is medical care. In the same way that the government shouldn’t be determining whether or not you take antibiotics or have surgery for your appendicitis, it should be a conversation between you and your doctors,” she said. “Government should stay out of it, and where the federal government is trying to muck around in it, then it is our job as states that care about human rights to do everything we can to protect the sanctity of the doctor-patient decision making space.”
Trainings will be led by trans lawmaker with a proven record
When Virginia State Sen. Danica Roem unseated a 26-year Republican incumbent in Virginia in 2017, she became the first out transgender state legislator in the country. Since then, she has turned her experience into a roadmap for others — including through her book “Burn the Page” and now through the trans and gender diverse training extension she will help lead in Los Angeles.
“What is life like as a trans person on the campaign trail? What is your day to day?” Roem said of the sessions she plans to run. “Because you know that your gender will be the headline of the story. No matter whether you’re running for soil and water conservation district or you’re running for Congress, your gender is going to be the first thing that’s going to be mentioned about you.”
The key, she tells trainees, is not to deny the reality but to control how much it defines the narrative.
“You never say, ‘I’m trans, but.’ I say, ‘I’m trans, and.’ I’m not apologizing for who I am,” Roem said. “I’m trans, and I care a lot about fixing Route 28. About universal free school breakfast and lunch. About making Virginia a more inclusive commonwealth.”
That approach, she noted, has already helped other trans candidates win. “Emma Curtis followed my playbook pretty much verbatim, and now she’s a member of the Lexington City Council,” Roem said.
Trainings prepare candidates for campaigns
For Hoffkling, the appeal of the training is partly practical — fundraising, budgeting, social media — and partly about the blind spots she may not yet know she has.
“The unknown unknowns, those are your blind spots,” she said. “Those are the danger points, and it’s worth spending time and energy to try to map those out so that they’re no longer blind spots.”
But just as important is the chance to learn from others who have been targeted because of their gender identity.
“Most of the challenges of campaigning are universal to any candidate, but some of them will be specific to the experience of navigating a campaign in a transphobic world while trans,” she said. “I want to learn more from the experience and insights of other folks who walk this path.”
Roem, who has trained dozens of candidates through Victory and Emerge Virginia, which works to elect women to public office, said those moments of connection are often the most powerful.
“The most important thing that I did in the Chicago training last year was spend one-on-one time with dozens of them,” she said. “Because then if I can connect with someone as a person, I can usually fish out something beyond the slogan of why you’re running for office. The slogan is nice, the policy position is important. [But] why are you really running? Tell me who you really are.”
Those conversations, she said, often bring candidates to tears. But they also bring breakthroughs that can prepare candidates to “really become unstoppable on the campaign trail.”
Hoffkling frames representation itself as a form of medicine.
“When I have a patient who has a trans kid who comes to her appointments, who is so excited to come to her mom’s doctor’s appointments because there’s a trans doctor — that’s one little snapshot of a moment in an exam room that’s private,” she said. “But that same phenomenon happens at scale, and in a public role in public office, it helps people to see the expanse of possibilities for their future.”
She credits trailblazers like Roem, U.S. Rep. Sarah McBride (D-Del.), and Colorado State Rep. Brianna Titone with clearing the way. “If there weren’t the wave of Sarah McBride, Brianna Titone, Danica Roem, Zooey Zephyr…then in my race, I would be facing a lot of questions about, ‘is it possible? Is it winnable, as a trans person?’ And the fact that other people have proved that it’s possible makes it more possible for me.”
Roem sees that ripple effect too. In her own district, polling after her 2021 reelection campaign found that 12 percent of voters reported a more favorable view of transgender people because of her service.
“By a 12-to-one margin, we were actually having a positive effect on how people thought about my own community, which is pretty good,” she said.
The trainings, both women emphasized, are about more than political survival. They are about equipping candidates to become the leaders they wished they’d had — inclusive, effective, and grounded in the lives of their constituents.
“Because we know what it’s like to be singled out and stigmatized by the very people who are elected to serve us in the first place,” Roem said, “which makes us far less likely to do it to our constituents when we’re elected.”
Congress
McBride, other US lawmakers travel to Denmark
Trump’s demand for Greenland’s annexation overshadowed trip
Delaware Congresswoman Sarah McBride is among the 11 members of Congress who traveled to Denmark over the past weekend amid President Donald Trump’s continued calls for the U.S. to take control of Greenland.
