The Latest | US is removing aid pier from Gaza coast again due to weather, officials say

The U.S.-built aid pier will be detached from Gaza’s coast for a second time due to rough seas, two U.S. officials said Friday, raising further questions about the viability of the sea route.

Palestinians are facing widespread hunger because the war has largely cut off the flow of food, medicine and other supplies. U.N. agencies say over 1 million in Gaza could experience the highest level of starvation by mid-July.

The military would move the pier late Friday and into Saturday to prevent it from breaking apart as it did late last month in bad weather, the two officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss military planning. The officials expect the pier will be back in place and operating again by next week.

The $230 million project has been beset by security, logistical and other problems since aid first rolled ashore May 17.

Although aid has been unloaded in a secure area onshore for several days, humanitarian agencies have stopped picking up and distributing it throughout Gaza. The U.N. is weighing whether it can safely and ethically keep delivering supplies from the pier, after Israeli forces used the area near the pier to evacuate hostages and a wounded commando, according to the U.S. and Israeli militaries, during last week's operation that killed more than 270 Palestinians.

U.S. President Joe Biden said Thursday he doesn’t expect to seal a Gaza cease-fire deal in the near future, as an American-backed proposal with global support has not been fully embraced by Israel or Hamas.

Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza has killed more than 37,100 people, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians in its count.

Israel launched the war after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, in which militants stormed into southern Israel, killed some 1,200 people — mostly civilians — and abducted about 250.

Currently:

— US-built pier in Gaza is facing its latest challenge — whether the UN will keep delivering the aid

— Israelis and Palestinians are hopeful but cautious over the latest cease-fire plan.

— What are the main sticking points in the cease-fire talks between Israel and Hamas?

— Muslims start the Hajj against the backdrop of the destructive Israel-Hamas war

— US Navy faces its most intense combat since World War II against Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels

— Report by UN-backed experts cites crimes by Israeli forces and Palestinian militants starting 0ct. 7.

Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Gaza at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war

Here's the latest:

UNITED NATIONS — More than two-thirds of Gaza's water and sanitation facilities and infrastructure are estimated to have been destroyed or damaged since the Israel-Hamas war began eight months ago, the United Nations says.

U.N. deputy spokesman Farhan Haq told reporters Friday that U.N. partners working on water, sanitation and hygiene in Gaza report additional losses of key water and sanitation assets during the recent intensification of military operations.

They said five water production wells in Jabalaya in the north have been lost along with two water wells and two desalination plants in the southern city of Rafah, where Israel is conducting major military operations, he said.

Haq said U.N. humanitarian officials report that displaced Palestinian families continue to face “dire conditions and significant challenges in accessing basic services.”

The U.N. humanitarian office led two assessments last week to informal displacement sites in the central city of Deir al-Balah where thousands of Palestinians have sought shelter.

“They said the shelters are overcrowded and lack sanitation infrastructure, with distributions that are irregular, and residents reported a range of health issues such as hepatitis A, skin diseases and respiratory illnesses.” Haq said. “Access to water is also critically low.”

U.N. humanitarian officials also underscored that aid operations in Gaza are facing serious impediments which must be lifted, he said.

DAMASCUS, Syria — The Syrian branch of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad militant group is prepared to send more forces to Lebanon in case Israel launches a full-scale war against the militant group Hezbollah, an Islamic Jihad official said Friday.

“All Palestinian youth look forward to facing the Israeli occupation and joining Hezbollah in this resistance,” said Ismail al-Sendawi, national relations officer for the Islamic Jihad in Syria. He spoke at a ceremony in Damascus commemorating members of the group from Syria who died fighting in Lebanon over the past eight months.

Sixteen Palestinian refugees from Syria, all Islamic Jihad members, have died to date fighting on the Israel-Lebanon border.

Ahmed Saleh, 62, said his 22-year-old son, Mohammed, a former factory worker, was killed in southern Lebanon in December and his older son is still fighting there.

