Under a Harris presidency, the push to broaden access to gender transition surgeries, as advanced by President Biden, is expected to continue, notwithstanding her earlier decision as California attorney general to reject a similar request from a prison inmate.

When Harris was the California Attorney General from 2011 to 2017, she drew backlash for denying an incarcerated inmate, Michelle Lael-Norsworthy, access to gender transition surgery. Norsworthy was sentenced to 17 years behind bars in 1987 for killing an acquaintance outside a bar. 

At the time, Harris’ office contended the surgery was not necessary because the prison system was already providing adequate so-called gender-affirming care through hormone therapy and other treatments. In April 2015, however, a federal judge overruled Harris’ rejection of the procedure and sided with Norsworthy, stating the surgery was medically necessary to remedy the inmate’s psychological suffering.

Harris later walked back her decision when confronted on the 2019 presidential campaign trail when she was one of the Democratic candidates, saying she takes ‘full responsibility’ for what her office did. 

‘I was, as you are rightly pointing out, the attorney general of California for two terms, and I had a host of clients that I was obligated to defend and represent, and I couldn’t fire my clients, and there are unfortunately situations that occurred where my clients took positions that were contrary to my beliefs,’ she said at the time during a news conference at Howard University. ‘And it was an office with a lot of people who would do the work on a daily basis, and do I wish that sometimes they would have personally consulted me before they wrote the things that they wrote? Yes, I do. But the bottom line is, the buck stops with me, and I take full responsibility for what my office did.’

Meanwhile, Harris also recently hired a senior adviser with a history of sexist messages online mocking women and gay people as well as seemingly criticizing Harris on social media during her failed presidential campaign in 2019.

The Harris campaign announced earlier this week it hired Kamau M. Marshall, who has deleted thousands of old posts this week as 2024 senior adviser after he previously held positions as Joe Biden’s strategic communications director in 2020, a senior adviser for the Biden-Harris campaign and was formerly a senior adviser to Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona.

However, Harris’ track record has otherwise remained steadfastly progressive. During her AG tenure, Harris also refused to endorse Proposition 8, which passed with more than half of the state’s support, and outlawed gay marriage from the California constitution. It was later overturned in court.

And last month, under the Biden-Harris administration, health officials urged an international transgender health nonprofit to omit the age limit in its guidelines for transgender surgical procedures for adolescents — and succeeded — according to the unsealed court documents.

The documents, first reported on by The New York Times, revealed that staff for Rachel Levine, assistant secretary for the Department of Health and Human Services, pushed the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) to drop the age minimum requirement altogether to avoid seeing conservative lawmakers work to put such age restrictions into law.

After publication, the White House told Fox: ‘The Administration does not support surgery for minors.’

But the White House has since expressed support for gender transition surgeries for children, according to news reports. 

‘We continue to fight state and national bans on gender-affirming care, which represents a continuum of care, and respect the role of parents, families, and doctors — not politicians — in these decisions. Gender-affirming surgeries are typically reserved for adults, and we believe they should be,’ White House Domestic Policy Council director Neera Tanden told The 19th, a gender and politics advocacy nonprofit newsroom. 

After President Biden abruptly suspended his re-election campaign last week and endorsed VP Harris, LGBTQ and transgender advocacy groups rushed to endorse her, too. 

‘Advocates for Trans Equality (A4TE) is proud to announce our endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris for the presidency,’ the organization said in a statement. ‘Since taking office as our nation’s first woman of color Vice President, Harris has demonstrated an unwavering commitment to advancing the well-being of the transgender community.  

The Human Rights Campaign, the largest LGBTQ advocacy group in the U.S., also joined in and endorsed Harris in a lengthy statement. 

‘Vice President Kamala Harris is a trailblazer and has been a champion for LGBTQ+ equality for decades: from leading the fight in San Francisco against hate crimes and her work in California to end the so-called gay and transgender ‘panic defense’ to her early support for marriage equality and her leadership serving as our Vice President.

Fox News Digital’s Andrew Mark Miller contributed to this report.

President Biden on Monday outlined his wish for Congress to impose ‘bold’ rules on the Supreme Court, including term limits and a new code of conduct, and to draft a new constitutional amendment that limits presidential immunity. 

‘In recent years, extreme opinions that the Supreme Court has handed down have undermined the longest civil rights principles and protections,’ Biden claimed Monday at the LBJ Presidential Library at an event in commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act.

Biden named a number of recent cases, including the overturning of Roe v. Wade and Trump v. United States, which he said ‘most shockingly’ established some presidential immunity and called it a ‘dangerous precedent.’

‘This court is being used to weaponize an extreme and unchecked agenda,’ Biden said and called the immunity decision ‘a total affront to the basic expectations we have for those who wield the power of this,’ the president said.

‘My fellow Americans, based on all my experience, I’m certain we need these reforms. We need these reforms to restore trust in the courts, preserve the system of checks and balances that are vital to our democracy,’ he said.

Biden’s reforms would eliminate any immunity a former president enjoys for crimes committed while in office. Regarding the Supreme Court, Biden wants to impose a term limit of 18 years for justices. Once fully adopted, it would allow presidents to appoint new justices at a cadence of once every two years.