McBride, the first openly transgender person elected to Congress, traveled to Copenhagen, the Danish capital, with U.S. Sens. Chris Coons (D-Del.), Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and U.S. Reps. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.), Madeleine Dean (D-Pa.), Don Bacon (R-Neb.), and Sarah Jacobs (D-Calif.). The lawmakers met with Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and Greenlandic MP Pipaluk Lynge, among others.
“I’m grateful to Sen. Coons for his leadership in bringing together a bipartisan, bicameral delegation to reaffirm our support in Congress for our NATO ally, Denmark,” said McBride in a press release that detailed the trip. “Delaware understands that our security and prosperity depend on strong partnerships rooted in mutual respect, sovereignty, and self-determination. At a time of growing global instability, this trip could not be more poignant.”
Greenland is a self-governing territory of Denmark with a population of less than 60,000 people. Trump maintains the U.S. needs to control the mineral-rich island in the Arctic Ocean between Europe and North America because of national security.
The Associated Press notes thousands of people on Saturday in Nuuk, the Greenlandic capital, protested against Trump. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is among those who have criticized Trump over his suggestion the U.S. would impose tariffs against countries that do not support U.S. annexation of Greenland.
A poll that Sermitsiaq, a Greenlandic newspaper, and Berlingske, a Danish newspaper, commissioned last January indicates 85 percent do not want Greenland to become part of the U.S. The pro-independence Demokraatit party won parliamentary elections that took place on March 12, 2025.
“At this critical juncture for our countries, our message was clear as members of Congress: we value the U.S.-Denmark partnership, the NATO alliance, and the right of Greenlanders to self-determination,” said McBride on Sunday in a Facebook post that contained pictures of her and her fellow lawmakers meeting with their Danish and Greenlandic counterparts.
Congress
Van Hollen speaks at ‘ICE Out for Good’ protest in D.C.
ICE agent killed Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis on Jan. 7
U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) is among those who spoke at an “ICE Out for Good” protest that took place outside U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s headquarters in D.C. on Tuesday.
The protest took place six days after a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot and killed Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old woman in Minneapolis.
Good left behind her wife and three children.
(Video by Michael K. Lavers)
Congress
Advocates say MTG bill threatens trans youth, families, and doctors
The “Protect Children’s Innocence” Act passed in the House
Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene has a long history of targeting the transgender community as part of her political agenda. Now, after announcing her resignation from the U.S. House of Representatives, attempting to take away trans rights may be the last thing she does in her official capacity.
The proposed legislation, dubbed “Protect Children’s Innocence Act” is among the most extreme anti-trans measures to move through Congress. It would put doctors in jail for up to 10 years if they provide gender-affirming care to minors — including prescribing hormone replacement therapy to adolescents or puberty blockers to younger children. The bill also aims to halt gender-affirming surgeries for minors, though those procedures are rare.
Greene herself described the bill on X, saying if passed, “it would make it a Class C felony to trans a child under 18.”
According to KFF, a nonpartisan source for health policy research, polling, and journalism, 27 states have enacted policies limiting youth access to gender-affirming care. Roughly half of all trans youth ages 13–17 live in a state with such restrictions, and 24 states impose professional or legal penalties on health care practitioners who provide that care.
Greene has repeatedly introduced the bill since 2021, the year she entered Congress, but it failed to advance. Now, in exchange for her support for the National Defense Authorization Act, the legislation reached the House floor for the first time.
According to the 19th, U.S. Rep. Sarah McBride (D-Del.), the first trans member of Congress, rebuked Republicans on the Capitol steps Wednesday for advancing anti-trans legislation while allowing Affordable Care Act tax credits to expire — a move expected to raise health care costs for millions of Americans.
“They would rather have us focus in and debate a misunderstood and vulnerable one percent of the population, instead of focusing in on the fact that they are raiding everyone’s health care,” McBride said. “They are obsessed with trans people … they are consumed with this.”
Polling suggests the public largely opposes criminalizing gender-affirming care.
A recent survey by the Human Rights Campaign and Global Strategy Group found that 73 percent of voters in U.S. House battleground districts oppose laws that would jail doctors or parents for providing transition-related care. Additionally, 77 percent oppose forcing trans people off medically recommended medication. Nearly seven in 10 Americans said politicians are not informed enough to make decisions about medical care for trans youth.
The bill passed the House and now heads to the U.S. Senate for further consideration.
