Donald Trump and the Republican party are pushing an agenda of “division, chaos and hate” by spending tens of millions on ads attacking transgender people, advocates said, as the right wing intensifies its anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric.
The GOP has spent more than $65m on ads targeting trans people, the New York Times reported on Tuesday, with the former president’s most frequently aired ad targeting Kamala Harris over her support for gender-affirming care.
Television ads have also been running in tight statewide races further down the ballot, including in Ohio, Montana and Wisconsin, with Republicans returning to hyperbolic, far-right talking points that proved unsuccessful during the 2022 midterm elections.
“The Maga [Make America great again] agenda is one of division, chaos and hate,” said Brandon Wolf, a spokesperson for the LGBTQ+ advocacy group Human Rights Campaign (HRC).
“They pit neighbors against one another and try to divide our communities because they don’t have a vision for lifting people up or bringing the nation together.”
One Trump ad highlights comments the vice-president made in 2019, when she said she supported “surgical care” for trans prisoners. The ad shows Harris posing next to Pattie Gonia, a drag queen – Gonia, whose real name is Wyn Wiley, has said he may sue the Trump campaign for using his image without permission – and ends with the voiceover: “Kamala is for they, them. President Trump is for you.”
The economy and immigration are among the key issues for Americans in the upcoming election, and Trump has focussed much of his rhetoric on those topics. But with some polls showing that Harris is becoming more trusted on those issues, it appears that Trump and the Republican party have made a concerted effort to focus on anti-trans issues.
There is evidence, however, that this is an unsuccessful strategy.
Two years ago Republicans ran on anti-trans platforms in races across the country, and it rarely proved successful. Blake Masters, the Republican candidate for Senate in Arizona, falsely accused Democrats during his campaign of “indoctrinating children”, while his campaign handed out yard signs that said: “Blake Masters won’t ask your pronouns in the US Senate.” Masters lost by 5% to Mark Kelly.
In Arizona, Republican candidate Herschel Walker ran ads attacking trans athletes and suggested that when trans people “go to heaven”, “Jesus may not recognize you.” Walker lost a run-off election to the Democrat Raphael Warnock. HRC reported that in 2023 the American Principles Project spent $2m on an ad campaign in Kentucky against Andy Beshear, the incumbent Democratic governor, “for his support for transgender young people and the freedom for their families to access health care”. Beshear cruised to victory in what has historically been a Republican state.
“The more Maga bullies are exposed for having no plan for America, the more they turn to their same tired playbook of transphobia,” Wolf said. “But again – it’s a losing strategy because voters know better.”
The anti-trans ad campaigns come at a time when attacks on trans and LGBTQ+ people are becoming more widespread in the US. Glaad, the LGBTQ+ advocacy association, found that in the 12 months between June 2023 and June 2024 there were 1,109 anti-LGBTQ+ incidents – an increase of 112% on the previous year.
Republicans have introduced hundreds of anti-trans bills around the country in recent years, as opposition to LGBTQ+ rights has become something of a litmus test to be approved as a GOP politician. Trump has said he would order federal agencies to end all programs “that promote the concept of sex and gender transition”, and said he would ask Congress to “permanently stop federal taxpayer dollars” from going to gender-affirming care.
But there is nothing to show that trans issues are at the top of voters’ minds.
Related: If Trump wins the election, he could launch a ‘catastrophic’ rollback of LGBTQ+ rights
Polling by HRC, conducted after the 2022 midterms, found that fewer than 5% of voters identified gender-affirming care for trans youth, or trans participation in sports, as issues motivating them to vote. A New York Times/Siena poll of likely voters in September, meanwhile, found that a majority of people in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina and Wisconsin believe that “society should accept transgender people as having the gender they identify with” – suggesting anti-trans ads could have little impact.
“Politicians escalating this line of attack are out of touch with where their voters are,” said Sarah Kate Ellis, president and CEO of Glaad.
“The focus on other people’s bodies and other people’s children is grotesque. Our pronouns are not making you poorer – tax cuts on the wealthiest Americans and plans to refuse overtime pay and enact taxes via tariffs are.”
Ellis added: “The ads are a pathetic attempt to get people to forget how these policies will make everyone’s lives dramatically worse.”
