Women and girls look on as President Donald Trump speaks before signing an executive order barring transgender female athletes from competing in women's or girls' sporting events, in the East Room of the White House, Wednesday, Feb. 5, 2025, in Washington.(AP Photo/ Evan Vucci, File)2025-05-10T11:33:29Z WASHINGTON (AP) About half of U.S. adults approve of how President Donald Trump is handling transgender issues, according to a new poll a relative high point for a president who has the approval overall of about 4 in 10 Americans.But support for his individual policies on transgender people is not uniformly strong, with a clearer consensus against policies that affect youth.The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research survey conducted this month found theres more support than opposition on allowing transgender troops in the military, while most dont want to allow transgender students to use the public school bathrooms that align with their gender identity and oppose using government programs to pay for gender-affirming health care for transgender youth.Schuyler Fricchione, a 40-year-old stay-at-home mother from northern Virginia, is one of those who opposes the government paying for gender-affirming care, especially for young people. She said she doesnt want people to make major changes that they might later regret. But she said that because of her Catholic faith, she doesnt want to exclude transgender people from public life. Its very important to me that everyone understands their dignity and importance as a person.It is something I am kind of working through myself, she said. I am still learning. Most adults agree with Trump that sex is determined at birthAbout two-thirds of U.S. adults agree with President Donald Trump that whether a person is a man or woman is determined by their biological characteristics at birth.The poll found that Republicans overwhelmingly believe gender identity is defined by sex at birth, but Democrats are divided, with about half saying gender identity can differ from biological characteristics at birth. The view that gender identity cant be separated from sex at birth view contradicts what the American Medical Association and other mainstream medical groups say: that extensive scientific research suggests sex and gender are better understood as a spectrum than as an either-or definition. A push against the recognition and rights of transgender people, who make up about 1% of the nations population, has been a major part of Trumps return to the White House and was a big part of his campaign.He has signed executive orders calling for the government to classify people by unchangeable sex rather than gender, oust transgender service members and kick transgender women and girls out of sports competitions for females. Those actions and others are being challenged in court, and judges have put many of his efforts on hold.The public is divided on some issues and many are neutralDespite being a hot-button issue overall, a big portion of the population is neutral or undecided on several key policies.About 4 in 10 people supported requiring public schoolteachers to report to parents if their children are identifying at school as transgender or nonbinary. About 3 in 10 opposed it and a similar number was neutral.About the same portion of people just under 4 in 10 favored allowing transgender troops in the military as were neutral about it. About one-quarter opposed it. Tim Phares, 59, a registered Democrat in Kansas who says he most often votes for Republicans, is among those in the middle on that issue.One on hand, he said, Either you can do the job or you cant do the job. But on the other, he added, Im not a military person, so Im not qualified to judge how it affects military readiness.This month, a divided U.S. Supreme Court allowed Trumps administration to enforce a ban on transgender people in the military while legal challenges proceed, a reversal of what lower courts have said.Most object to government coverage of gender-affirming care for youthAbout half oppose allowing government insurance programs such as Medicare and Medicaid to cover gender-affirming medical care, such as hormone therapy and surgery, for transgender people 19 or older. About two-thirds oppose it for those under 19.And on each of those questions, a roughly equal portion of the populations support the coverage or is neutral about it.One of Trumps executive orders keeps federal insurance plans from paying for gender-affirming care for those under 19. A court has ruled that funding cant be dropped from institutions that provide the care, at least for now. Meanwhile, Trumps administration this month released a report calling for therapy alone and not broader gender-affirming health care for transgender youth. Twenty-seven states have bans on the care for minors, and the Supreme Court is expected to rule in coming months over whether the bans can hold. Forming a stance is easy for someWhile Democrats are divided on many policies related to transgender issues, theyre more supportive than the population overall. There is no anguish over the issue or other transgender policy questions for Isabel Skinner, a 32-year-old politics professor in Illinois.She has liberal views on transgender people, shaped partly by her being a member of the LGBTQ+ community as a bisexual and pansexual person, and also by knowing transgender people.She was in the minority who supported allowing transgender students to use the public-school bathrooms that match their gender identity something that at least 14 states have passed laws to ban in the last five years.I dont understand where the fear comes from, Skinner said, because there really doesnt seem to be any basis of reality for the fear of transgender people.___Mulvihill reported from New Jersey.___The AP-NORC poll of 1,175 adults was conducted May 1-5, using a sample drawn from NORCs probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for adults overall is plus or minus 4 percentage points. GEOFF MULVIHILL Mulvihill covers topics on the agendas of state governments across the country. He has focused on abortion, gender issues and opioid litigation. twitter mailto LINLEY SANDERS Sanders is a polls and surveys reporter for The Associated Press. She develops and writes about polls conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, and works on AP VoteCast. twitter RSShttps://feedx.net https://feedx.site