Joe Biden says there should be “zero discrimination” against transgender people and he promised to restore protections for them that President Donald Trump has sought to remove.
At his ABC News town hall Thursday, Biden said he would reverse Trump’s moves to revoke protections for transgender people against sex discrimination in health care and restrict military service by transgender men and women. He also condemned violence against transgender women of color.
He told an anecdote about his late son, Beau Biden, helping pass a transgender protection law in Delaware while serving as state attorney general, an effort inspired by a worker in the attorney general’s office.
The former vice president also recounted a story from his youth where he witnessed two men kissing and said his father turned to him and said, “Joey, it’s simple: They love each other.”
Biden is also putting distance between his clean energy goals and the Green New Deal, saying the policy plan popular with progressives isn’t achievable within the timeframes it has laid out.
At the Thursday town hall, he pointed to a piece of the deal that calls for 100% renewable and zero-emission energy sources by 2030. Biden says that “you can’t get there” and that the country needs more time to invest in technologies that will eventually lead to net-zero emissions.
He’s detailing his own climate plan that includes ending subsidies and tax breaks for oil companies, putting more land into conservation, planting more trees and plants to absorb carbon from the air and even finding more creative ways to use animal manure. Biden also says the country needs to ramp up its efforts around expanded use of electric vehicles.
His campaign website calls the plan a crucial framework for meeting the nation’s climate challenges.
“My deal’s a crucial framework, but not the New Green Deal,” Biden said, misstating the plan’s name.
You can watch the town hall here. You can watch and learn more about a one-hour town hall with President Trump in Miami here.