Housing male inmates in women’s prisons and jails — which he has supported — is a nightmarish transgender policy.
Housing male inmates in women’s prisons and jails — which he has supported — is a nightmarish transgender policy.
G avin Newsom’s attempted shift from West Coast, authoritarian governor to affable, centrist presidential hopeful went into overdrive last week. On the first episode of yet another new Gavin-hosted podcast (let’s not forget his ongoing podcast with, of all people, former Seattle Seahawks running back Marshawn Lynch), Newsom made headlines by breaking with the broader Democrat Party on the issue of males playing women’s sports.
Newsom shouldn’t be allowed to wear the “moderate” mantle just yet on transgenderism. NR’s Jim Geraghty correctly noted last week that Newsom is not likely to actually reverse any California laws that allow students to participate in sports on the basis of “gender identity,” and the commentariat largely understand that his change of heart is transparently insincere. But we should also note Newsom’s record of signing far more harmful legislation to house males in women’s correctional facilities, with predictably devastating consequences — consequences that are on full display in a Central California rape trial.
In 2020, Covid-dictator Newsom took a break from destroying businesses, permanently setting back public school achievement, and violating Californians’ Free Exercise rights to sign SB 132, the Transgender Respect, Agency, and Dignity Act, a law mandating that inmates in California correctional facilities be housed on the basis of their “gender identity.” The naïveté of thinking that convicted male felons wouldn’t immediately exploit this new law in order to rape female inmates was breathtaking.
This is, of course, precisely what happened. The district attorney of Madera County, Calif., is currently prosecuting Tremaine Carroll, a man who claims to identify as a woman, on charges of raping three women in the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla, Calif., in early 2024. The three victims were all former cellmates of Carroll, one of whom became pregnant. The story made headlines because the California judge was in a tizzy over prosecutors and witnesses (including the alleged victims in their testimony) referring to Carroll as “he” during the trial.
There is evidence that Carroll simply lied about “identifying” as a woman so that he could be housed with women and rape them. He has kept the masculine first name “Tremaine.” He has not undergone or requested any transgender surgeries or hormonal interventions. He has a goatee in his not-at-all-feminine mugshot. On top of it all, he had been charged with a prior sex crime in 1990, when the 17-year-old Carroll allegedly joined several men to kidnap two women at gunpoint, demand a ransom for them, and sexually assault them. Following a hung jury and a mistrial, Carroll ultimately pled to two lesser charges of kidnapping.
This case exists only because of Newsom’s SB 132. The law required that Carroll be treated as a woman simply because he claimed a transgender identity. By claiming that he was a woman, he was allowed to live in a women’s prison and even bunk with a female cellmate. No psychological evaluation or any other kind of screening to “verify” his transgender identity was required before housing him with women. This case must be laid at Newsom’s door.
There is a sense that Newsom is conceding on men playing women’s sports because it is the most obviously absurd and unjust outcome of the transgender worldview, the “low-hanging fruit” for staking out a moderate position. While it is obviously a more relatable topic than correctional housing, and I certainly agree that men shouldn’t play women’s sports, housing male inmates in women’s prisons and jails is an even more absurd and unjust transgender policy — given that the potential female victims are literally locked in with their rapists and abusers.
SB 132 and policies like it leave the physical and sexual integrity of women up to the whim of a criminal who will be, on average, bigger, taller, and stronger than his victim. SB 132 was and is readily open to abuse by men with no transgender “identity” whatsoever.
Because of this record, nobody should let Gavin Newsom claim the “moderate” mantle on transgenderism as a way of gaining an electoral advantage in the 2028 presidential cycle. No amount of podcast chatter can erase his signature on SB 132 or undo its horrific consequences.