The Center for American Progress, one of the most influential think tanks in Democratic politics, has published a policy paper advising the party to step back from the fight over trans student-athletes and leave those decisions to local schools and sports bodies. The paper is co-authored by Caleb Smith, CAP's trans Director of LGBTQI+ Policy, and framed as a way to "lower the temperature" ahead of the midterms. I understand the instinct. I also think that framing has a cost.

What the paper actually says

It is not a full retreat. Smith and co-author Winnie Stachelberg argue that Democrats should hold their ground in three important areas: opposing Donald Trump's ban on trans people serving in the military, fighting for discrimination protections through the Equality Act, and defending access to gender-affirming care for trans minors as a decision best made by doctors and families. Those are not small things, and it matters that a major Democratic institution is saying them clearly.

But on trans student-athletes, the paper says the party should let schools and sports governing bodies make the call, noting that "restrictions may be appropriate under some circumstances." The context is the U.S. Supreme Court's decision upholding state bans on trans athletes participating in girls' sports. For some Democrats, the Court's ruling has been a convenient exit: they can call it settled law and move on to talking about affordability. CAP is offering a version of that exit with a progressive wrapper.

The girl at the centre of this

Trans activist NV Gay put it simply and exactly right. "I think the effects of her words are extremely damaging to the trans girls out there who are wanting to just be themselves." She was talking about Amy Acton, the Ohio Democratic gubernatorial candidate who responded to the Supreme Court ruling by saying, "I do not support boys playing in girls' sports." That sentence is not a strategic triangulation; it is a statement that erases the identity of every trans girl who has ever laced up a pair of trainers.

The Ohio Democratic Party's Pride Caucus replied immediately: "There are no boys in girls' sports. Trans girls are girls." That is not a slogan, it is a factual correction, and it is the kind of clarity that a frightened trans teenager in Ohio needs to hear from the party that is supposed to represent her.

NV Gay's editorial in the Buckeye Flame, and her words to Signal, say something that no amount of policy positioning can paper over: "Once again, we're in this fight where we don't have a politician who is truly on our side." Read that again. This is a trans activist describing her experience of being inside the Democratic coalition in 2026. The party spent years asking trans people and their allies for loyalty, votes, donations, and canvassing hours. And when the political weather turned cold, some of its candidates reached for MAGA language to describe trans girls.

Is strategic retreat ever justified?

I want to be fair to Caleb Smith here, because it genuinely matters that a trans person is co-authoring this guidance rather than being talked about from the outside. Smith is not abandoning trans people; the paper explicitly defends gender-affirming care, military inclusion, and legal protections. And the question of who should govern sports participation is genuinely complicated, in the sense that it involves bodies with different levels of expertise, different competitive contexts, and different populations of athletes.

But "let local bodies decide" is only a neutral-sounding position until you look at what local bodies have been doing. State legislatures across the US have been systematically banning trans girls from sport for years, often using wildly disproportionate legislation that sweeps up tiny numbers of children to score culture-war points. Handing the question back to those bodies is not lowering the temperature; it is accepting the outcome the temperature was always designed to produce.

And there is something that troubles me about the framing of trans athletes as the issue the party can afford to give ground on, while retaining positions on military service and healthcare. Trans girls in sport are not a harder case. They are not less deserving. They are children who want to run races and belong to teams and experience the completely ordinary joy of competing. The argument that their inclusion is the place to compromise is only coherent if you have already accepted that their inclusion is legitimately controversial, and it is not.

What lowering the temperature actually means

Smith told the Washington Post that CAP hopes the paper "lowers the temperature and lets us come out of this really scary moment for folks." I do not doubt the sincerity of that. But the temperature that needs lowering is not the temperature of the political debate; it is the temperature of fear inside every trans girl who is watching politicians and courts decide whether she is allowed to be herself in the most ordinary of settings.

Strategic silence on her behalf does not lower that temperature. It raises it. The Ohio Democratic Progressive Caucus said Acton's comment would cost her support from the party's base, and they were probably right. But the more important consequence is not electoral. It is the message sent to NV Gay, and to every trans girl who read Acton's words and felt, once again, that the adults in the room had decided she was expendable.

Democrats have a genuine choice here. They can treat trans athletes as a liability to be managed, or they can treat trans girls as constituents whose dignity is worth defending even when it is politically inconvenient. Those two positions are not compatible, and no amount of careful policy language makes them so.

If there is a news story you would like me to cover then just let Sammy know.

Dr Helen Webberley is a gender specialist, medical educator, and advocate. She is the founder of GenderGP and writes about gender diversity, trans healthcare, and trans rights.