Why Republicans Are Focusing on Transgender Issues in Competitive 2026 Campaigns
Translated from English and summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.
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- Republican campaign ads in Kansas, Georgia, Iowa, Ohio and Texas are attacking Democrats over transgender athletes and transition-related medical care for minors.
- A Kansas ad targeting Democratic Senate candidate Adam Hamilton stitched together separate comments to create a quote he did not say, according to the article.
- Republicans are drawing on a strategy Donald Trump used against Kamala Harris in 2024, although the scale of its electoral effect remains uncertain.
Republican candidates are again making transgender issues a prominent weapon in competitive U.S. Senate campaigns, with ads portraying Democrats as outside the cultural mainstream.
One Kansas advertisement targeting Democratic candidate Adam Hamilton, a United Methodist pastor, shows dancing drag queens and says he “preaches the gospel of woke.” It also combines separate remarks from a 2021 podcast interview to create the impression that Hamilton said, “How we define gender… we have a whole array of sexualities.” The wording does not form a quote Hamilton actually made.
Hamilton expressed support for same-sex marriage and challenged more conservative Christian views during the interview. He did not set out specific transgender policies and said the church should not make decisions based on public opinion. The ad instead presents his remarks as evidence that he is out of touch on social issues.
It swung the most voters over to him, the most swing voters.
Similar advertisements have appeared in Georgia, Iowa, Ohio and Texas. They focus mainly on transgender participation in sports and gender-affirming medical care for minors, often leaving out context about candidates’ votes or statements. The approach follows Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign, when he repeatedly attacked Kamala Harris on transgender issues.
Terry Schilling of the conservative American Principles Project said the strategy helped move swing voters toward Trump. Research by the group found that the ads increased voters’ likelihood of supporting him, while other research found that some undecided voters came to view Harris as too focused on cultural issues. The overall impact remains unclear.
The ads target policies that already generate discomfort among many Americans. A 2025 Gallup poll found that 69% of adults favored limiting transgender athletes to teams matching their birth sex, while Pew Research Center found 56% supported banning transition-related medical care for minors. Pew said support for those restrictions had risen since 2022.
They said their top issue was that Kamala cared more about transgender issues than people like them.
About this summary
Originally published by PBS NewsHour in English. Translated, summarized, and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.
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