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Trump campaign has spent millions on anti-trans ads

By
Caitlin Yilek
Politics Reporter
Caitlin Yilek is a politics reporter at CBSNews.com, based in Washington, D.C. She previously worked for the Washington Examiner and The Hill, and was a member of the 2022 Paul Miller Washington Reporting Fellowship with the National Press Foundation.
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Caitlin Yilek

/ CBS News

Washington — Former President Donald Trump's campaign and his allies have spent tens of millions of dollars on political ads focusing on transgender rights issues in the weeks leading up to the election. 

The Trump campaign has spent more than $19 million on two television ads that have aired nearly 55,000 times since Oct. 1, according to data from AdImpact. Make America Great Again Inc., the leading super political action committee supporting Trump, has spent more than $1.1 million during the same time period on a similar ad that has aired more than 6,000 times. 

The campaign's ads are playing in all battleground states and airing during NFL and college football games, a Trump campaign official said. 

The ads focus on taxpayer-funded gender transitions for people in prison and immigrant detainees. They use Vice President Kamala Harris' from 2019 in which she said she supported transgender inmates having access to gender-affirming surgery. She made similar comments in an American Civil Liberties Union in 2019, saying she supported "medically necessary care" for federal inmates and detained migrants. 

"Kamala is for they/them," one ad says. "Trump is for you." 

The answer in the questionnaire "is not what she's proposing, it's not what she's running on," Harris' communications director, Michael Tyler, told Fox News in September. 

Harris was asked whether she stood by her prior position in an interview with Fox News on Wednesday. 

"I will follow the law. And it's a law that Donald Trump actually followed," she said. "I think, frankly, that ad from the Trump campaign is a little bit of like throwing stones when you're living in a glass house." 

While Trump was president, his administration kept in place "hormone or other necessary medical treatment" for transgender inmates, while rolling back other protections, acknowledging it in a budget request as a "statutory mandate to provide basic medical and mental health care" for all inmates.

Only 38% of voters said transgender rights are extremely or very important to their vote choice in November, according to a recent . A 2023 showed a growing majority of Americans believed transgender athletes should only be allowed to compete on sports teams that matched their gender at birth. Only 26% believed transgender athletes should be able to play on teams that match their gender identity. 

Voters have said their top concerns are issues like the economy, abortion and immigration. 

The Trump campaign is betting that with time dwindling until Nov. 5, the issue of transgender rights will sway voters more than the economy or immigration. 

"It's the last thing on Earth they want to talk about," co-campaign manager Chris LaCivita NBC News. "So we'll talk about it for them." 

Trump has underscored that on the campaign trail, often repeating a line about "keeping men out of women's sports" — it often gets the most applause at his rallies. 

Trump is not the only candidate using the issue to criticize his Democratic rival. The debate over transgender girls in sports and locker rooms is featured in Republican ads in key Senate races.

Cameron Shelton, a political economy professor at Claremont McKenna College, said political ads typically don't persuade voters but rather confirm preexisting feelings that could fuel turnout.

"[Republicans] are trying to find an issue on which the majority is on their side," said Shelton, who has researched the impacts of campaign ads in previous election cycles. "What they're trying to say is, 'Hey, look, forget about these other things that we disagree on. If I can remind you that you agree with me on transgender rights…' Then maybe that'll spill over." 

In a memo earlier this month, the Human Rights Campaign highlighted the lack of success that anti-transgender ads had in previous elections, including in Senate and gubernatorial races and on ballot measures. 

"Anti-trans attacks don't work," Human Rights Campaign spokesperson Brandon Wolf said. "Time and time again this kind of fear mongering has been a political loser, and the American people will see through it again in November." 

Olivia Rinaldi contributed to this report.

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