According to reporting by Erin Reed of Erin In The Morning, three Democrats — U.S. Reps. Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez of Texas and Don Davis of North Carolina — crossed party lines to vote in favor of the felony ban, joining 213 Republicans. A total of 207 Democrats voted against the bill, while three lawmakers from both parties abstained.
Advocates and lawmakers warned the bill is dangerous and unprecedented during a multi-organizational press call Tuesday. Leaders from the Human Rights Campaign and the Trevor Project joined U.S. Rep. Becca Balint (D-Vt.), Dr. Kenneth Haller, and parents of trans youth to discuss the potential impact of restrictive policies like Greene’s — particularly in contrast to President Donald Trump’s leniency toward certain criminals, with more than 1,500 pardons issued this year.
“Our MAGA GOP government has pardoned drug traffickers. They’ve pardoned people who tried to overthrow the government on January 6, but now they want to put pediatricians and parents into a jail cell for caring for their kids,” said Human Rights Campaign President Kelley Robinson. “No one asked for Marjorie Taylor Greene or Dan Crenshaw or any politician to be in their doctor’s office, and they should mind their own business.”
Balint, co-chair of the Congressional Equality Caucus, questioned why medical decisions are being made by lawmakers with no clinical expertise.
“Parents and doctors already have to worry about state laws banning care for their kids, and this bill would introduce the risk of federal criminal prosecution,” Balint said. “We’re talking about jail time. We’re talking about locking people up for basic medical care, care that is evidence-based, age-appropriate and life-saving.”
“These are decisions that should be made by doctors and parents and those kids that need this gender-affirming care, not certainly by Marjorie Taylor Greene.”
Haller, an emeritus professor of pediatrics at St. Louis University School of Medicine, described the legislation as rooted in ideology rather than medicine.
“It is not science, it is just blind ideology,” Haller said.
“The doctor tells you that as parents, as well as the doctor themselves, could be convicted of a felony and be sentenced up to 10 years in prison just for pursuing a course of action that will give your child their only chance for a happy and healthy future,” he added. “It is not in the state’s best interests, and certainly not in the interests of us, the citizens of this country, to interfere with medical decisions that people make about their own bodies and their own lives.”
Haller’s sentiment is echoed by doctors across the country.
The American Medical Association, the nation’s largest organization that represents doctors across the country in various parts of medicine has a longstanding support for gender-affirming care.
“The AMA supports public and private health insurance coverage for treatment of gender dysphoria and opposes the denial of health insurance based on sexual orientation or gender identity,” their website reads.
Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen, senior vice president of public engagement campaigns at the Trevor Project, agreed.
“In Marjorie Taylor Greene’s bill [it] even goes so far as to criminalize and throw a parent in jail for this,” Heng-Lehtinen said. “Medical decisions should be between patients, families, and their doctors.”
Rachel Gonzalez, a parent of a transgender teen and LGBTQ advocate, said the bill would harm families trying to act in their children’s best interests.
“No politician should be in any doctor’s office or in our living room making private health care decisions — especially not Marjorie Taylor Greene,” Gonzalez said. “My daughter and no trans youth should ever be used as a political pawn.”
Other LGBTQ rights activists also condemned the legislation.
Tyler Hack, executive director of the Christopher Street Project, called the bill “an abominable attack on the transgender community.”
“Marjorie Taylor Greene’s last-ditch effort to bring her 3-times failed bill to a vote is an abominable attack on the transgender community and further cements a Congressional career defined by hate and bigotry,” they said. “We are counting down the days until she’s off Capitol Hill — but as the bill goes to the floor this week, our leaders must stand up one last time to her BS and protect the safety of queer kids and medical providers. Full stop.”
Hack added that “healthcare is a right, not a privilege” in the U.S., and this attack on trans healthcare is an attack on queer rights altogether.
“Marjorie Taylor Greene has no place in deciding what care is necessary,” Hack added. “This is another attempt to legislate trans and queer people out of existence while peddling an agenda rooted in pseudoscience and extremism.”
U.S. Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.), chair of the Congressional Equality Caucus, also denounced the legislation.
“This bill is the most extreme anti-transgender legislation to ever pass through the House of Representatives and a direct attack on the rights of parents to work with their children and their doctors to provide them with the medical care they need,” Takano said. “This bill is beyond cruel and its passage will forever be a stain on the institution of the United States Congress.”
The bill is unlikely to advance in the Senate, where it would need 60 votes to pass.
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