“I am proud that I am the father of a martyr. My son is a fighter for the children of Gaza and a fighter for Palestine,” he said. “I encouraged my son to join the fight in the south.”

Like the larger and stronger Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad was formed in the 1980s as a radical Islamist movement to resist Israel’s occupation of Gaza.

Hezbollah, which is allied with Hamas and Islamic Jihad and, like them, backed by Iran, has been clashing near-daily with Israeli forces against the backdrop of Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza. The fighting has escalated in recent weeks, raising fears of a full-scale war on the Lebanon-Israel front.

BORGO EGNAZIA, Italy — The Group of Seven nations warned Israel to stop any “actions that weaken the Palestinian Authority,” after far-right Israeli leaders moved to withhold tax funds from the fledgling Palestinian government in the West Bank.

The statement was made Friday in the final communique from the G7 leading industrialized nations summit in Italy.

Under interim peace accords in the 1990s, Israel collects tax revenue on behalf of the Palestinians, and it has used the money as a tool to pressure the Palestinian Authority, which administers some parts of the West Bank. Hamas violently expelled the PA from Gaza in 2007.

The G7 called on Israel to release tax revenues in light of the PA’s “urgent fiscal needs.” The leaders also demanded Israel “remove or relax other measures to avoid further exacerbating the economic situation in the West Bank.”

The statement came a day after Israel’s firebrand finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, said he would reroute some of the funds earmarked for the PA to “victims of terrorism” in Israel.

After the Oct. 7 Hamas that triggered the war in Gaza, Smotrich froze the tax revenue transfers. But Israel agreed to send the money to Norway, which transferred it to the PA.

Smotrich has said he is ending that arrangement and is pursuing other financial measures that would handicap the PA’s already-waning ability to pay salaries to thousands of employees.

WASHINGTON — The U.S.-built aid pier will be detached from Gaza’s coast for a second time due to rough seas, two U.S. officials said Friday, raising further questions about the viability of the sea route.

The military is detaching the causeway and moving it late Friday and into Saturday to prevent it from breaking apart again, as it did late last month when it was hit by bad weather, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss military planning.

The officials expect it will be back in place by next week and will be operating again.

Palestinians are facing widespread hunger because the war has largely cut off the flow of food, medicine and other supplies. U.N. agencies say over 1 million in Gaza could experience the highest level of starvation by mid-July.

Aid has been moving from Cyprus through the pier to the secure area onshore for several days. But aid agencies have currently paused their effort to pick up and distribute the aid while they conduct a security review.

The United Nations, the player with the widest reach delivering aid within Gaza, has paused its work with the pier after a June 8 operation by Israeli security forces that rescued four Israeli hostages and killed more than 270 Palestinians.

GENEVA — Around two thirds of all roads in the Gaza Strip have been damaged or destroyed by war, the U.N. satellite center says its latest analysis.

The United Nations Satellite Center said Friday its assessment was based on high-resolution satellite imagery collected on May 29, after almost eight months of fighting between Israel and Hamas.

UNOSAT released a satellite photo of the tiny Palestinian territory overlaid with a color-coded map of the dense road network. It appears to show nearly all of the roads in Gaza City and areas north of Wadi Gaza have been affected by the fighting, as well as most of the roads in the southern city of Khan Younis

Roads were also destroyed in zones running along much of the length of Gaza's borders with Israel and Egypt.

UNOSAT identified approximately 1,100 kilometers (683.51 miles) of destroyed roads, 350 kilometers (217 miles) of severely affected roads and 1,470 kilometers (913 miles) of moderately affected roads. The center said this totals roughly 65% of the road network.

The center did not elaborate on its criteria for categorizing the damage, and noted this was a preliminary analysis that hadn’t yet been backed up by on-the-ground examinations.

