Ivanka Trump, Kushner publicly silent as White House rolls back transgender protections

The couple is seen as a moderating force on social issues, but transgender allies want them to take a stand as the new administration rolls back Obama-era policies on school bathrooms.
From: Politico

In the past,
Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump have described themselves as supporters of gay rights.
  Getty

Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, seemed to speak for their socially progressive generation last month when they helped to kill a proposed executive order that would have rolled back LGBT protections.

But their involvement in that high-profile gay-rights issue — they encouraged Donald Trump to uphold Obama-era workplace discrimination protections for federal contractors — now serves only to underscore their silence after the White House on Wednesday revoked protections that had allowed transgender students to use the public school bathroom of their choice.

“Yesterday’s actions really puts into question whether there are allies in this administration,” said Chad Griffin, president of the Human Rights Campaign. “It’s important to define what an ally is — it’s not someone who sends the occasional tweet, it’s not someone who has people talking on background to reporters about your supposed view. An ally is someone who stands up, champions and fights for our community.”

In the past, Ivanka Trump and Kushner have described themselves as supporters of gay rights.

A spokeswoman for Ivanka Trump declined to comment on Trump’s position. A White House spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment about Kushner’s position.

The debate inside the Trump administration already pitted Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, who reportedly originally opposed the move, against Attorney General Jeff Sessions. But it also puts additional pressure on the first daughter and her husband.

Since the campaign, Ivanka Trump has had the difficult task of acting as a surrogate for her father, while claiming she is not always ideologically in line with his most hard-line positions. “I’m a daughter, not a clone,” she said last year in an interview with "Good Morning America." “There are times when I’ve disagreed with him.” She did not, however, go into details about areas where they did not see eye to eye — and since then, she has made it clear that she does not plan to publicly challenge the president when there is disagreement.

Gay rights are not officially part of either Ivanka Trump’s or Kushner’s portfolios. But the couple is seen, both internally and externally, as the great, socially moderate hope for voters who are worried about the more extreme factions of Trump's administration.

Kushner, according to people who have met with him, outlines his role in the White House in broad terms: dealing with trade agreements, international peace agreements, outreach to the business community and personnel matters. Meanwhile, Ivanka Trump has become a regular presence in the White House, where she is using her influence to push women’s economic empowerment issues.

This week, Ivanka Trump met in the Roosevelt Room with members of the House and Senate to discuss including a deduction for child care expenses in their tax overhaul, Bloomberg News reported. On Thursday, she joined the president at the White House for a listening session with manufacturing CEOs. She has no official position in the White House, but she has been there every day this week.

But her involvement in politics, so far, has been inconsistent, with periods of engagement, followed by an expectation that she will not be held accountable when she decides to remain silent and behind-the-scenes. On Monday, Ivanka Trump got ahead of her father when she called for "religious tolerance" on Twitter, in response to a rash of threats to Jewish community centers. Her father had yet to comment on the anti-Semitic acts and passed on an opportunity to do so at a news conference last week, though he has since condemned them explicitly.

Some LGBT rights activists said the problem is deeper than whether or not Ivanka Trump chooses to weigh in.

“It seems to me that when you have to rely on Ivanka Trump to advocate for civil rights issues, that’s a problem,” said Anthony Kreis, a law professor at the Chicago-Kent College of Law who specializes in LGBT civil rights cases. “What is her role here? There's the deeper question, of whether we should have to rely on the president’s daughter to go toe to toe with the attorney general.”