WASHINGTON — 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.
Still, 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 found there's more support than opposition on allowing transgender troops in the military, while most don't 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.
The poll of 1,175 adults was conducted May 1-5 using a sample drawn from NORC's 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.
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Schuyler Fricchione, 40, a Virginia stay-at-home mother, is one of those who opposes the government paying for gender-affirming care, especially for young people. She said she doesn't want people to make major changes that they might later regret.
Because of her Catholic faith, she said she doesn't want to exclude transgender people from public life: "It's very important to me that everyone understands their dignity and importance as a person."
Women and girls look on Feb. 5 as President Donald Trump speaks  in the East Room of the White House in Washington before signing an executive order barring transgender female athletes from competing in women's or girls' sporting events.
Most adults agree with Trump that sex is determined at birth
About two-thirds of U.S. adults agree with Trump that whether a person is a man or woman is determined by their biological characteristics at birth.
The poll found 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 can't 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 nation's population, was a major part of Trump's return to the White House.
He 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 challenged in court, and judges put many of his efforts on hold.
People hold a banner reading, "We're Here, We're Queer Get Used To It!" on May 8 in the fourth floor rotunda of the Maine State House in Augusta, Maine.
The public is divided on some issues
Despite 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 school teachers to report to parents if their children identify as transgender or nonbinary at school. 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.
"Either you can do the job or you can't do the job," he said, though he added, "I'm not a military person, so I'm not qualified to judge how it affects military readiness."
This month, a divided U.S. Supreme Court allowed Trump's administration to enforce a ban on transgender people in the military while legal challenges proceed.
Supporters of transgender rights rally Dec. 4 near the Supreme Court in Washington.
Most object to government coverage of gender-affirming care for youth
About 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.
On each of those questions, a roughly equal portion of the populations support the coverage or is neutral about it.
A Trump executive order prevents federal insurance plans from paying for gender-affirming care for those under 19. A court ruled that funding can't be dropped from institutions that provide the care, at least for now.
Trump's administration this month released a report calling for therapy alone and not broader gender-affirming health care for transgender youth. Twenty-seven states banned the care for minors, and the Supreme Court is expected to rule in coming months over whether the bans can hold.
The chairman of USA Fencing and the athlete who took a knee in a bout against a transgender competitor testified before Congress.
Forming a stance is easy for some
While Democrats are divided on many policies related to transgender issues, they're 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 banned in the last five years.
"I don't understand where the fear comes from," Skinner said, "because there really doesn't seem to be any basis of reality for the fear of transgender people."