Israel faces growing international criticism for its strategy of systematic destruction in Gaza, at a huge cost in civilian lives. A cease-fire proposal outlined by the U.S. calls for major reconstruction of Gaza, which faces decades of rebuilding from devastation caused by the war.

JERUSALEM — Israel will not join a trilateral effort to stem fighting with Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group proposed by France's president, Israel’s defense minister said Friday.

“As we fight a just war, defending our people, France has adopted hostile policies against Israel,” Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said in a statement from his office rejecting the French proposal.

French President Emmanuel Macron mentioned the effort Thursday on the sidelines of the G7 conference in Italy. He said France, the U.S. and Israel had agreed to work jointly towards quelling tensions between Hezbollah and Israel, who have exchanged cross-border fire nearly every day since the war in Gaza began in early October.

“We have agreed on the principle of a trilateral between Israel, the United States, and France to advance the roadmap we have proposed,” said Macron.

Gallant’s rejection of the French proposal was criticized by senior officials in Israel’s Foreign Ministry in a rare public spat.

“We disapprove of Minister of Defense Gallant’s attacks on France,” the officials wrote Friday. They said France had supported Israel in many ways over the course of the war — by assisting Israeli defenses against an Iranian missile attack in April, by sanctioning Hamas and Iran, and by fighting antisemitism domestically.

Tensions are escalating dramatically on Israel’s northern border over the last few after an Israeli airstrike killed a senior Hezbollah commander. Hezbollah has fired hundreds of rockets toward Israel, igniting major fires in Israel’s north. In retaliation, Israel has continued to strike Hezbollah bases, with airstrikes in Lebanon’s south killing and wounding civilians.

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration has sanctioned a group of hard-line Israeli activists who have blocked humanitarian aid from reaching desperately hungry Palestinian civilians in Gaza.

The State Department sanctions were leveled Friday against Tzav 9, which has blocked a major highway in southern Israel in an effort to prevent the delivery of aid. U.S. officials say the group has also looted and set fire to trucks carrying aid through the West Bank toward Jordan.

In announcing the sanctions, the State Department said the Israeli government had a responsibility to ensure that humanitarian convoys could safely reach Gaza, and that acts of sabotage and violence would not be tolerated.

In a statement in response, Tzav 9 called the Biden administration’s decision to impose sanctions “shocking” and asserted that the aid that’s being delivered falls directly into the hands of Hamas. The group said it should not be “required to feed the enemy” and said that blocking aid was its right and duty.

International sanctions have already targeted 13 hard-line Israeli settlers — as well as two affiliated outposts and four groups — over accusations of attacks and harassment against Palestinians in the West Bank. The measures are meant as a deterrent, and they expose people to asset freezes and travel and visa bans.

Messages seeking comment on the new sanctions were not immediately returned by Israel’s Foreign Ministry as well as the offices of Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, two of the most extreme ministers in Israel’s governing coalition who have deep ties to the settler movement.

The United Nations said it hopes there are no attacks on U.N. or other humanitarian convoys for Gaza, and has been asking all parties to make sure aid is delivered "without any hindrance or obstruction," U.N. deputy spokesman Farhan Haq said.

BEIRUT — A senior official with the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah said its intensified attacks along Israel’s northern border will make it difficult for Israel to stage an all-our war on Lebanon because it knows the conflict would be costly.

The attacks are also pressuring Israel to end the war in the Gaza Strip, said Sheikh Ali Daamoush in a sermon during Friday prayers. His comments came as Iran-backed Hezbollah claimed it fired rockets into northern Israel in a third day of barrages, saying it struck several military posts including two in the towns of Metula and Misgav Am.

The Israeli military said approximately 35 projectiles were identified crossing from Lebanon into the areas of Kiryat Shmona and Kfar Szold in northern Israel earlier Friday. The army said that as a result of the launches, a fire broke out in the area of Kfar Szold. Israeli army artillery fired toward the sources of the launches, it said.

Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported an Israeli airstrike Friday on the border village of Kfar Kila. Late Thursday, an Israeli strike on the south Lebanon village of Janata killed two women and wounded 19, according to Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV.

Hezbollah's intensified attacks come after an Israeli strike late Tuesday killed the most senior military commander with the group since fighting began along the Lebanon-Israel border in early October.

These cross-border attacks have been taking place almost daily. This week's escalation comes as some Israeli leaders have threatened all-out war to silence Hezbollah’s rocket fire, which has displaced tens of thousands of Israelis, and Hezbollah seeks to exert pressure in support of its Palestinian ally Hamas during back-and-forth negotiations over a cease-fire in Gaza.

More than 400 people have been killed in Lebanon, mostly fighters, but they include over 70 civilians and non-combatants. Tens of thousands have also been displaced. On the Israeli side, at least 15 soldiers and 10 civilians have been killed.

The United Nations is “encouraging all parties to exercise maximum restraint and refrain from any action or statement that could further fuel tensions,” U.N. deputy spokesman Farhan Haq said Friday.

JERUSALEM — Two high-ranking Israeli officials will visit the U.S. next week, said an Israeli official Friday, as a U.S.-backed ceasefire proposal to end the grinding Israel-Hamas war hangs in the balance.

Israel’s strategic affairs minister Ron Dermer and national security adviser Tzachi Hanegbi will fly to Washington next week, the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject matter.

The meetings come as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken visits the Middle East to try to bridge gaps between Israel and Hamas over the proposal, which U.S. President Joe Biden announced earlier this month. It’s the latest serious attempt to wind down the war in Gaza.

Biden said Thursday he doesn’t expect to cement the deal in the near future, as it has not been fully embraced by Israel or Hamas.

DEIR Al-BALAH — An Israeli airstrike on a home in the central Gaza city of Deir al-Balah killed two people and wounded several others including children, hospital officials said.

The bodies of the two men were brought to the Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah.

The seven wounded, including three children and one woman, were also brought for treatment at the hospital.

Earlier in the day, the bodies of two fishermen were brought to the hospital after they were shot by Israel’s navy, the officials said.

Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza has killed more than 37,100 people, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians in its count.

The Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel killed that sparked the war killed some 1,200 people — mostly civilians — and militants abducted about 250.

BORGO EGNAZIA, Italy — U.S. President Joe Biden said Thursday he doesn’t expect to reach a cease-fire deal for Gaza in the near future, as Israel and Hamas have not fully embraced an American-backed proposal with global support.

Biden said international leaders at the Group of Seven summit in Italy had discussed the cease-fire, but when asked by reporters if a truce deal wound be reached soon, Biden replied simply, “No,” adding, “I haven’t lost hope.”

Earlier Thursday, U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan pushed back against assertions that Israel isn’t fully committed to the cease-fire proposal with Hamas.

“Israel has supplied this proposal. It has been sitting on the table for some time. Israel has not contradicted or walked that back,” Sullivan said. Hamas responded to the plan by offering amendments, and Sullivan said the goal is “to figure out how we work to bridge the remaining gaps and get to a deal.”

Hamas says the requested changes aim to guarantee a permanent cease-fire and complete Israeli troop withdrawal from Gaza. The cease-fire proposal announced by Biden includes those provisions, but Hamas has expressed wariness whether Israel will implement the terms.

At a news conference later Thursday, Biden said, “The biggest hang-up so far is Hamas refusing to sign on, even though they have submitted something similar.”

He said it remains to be seen whether a deal comes “to fruition.” But he said he remains committed to pushing for the two sides to come together on the three-phase deal he publicly outlined late last month.

