After losing the White House and both houses of Congress, Democrats are grappling with how to handle transgender politics and policy following a campaign that featured withering and often misleading GOP attacks on the issue.

The fallout leaves some progressive and moderate Democrats struggling between the party’s modern identity as a champion of civil rights and its electoral fortunes across swaths of America with whom those attacks resonated.

The Democratic Party faces existential questions after Donald Trump’s resounding victory. One of the first: Who will lead it? Democratic National Committee chairman Jaime Harrison is not expected to seek a second term,

Trump announced several controversial cabinet nominees, including Democrat-turned-Republican Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence and Fox News host Pete Hegseth for secretary of defense, both of whom are outside of the traditional mold for appointees to their respective positions.

Trump is expected to make Matt Gaetz his attorney general and Marco Rubio his secretary of state, and place Tulsi Gabbard, Kristi Noem and Stephen Miller in key posts.

Tulsi Gabbard - a former Democratic congresswoman who joined the Republican Party to back Donald Trump - is the president-elect's pick for director of national intelligence. The wide-ranging role would mean she oversees US intelligence agencies like the CIA, FBI and the National Security Agency (NSA), which focuses on intelligence gathering.