Former Vice President Kamala Harris revealed in her new book that she agrees with the biological concerns of transgender athletes competing in girls’ sports, following other Democrats who have expressed the long-held conservative opinion.
Harris’s memoir, 107 Days, follows her shortened 2024 presidential campaign after former President Joe Biden dropped out of the race. Throughout the book, Harris provides a behind-the-scenes glimpse into her historic sprint for the White House.
The Washington Examiner received a copy of 107 Days prior to its Sept. 23 publication.
“I agree with the concerns expressed by parents and players that we have to take into account biological factors such as muscle mass and unfair athletic advantage when we determine who plays on which teams, especially in contact sports,” Harris said.
In the final weeks of the election, President Donald Trump slammed Harris over her position on transgender rights, releasing ads with the now-famous tagline, “Kamala is for they/them, I am for you.” Harris admits it was a “winning message,” but argued he misrepresented her position, especially on youth sports.
“With goodwill and common sense, I believe we can come up with ways to do this, without vilifying and demonizing children,” Harris wrote about navigating the transgender athletes issue.
Doug Emhoff, former first gentleman, was noted to have been watching sports games when the ads started to air. Harris noted that the Trump campaign spent $40 million on those ads, which aired in the seven swing states and were shown in all 50 states during sports broadcasts.
Harris’s book makes her the latest national Democrat to question the fairness of transgender athletes competing in girls’ sports, after Gov. Gavin Newsom broke with much of the party earlier this year when he called the participation “deeply unfair.”
Harris said she didn’t “punch back harder” to Trump’s attacks on this issue, because of the people and political aspects.
Even 20 years later, Harris drew similarities to previous elections, writing “in the 2004 presidential election, gay marriage was used as a wedge issue by Republicans, just as the trans issue was in 2024.”
In 2004, when John Kerry was the Democratic presidential nominee, he took a nuanced stance on same-sex marriage. He opposed the Federal Marriage Act and supported civil unions, but he stated that he personally believed marriage was between a man and a woman.
Republicans strategically used this to motivate their conservative base, which contributed to the reelection of then-President George W. Bush.
Harris defended another Trump ad claim, telling the American Civil Liberties Union during her 2019 presidential primary campaign that she supported providing gender transition treatment to people in prison and immigration detention, saying it was “medically necessary.”
Harris writes that she “has been an ally of the LGBTQ+ community for [her] entire life,” and that the rhetoric from the Trump campaign over the issue was “painting a bull’s-eye on their backs and putting them in peril.”
Harris disagreed with pundits who called Trump’s ads the “knockout punch” that stalled her campaign growth in October 2024.
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“I believe this is the conventional wisdom of middle-aged men who don’t live in battleground states and were the target of those ads,” she wrote.
Similar to other moments in the book, Harris admits she wishes that her responses were stronger and that they had “given even more attention to how we might mitigate Trump’s attacks.”
“I wish I had gotten the message across that there isn’t a distinction between ‘they/them’ and ‘you.’ The pronoun that matters is ‘we’. We the people. And that’s who I am for,” she wrote.