FILE - This image provided by U.S. Central Command, shows the U.S.-built floating pier being used to facilitate aid deliveries to the Gaza Strip, May 16, 2024. U.S. officials said Friday, June 14, 2024, that the pier will be detached from Gaza’s coast for the second time in a month due to rough seas, raising questions about the viability of the sea route. (U.S. Central Command via AP, File)

An injured Palestinian girl is treated at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al Balah, Gaza Strip, Friday, June 14, 2024. An Israeli airstrike on a home in the central city in the Gaza Strip killed two people and wounded several others including children, hospital officials said. (AP Photo/Mohammad Hajjar)

FILE - A ship is seen off the coast of Gaza near a U.S.-built floating pier that will be used to facilitate aid deliveries, as seen from the central Gaza Strip, May 16, 2024. U.S. officials said Friday, June 14, 2024, that the pier will be detached from Gaza’s coast for the second time in a month due to rough seas, raising questions about the viability of the sea route. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana, File)

Houthi supporters attend anti-Israel and anti-U.S. protests in Sanaa, Yemen, Friday, June 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Osamah Abdulrahman)

Houthi supporters attend anti-Israel and anti-U.S. protests in Sanaa, Yemen, Friday, June 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Osamah Abdulrahman)

Muhammad al-Habil, killed along with his uncle Abdul Muti al-Habil, is cradled by his father on the way to the funeral of the two men, in Deir al Balah, Gaza Strip, Friday June 14, 2024. The two men were killed while fishing in the sea when Israeli gunboats opened fire on them. (AP Photo/Mohammad Hajjar)

Mourners take a last look at Mohammad al-Habil, who was killed with his uncle, Abdul Muti al-Habil, while they were fishing in the sea when Israeli gunboats opened fire on them in Deir al Balah, Gaza Strip, Friday, June 14, 2024. The bodies of the two fishermen were brought to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital after they were shot by Israel's navy, the hospital officials said. (AP Photo/Mohammad Hajjar)

Mourners pray for two Palestinians during their funeral at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al Balah, Gaza Strip, Friday, June 14, 2024. An Israeli airstrike on a home in the central city in the Gaza Strip killed two people and wounded several others including children, hospital officials said. (AP Photo/Mohammad Hajjar)

The father of Mohammad al-Habil weeps with his relatives after his son was killed with his uncle, Abdul Muti al-Habil, while they were fishing in the sea when Israeli gunboats opened fire on them in Deir al Balah, Gaza Strip, Friday, June 14, 2024. The bodies of the two fishermen were brought to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital after they were shot by Israel's navy, the hospital officials said. (AP Photo/Mohammad Hajjar)

An injured Palestinian girl is treated at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al Balah, Gaza Strip, Friday, June 14, 2024. An Israeli airstrike on a home in the central city in the Gaza Strip killed two people and wounded several others including children, hospital officials said. (AP Photo/Mohammad Hajjar)

A plane uses a fire retardant to extinguish a fire burning in an area near the border with Lebanon, in Safed, northern Israel, Wednesday, June 12, 2024. Scores of rockets were fired from Lebanon toward northern Israel on Wednesday morning, hours after Israeli airstrikes killed four officials from the militant Hezbollah group including a senior military commander. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)

Smoke rises to the sky as a fire burns an area after a Lebanese shelling, in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights, Thursday, June 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)

Palestinian medics treat a wounded youth in the Israeli bombardment on a residential building owned by the Jabr family in Bureij refugee camp, at al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al Balah, central Gaza Strip, Wednesday, June 12, 2024. (AP Photo/Saher Alghorra)

An Israeli Police officer and paramedic remove a body found at the Sha'ar HaNegev junction in southern Israel, Thursday, June 13, 2024, an area besieged by a cross-border attack by Hamas militants on Oct. 7, 2023. Israeli Police say that the body, found alongside a combat vest and a shirt with Arabic writing, will be sent for forensic investigation. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)

Students march towards The Knesset, Israel's parliament, to call for a deal to release hostages held by Hamas in the Gaza Strip, in Jerusalem, Thursday, June 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean)