Biden argued the new Supreme Court code of conduct should require justices to ‘disclose gifts, refrain from public political activity, and recuse themselves from cases in which they or their spouses have financial or other conflicts of interest.’

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said that such radical changes would be ‘dead on arrival’ in the House, and it’s unclear if Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. would push them in the Senate. 

Biden on Monday retorted that Johnson’s ‘thinking’ is ‘dead on arrival.’ 

The changes mark a shift in Biden’s approach to the Supreme Court. He has long resisted calls from within his own party to make changes like expanding the number of justices on the court, calling that a ‘bonehead’ idea that would undermine the court’s credibility. 

But now, as the high court sits with a Republican-nominee majority, Biden is pivoting to a much more radical approach. 

Vice President Harris, who is also running for president, earlier on Monday endorsed the push. ‘Today, there is a clear crisis of confidence facing the Supreme Court as its fairness has been called into question after numerous ethics scandals and decision after decision overturning long-standing precedent,’ she said.

Biden’s announcement Monday marks his first policy push since abruptly dropping out of the presidential race and endorsing Harris, just hours after saying he was ‘in it to win it.’ 

The Harris campaign is dismissing critics of their fundraising efforts that have targeted individual races and genders, arguing the strategy is nothing more than normal campaign work.

The Harris campaign has held multiple fundraisers in the week since she was elevated to the top of the ticket, holding Zoom events with titles such as ‘Win with Black Men,’ ‘White Dudes for Harris,’ and ‘Karens for Kamala’ in hopes of attracting different demographics to the new campaign.

But the events have also earned scorn from critics on social media, with some accusing the campaign of harkening back to ‘segregation.’

‘The Kamala Harris campaign is bringing segregation back in style again,’ said one user on X in response to the back-to-back-to-back events.

‘It’s all about race with you guys,’ another critic said of the events.

The Harris campaign’s ‘White Dudes for Harris’ is scheduled for Monday and may be the most widely panned, with some critics calling the event ‘racist’ and ‘cringy,’ while others have called the event ‘condescending.’

‘There’s nothing more ‘progressive’ than self-loathing White guys with low self-esteem, man buns, and a gender studies degree from SUNY Binghamton thinking if they sign up for something as condescending as this that they’ll make their first Black female friend and maybe get a date. This qualifies as ‘trying too hard’ and is so desperate as to likely backfire,’ conservative radio host Jason Rantz told Fox News Digital.

Others have poked fun at potential participants in the events, arguing that it would target men who are soft or weak.

‘This will be the most Beta gathering in history,’ one user argued.

Nevertheless, the unique Zoom fundraising effort has been at least somewhat successful, with close to 100,000 Black men and women raising nearly $2 million before the ‘Karen’s for Kamala’ call had over 160,000 join the call.

The Harris campaign has also dismissed the critics, noting that former President Donald Trump has engaged in similar tactics.

‘I’m a bit confused. This is what campaigns do is build coalition groups. Latino Americans for Trump for example,’ Harris campaign spokesperson Kevin Munoz told Fox News Digital.

According to a report from the New York Post, allies for Trump in Congress have been holding events tailored towards the Black community, including get-out-the-vote events titled ‘Cigars, Cognac, and Congress’ that have been hosted in predominantly Black communities.

Trump has also aggressively courted Hispanic voters, with the campaign rebranding its outreach to the demographic last month by launching the ‘Latino Americans for Trump’ at a rally in Las Vegas, according to a report from NBC News, ditching the former ‘Latinos for Trump’ slogan for a new one that chooses to emphasize that Latinos are Americans.

‘Whether you’re African American, Latino American, Asian American, European American, wherever you come from, we are all American,’ Jaime Florez, the Hispanic communications director for the Republican National Committee and the Trump campaign, told NBC News.

The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a Fox News Digital request for comment.

It is back to being a margin-of-error race for the White House.

Former President Trump saw his edge over President Biden expand in the wake of last month’s disastrous debate performance by Biden, as calls grew louder from within his own party for the president to drop out of the race.

However, in the eight days since Biden ended his re-election bid, and Vice President Kamala Harris quickly consolidated party support and became the Democrats’ presumptive 2024 nominee, polls indicate it is once again a margin-of-error race.

More importantly, it is all tied up again in the battleground states that will likely decide the outcome of the presidential election. Fox News polls conducted after Biden’s blockbuster announcement in three of the seven crucial states – Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin – indicated Trump and Harris all knotted up.

Additionally, in Minnesota and New Hampshire – where Republicans have not won a presidential election in decades, but recent polls indicated Trump was very competitive with Biden – the latest surveys indicate the Democrats re-establishing single digit leads with Harris at the top of the ticket.

Veteran GOP pollster Tony Fabrizio, who polls for the Trump campaign, predicted it last Tuesday as he pointed to what he called the ‘Harris Honeymoon.’

‘We will start to see public polling – particularly national public polls – where Harris is gaining on or even leading President Trump,’ Fabrizio wrote in a campaign memo. 

