As Trump attacks the trans community, advocates urge Josh Shapiro to get louder

LGBTQ advocates in Pennsylvania want to hear more from Gov. Josh Shapiro as President Donald Trump increasingly targets their community.

As several health systems across Pennsylvania have announced limits to gender-affirming healthcare in the wake of federal orders targeting procedures for minors, some advocates in the LGBTQ community are getting increasingly frustrated with what they say has been relative silence on the topic from the Democratic governor.

Their dilemma: how to navigate a president who is attacking them and a governor who has been an ally but a quieter one than they want.

“If Shapiro has any presidential ambitions, he better start speaking up,” Kyle McIntyre, the organizer of Delco Pride, said last week, urging him to “fight” for the community.

Frustration with Shapiro’s relative silence on transgender issues has been bubbling for months and, with it, a debate among activists about how to engage. There is some fear of exposing an internal divide, and drawing the attention of the Trump administration and its megaphone. But several advocates said there is also an urgent need for support as transgender people’s access to healthcare is actively at risk.

Trump campaigned on, and then quickly signed, executive orders banning transgender people from participating in women’s sports and restricting gender-affirming care, which some healthcare institutions have now stopped providing.

As Pride, the monthlong celebration of LGBTQ history, culture, and resilience, takes place, a coalition of LGBTQ groups is asking Shapiro to more explicitly protect transgender healthcare. Amid rainbow flags and celebrations last weekend, organizations circulated QR codes directing people to sign onto a letter bound for Shapiro’s office, demanding he pledge to defend transgender healthcare.

Edward Mono, 20, wore an empty testosterone vial on a silver chain around his neck at Philadelphia’s Pride March last Sunday. He wanted to make a statement about how the hormone therapy saved his life — something he increasingly thinks the White House, and the governor’s mansion, might not understand.

“This helps me live my life, it’s the bare minimum,” he said. Mono said he appreciates Shapiro saying he supports transgender people, “but I haven’t heard of him doing anything.”

Shapiro, the state’s popular first-term governor and a potential candidate for president in 2028, has publicly supported the LGBTQ community, marching in Pride parades and denouncing discrimination against LGBTQ people, but he has largely avoided weighing in on Trump’s executive orders related to transgender people.

Known as a tactical politician, Shapiro has largely expressed the sentiment that Pennsylvania should fulfill its founding principle: to be “warm and welcoming for all, including for people in the LGBTQ+ community,” he said at a news conference in York in March.

When it comes to challenging Trump’s administration, he has picked other public battles: targeted lawsuits over withheld federal funds or speaking out against specific policy proposals he says will hurt Pennsylvania, such as tariffs or Medicaid cuts.

In the 2024 presidential election campaign, Democrats were hammered on transgender issues, often with misleading claims by Republicans, a tactic that continues.

That has led some in the party to blame their sweeping November losses, in part, on the GOP’s focus on the issue, and to distance themselves from it. California Gov. Gavin Newsom, another possible future presidential candidate, walked into a maelstrom after he questioned the fairness of transgender female athletes competing in women’s sports. Trump then cited Newsom’s comments as the president railed against a state track meet featuring a transgender competitor.

“We seriously hope he’s not considering a Gov. Newsom direction, at a time we urgently need him to be more like a Gov. Mills,” one LGBTQ leader said, referring to Janet Mills, Maine’s Democratic governor, a vocal defender of transgender kids who quickly became a punching bag for Trump over it.

“He’s just doing a Gov. Shapiro,” the advocate said. “No direction.”

In recent months, Shapiro has trod carefully when asked about transgender issues.

At a news conference in Philadelphia on Wednesday, Shapiro responded to a question about hospitals terminating gender-affirming surgeries for people under 19.

“We see the threats coming from the federal government,” he said, noting he has had conversations with “many, if not all,” of the major healthcare CEOs.

“I know that they’re trying to navigate their way through this in a humane way, in a way that respects the rights and the needs of all the people they serve, of all Pennsylvanians. And we’re going to continue to have dialogue on that and work through it,” he said.

People familiar with those conversations said the administration is focused on supporting healthcare providers and patients during a time of legal uncertainty and concern over federal retaliation.

Penn Medicine announced last week that it will no longer provide gender-affirming surgery to patients under age 19, following in the footsteps of UPMC and Penn State Health, which have backed off gender-affirming care services for youth under threat of losing critical federal financial support.