A woman holds posters of Kfir and Ariel Bibas, who are in Hamas captivity with their parents in the Gaza Strip, as students march towards The Knesset, Israel's parliament, to call for a deal to release hostages, in Jerusalem, Thursday, June 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean)

Israeli Iron Dome air defense system fires to intercept rockets fired from the Gaza Strip, in southern Israel, Thursday, June 13, 2024. The army is battling Palestinian militants across Gaza in the war ignited by Hamas' Oct. 7 attack into Israel. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)

Israeli Iron Dome air defense system fires to intercept rockets fired from the Gaza Strip, in southern Israel, Thursday, June 13, 2024. The army is battling Palestinian militants across Gaza in the war ignited by Hamas' Oct. 7 attack into Israel. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)

Israeli soldier check a tank near the Gaza Strip border in southern Israel, Thursday, June 13, 2024. The army is battling Palestinian militants across Gaza in the war ignited by Hamas' Oct. 7 attack into Israel. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)

Palestinian medics treat a child wounded youth in the Israeli bombardment on a residential building owned by the Jabr family in the Bureij refugee camp, at al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al Balah, central Gaza Strip, Wednesday, June 12, 2024. (AP Photo/Saher Alghorra)

Israeli soldiers are seen near the Gaza Strip border in southern Israel, Thursday, June 13, 2024. The army is battling Palestinian militants across Gaza in the war ignited by Hamas' Oct. 7 attack into Israel. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)

A firefighter walks near fire burning an area after a Lebanese shelling, in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights, Thursday, June 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)

Smoke rises to the sky as a fire burns an area after a Lebanese shelling, in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights, Thursday, June 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)

ATLANTA (AP) — After losing the White House and both houses of Congress, Democrats are grappling with how to handle transgender politics and policy following a campaign that featured withering and often misleading GOP attacks on the issue.

There is plenty of second-guessing after President-elect Donald Trump anchored his victory over Vice President Kamala Harris with sweeping promises on the economy and immigration. But Democrats also will not soon forget the punchline in anti-transgender Trump ads that became ubiquitous by Election Day: “Kamala is for they/them; President Trump is for you.”

“Week by week when that ad hit and stuck and we didn’t respond, I think that was the beginning of the end,” former Democratic Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell said of the 30-second spot that was part of $215 million in anti-transgender advertising by Trump and Republicans, according to tracking firm AdImpact.

“They painted her as something I don’t think she is," Rendell said. “They painted her as a far-left liberal.”

The fallout leaves some progressive and moderate Democrats struggling between the party’s modern identity as a champion of civil rights and its electoral fortunes across swaths of America with whom those attacks resonated.

“There are just a number of issues where we’re out of touch,” Rep. Seth Moulton, a moderate Massachusetts Democrat said in an interview, days after he set off recriminations within his party for saying he didn't want his daughters playing in sports against biological males. Critics said Moulton echoed Trump’s talking points about liberals allowing “men to compete in women’s sports.”

“I think that Republicans have a hateful position on trans issues,” Moulton told The Associated Press, but insisted that Democrats still lose voters because of the party’s “attitude.”

“Rather than talk down to you and tell you what to believe,” he argued, Democrats should “listen to hard-working Americans.”

LGBTQ+ advocates, meanwhile, are arguing that the 2024 election turned more on economic issues than Trump’s transgender rhetoric. They're urging political leaders to counter misinformation that they say threatens the health and safety of transgender Americans, who make up less than 1% U.S. population.

“Trans people have been existing and co-existing,” receiving health care and participating in society for years, said Sarah Kate Ellis, CEO of GLAAD, a leading LGBTQ+ advocacy group. “Nothing new happened,” Ellis said, other than Republicans singling them out in a presidential campaign year.

“It didn’t change one vote,” Ellis argued. “But it did make the world way more dangerous for trans people.”

