Eliana Johnson of the Washington Free Beacon reports an inconvenient piece of Pete Buttigieg’s political history.
It wasn’t just Kamala Harris. No, during the 2020 Democratic primary, presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg also supported taxpayer-funded gender transition surgeries for federal inmates and illegal immigrants.
The former mayor of South Bend, Ind.—now eyeing the 2026 Michigan Senate race—told the American Civil Liberties Union in 2019 that, if elected, he would use executive authority to ensure that federal inmates and illegal immigrants have access to “comprehensive treatment associated with gender transition, including all necessary surgical care.”
“I would direct my HHS Office of Civil Rights and Department of Justice to vigorously enforce all federal laws against discrimination based on gender identity, including ensuring the provision of all medically necessary care for transgender Americans,” Buttigieg wrote in response to the question. “This includes medical care for transgender individuals incarcerated in federal prisons and under immigration detention.”
A spokesman for Buttigieg told the Free Beacon that he “made clear his position that the law must be applied equally and fairly to all people seeking necessary care, and that he would faithfully enforce all federal laws against discrimination.”
Buttigieg also told the ACLU, in response to a survey sent to all presidential candidates, that he was committed to reducing the federal prison population by 50 percent during his presidency and to shrinking the size of the country’s immigration detention system by slashing funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Buttigieg’s responses are newly relevant given his interest in jumping into the Michigan Senate race, certain to be one of the most hotly contested races of the midterm election cycle in the wake of Democratic incumbent Gary Peters’s announcement that he will not run for reelection.
But Buttigieg’s left-wing social views may prove problematic in the swing state, which President Donald Trump—as well as the state’s Democratic Senate candidate, Elissa Slotkin—carried in November.