Trump in January issued an executive order that bars federal funding for gender-affirming care, including hormone therapy, puberty blockers, or surgeries, for transgender patients under 19. Such care helps patients to have a body that matches their gender identity and has wide acceptance within the medical community.

At the same time hospitals in the state have suspended care, Congress is considering a budget reconciliation bill that includes a ban on Affordable Care Act healthcare plans covering gender-affirming care (including hormone therapies) for all Medicaid patients, including adults.

Asked Wednesday if he would push back on Congress’ or Trump’s attempts to change what Medicaid covers in the state, Shapiro indicated he might.

“I’m not going to be threatened or bullied by the federal government,” he said. “I’ve proven that over years … my job is to follow my oath. My job is to protect all Pennsylvanians.”

Shapiro’s office pointed to these comments when asked about the frustrations of LGBTQ advocates.

Shapiro rarely mentions transgender people in public remarks, but he has a strong track record on LGBTQ issues more generally.

He supports the Fairness Act, recently reintroduced by State Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta (D., Philadelphia), which would amend the Pennsylvania Human Relations Act to prohibit discrimination in housing, employment, and public accommodations on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.

And Shapiro’s administration is currently defending the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission against a lawsuit filed by a conservative legal group targeting trans students.

Polling shows the majority of Americans do not support gender-affirming care for minors, or transgender athletes competing in women’s sports, which has made both issues politically fraught for Democrats.

“We lose the arguments on some of these issues just outright,” one elected Democrat in the state said. “It’s driven by people not knowing much about it, being open to the misinformation, and because most Americans do not know a trans person.”

The Democrat, who did not want to be quoted extrapolating on Shapiro’s future, said while the governor is likely treading lightly given his political ambitions, staying too quiet could backfire.

“This and police reform may feel out of vogue because of Trump and this moment, but I don’t think anyone’s getting through a presidential primary throwing trans kids under the bus.”

Ahead of Philadelphia’s Pride flag-raising last week, an email, obtained by The Inquirer, went out to participants, asking speakers to “save direct policy advocacy for other events” and to “avoid referencing anti-trans or anti-LGBTQ+ legislation or politicians.”

“This event is not about fighting back,” the email read. “It’s about shining through.”

It is not uncommon for a city-sponsored flag-raising to avoid politics, and a city spokesperson said the email was developed with such guidance in mind but the memo was emblematic of the internal debates going on among LGBTQ organizers about how and when to push back.

A lot of thought went into the best public approach to Shapiro over Pride.

Michel Lee Garrett, a board member at the nonprofit Centre LGBT+, described the Pride campaign as one of “solidarity.”

“Solidarity with each other, amongst each other, and with our allies and our elected officials who have been willing to stand with us,” she said.

The letters to Shapiro ask him to make a public statement confirming support for LGBTQ-inclusive healthcare for all Pennsylvania residents and to take action to ensure it is affordable and accessible, including through Medicaid.

Corinne Goodwin, executive director of the Eastern Pennsylvania Trans Equality Project, is among those circulating the letter for signatures. Goodwin’s organization operates a hotline to help transgender people. Since Trump’s election, the volume of calls has gone from about five a day to upward of 60.

“Our community is feeling a lot of trauma,” Goodwin said. “So what we’re trying to do is get the governor to step up more affirmatively than he has been.”

McIntyre, of Delaware County, helped draft a resolution passed by the Delaware County Council last week that declares it a safe space for transgender people and transgender healthcare and affirming that county officials will not share private healthcare information unless they are legally mandated to do so.

McIntyre has asked Shapiro to make a similar pledge declaring Pennsylvania a statewide sanctuary for trans healthcare.

“The only reason hospitals are engaging in pre-compliance is because it’s deafening silence,” he said. “They’re getting no signals from the government they’ll be supported.”

McIntyre admits he is personally skeptical of the efficacy of letter campaigns in a moment when he said the community needs urgent public support. “We always have to be strategic,” he said.

But he called trans healthcare “the next lightning rod civil rights issue,” and compared the moment to the Stonewall demonstrations against a violent police raid at a New York gay bar in 1969.

“In Stonewall, we started the riot because we had no choice,” he said. “That doesn’t mean that that’s what’s currently going on … but it’s building.”

Staff writers Michelle Myers, Katie Bernard, and Fallon Roth contributed to this article.