‘The Democrats and the MSM [main stream media] will try and tout these polls as proof that the race has changed. But the fundamentals of the race stay the same. The Democrats deposing one Nominee for another does NOT change voters discontent over the economy, inflation, crime, the open border, housing costs not to mention concern over two foreign wars,’ Fabrizio argued.

He predicted that ‘before long, Harris’ ‘honeymoon’ will end and voters will refocus on her role as Biden’s partner and co-pilot. As importantly, voters will also learn about Harris’ dangerously liberal record before becoming Biden’s partner.’

‘While the public polls may change in the short run and she may consolidate a bit more of the Democrat base, Harris can’t change who she is or what she’s done,’ Fabrizio emphasized.

However, veteran Democratic pollster Chris Anderson says it is too soon to make predictions.

‘Time will tell, but I’m not even sure she has seen her bump yet. It’s only been a week, so the reality that Harris is the nominee is still settling in, and campaign lines are still being drawn,’ said Anderson, a member of the Fox News Election Decision Team and the Democratic partner on the Fox News Poll.

Anderson noted that ‘soon [Harris} will make her VP pick, then there’s the convention. So she has an on-ramp to keep dominating new cycles. So sure, maybe the polls now reflect a bump that will quickly dissipate. Or maybe they are the start of a trend.’

The ‘Keys to the White House’ are currently favoring Vice President Kamala Harris in a hypothetical 2024 matchup against former President Trump, but a final prediction for the 2024 race is yet to be made.

Allan Lichtman, an election forecaster who has correctly predicted nearly every presidential race since 1984, developed a formula that is used to make predictions about an upcoming presidential election – and in most cases, it proves to be right. 

Lichtman’s ‘Keys to the White House’ consists of 13 true or false questions that he believes establish a strong indication of who will be named the victor on the fall ballot. Each question is asked about the two dueling nominees; if ‘true’ they are given a ‘key,’ and if ‘false,’ their competitor receives the point. Then, if one party’s candidate receives six or more keys, they are the predicted winner.

At the beginning of the cycle, Democrats were handed one automatic ‘key’ for President Biden’s incumbency – but the ballot has since seen a dramatic shift. 

The ‘keys’ are as follows: 
– party mandate
– contest
– incumbency
– third party
– short-term economy
– long-term economy
– policy change, 
– social unrest
– scandal
– foreign/military failure
– foreign/military success
– incumbent charisma
– challenger charisma

Democrats, with Harris being the likely nominee, currently hold six of the 13 keys, according to Lichtman’s prediction. These include primary contest, short-term economy, long-term economy, policy change, no scandal, and no challenger charisma.

Republicans hold three keys: winning the House majority in the 2022 midterms, the current incumbent not seeking re-election, and the current incumbent lacking charisma.

There are still four more keys that have yet to be handed out. 

The remaining keys include the third party factor, which Lichtman says is notable given Independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s place in the race.

Keys are also still in the air for having ‘no social unrest,’ as well as ‘foreign military failure’ and ‘foreign military success.’

If Democrats lose three more keys, then they would be the projected ‘losers,’ according to the election prognosticator’s formula.

A final prediction has not yet been made for the 2024 race, but Lichtman told News Nation that he believes ‘a lot would have to go wrong for Harris to lose.’

Lichtman correctly predicted Trump would win in 2016, and Biden in 2020. The historian will make his final prediction for this cycle after Democrats choose their nominee at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in August.

President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris are calling on Congress to impose term limits and a code of conduct on the Supreme Court while also drafting limits on presidential immunity, a White House official said.

Biden will discuss the proposed reforms during remarks on Monday at the LBJ Presidential Library, in commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act, the official said. Biden also addressed his desire for Supreme Court reform in an op-ed published Monday morning.

‘I served as a U.S. senator for 36 years, including as chairman and ranking member of the Judiciary Committee. I have overseen more Supreme Court nominations as senator, vice president and president than anyone living today,’ Biden said in the op-ed, published by the Washington Post. 

‘I have great respect for our institutions and separation of powers. What is happening now is not normal, and it undermines the public’s confidence in the court’s decisions, including those impacting personal freedoms. We now stand in a breach,’ Biden wrote.

Biden’s reforms would eliminate any immunity a former president enjoys for crimes committed while in office.

Harris, who is running for president, endorsed the push. ‘Today, there is a clear crisis of confidence facing the Supreme Court as its fairness has been called into question after numerous ethics scandals and decision after decision overturning long-standing precedent,’ she said.

Regarding the Supreme Court, Biden wants to impose a term limit of 18 years for justices. Once fully adopted, it would allow presidents to appoint new justices at a cadence of once every two years.

Biden argued the new Supreme Court code of conduct should require justices to ‘disclose gifts, refrain from public political activity, and recuse themselves from cases in which they or their spouses have financial or other conflicts of interest.’

‘President Biden and Vice President Harris look forward to working with Congress and empowering the American people to prevent the abuse of Presidential power, restore faith in the Supreme Court, and strengthen the guardrails of democracy,’ the White House official said.

The op-ed represents Biden’s first major policy push since formally announcing his withdrawal from the 2024 presidential race earlier this month.