Another Democratic Massachusetts lawmaker, Rep. Ayanna Pressley, didn't name Moulton, but said some reactions to the election “scapegoated and dehumanized” transgender people. “This Congresswoman sees you and loves you,” Pressley wrote on the social media platform X.

Certainly it’s difficult, if not impossible, to pinpoint single issues that can tip a national election, and there are mixed findings on what voters think about transgender rights.

According to AP VoteCast, a survey of more than 120,000 people who cast ballots this fall, more than half of voters said support for transgender rights in government and society has gone too far. About 2 in 10 said support has not gone far enough and another 2 in 10 said it’s about right. But among Trump voters, 85% said transgender support had gone too far.

Still, slightly more than half of all voters oppose banning gender affirming medical treatment such as hormone therapy and puberty blockers, while slightly less than half support such proposals.

About one-quarter of Harris voters said support for transgender rights in government and society has gone too far. About 4 in 10 said it’s been about right and about 4 in 10 said it hasn’t gone far enough.

Trump and Republicans were relentless in trying to capitalize on the issue. They piled on transgender athletes, with Trump falsely labeling two Olympic boxers as transgender women. They used Harris' comments as a presidential candidate in 2019 — before she became vice president — effectively to blame her for laws granting transgender health care to federal prisoners and detainees.

And Trump repeatedly and falsely claimed that “your kid goes to school and comes home a few days later with an operation” changing their sex.

In reality, the Biden administration has held that Title IX bars discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity — but Education Department rules do not explicitly address transgender athletes. Federal law that Trump ads cited does require people in U.S. government custody to have access to gender-affirming medical treatments. Those policies were in place throughout Trump’s 2017-21 term; they are not something Biden’s administration instituted specifically.

And it is not legal in any state for a school to determine and carry out surgical treatment for minor students.

“You gotta fight back” with those explanations, Moulton said, adding that the silence compounds the negative effects for transgender people. “What did we show about our willingness to stand up for trans people by just being silent and ignoring the issue and ignoring the attack?”

Still, Moulton said Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill and in statehouses should give individual elected officials and voters the space to take more conservative positions, and he defended his own comments that he doesn't want his daughters competing in athletics against men.

“I don’t want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete, but as a Democrat I’m supposed to be afraid to say that,” Moulton told The New York Times last week.

Before he resigned his post as Texas Democratic chairman, Gilberto Hinojosa said supporting transgender rights doesn’t necessarily have to include public funding for gender reassignment surgery.

“We can say, ’OK, we respect people’s right to say, we don’t want my taxpayer money to be used for that,'" Hinojosa told Texas Public Radio. Hinojosa later apologized via social media, saying LGBTQ Americans “deserve to feel seen, valued and safe in our state and our party.”

Ellis, the CEO of GLAAD, pointed to Delaware voters choosing to make state Sen. Sarah McBride the first transgender member of Congress as evidence that Americans “don’t hate trans people.”

For her part, McBride, a Democrat from Delaware, noted that she did not run on her identity – though it was not a secret – and instead talked to voters about “affordable health care, housing and child care” for everyone.

“The party that was focused on culture wars, the party that was focused on trans people was the Republican Party,” McBride told reporters on Capitol Hill after her victory. “It was Donald Trump,” she added, who “was trying to divide and distract from the fact that he has absolutely no policy solutions for the issues that are actually keeping voters up at night.”

Levy reported from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Associated Press writer Farnoush Amiri in Washington contributed to this report.

Sarah McBride, Democratic candidate for Delaware's at-large congressional district, speaks during an election night watch party Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024, in Wilmington, Del. (AP Photo/Pamela Smith)

Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump stands on stage with former first lady Melania Trump, as Lara Trump watches, at an election night watch party at the Palm Beach Convention Center, Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2024, in West Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

FILE - Protesters advocating for transgender rights and healthcare stand outside of the Ohio Statehouse, Jan. 24, 2024, in Columbus, Ohio. (AP Photo/Patrick Orsagost, File)