With less than a week before the midterm elections, Republicans are claiming that Democrats want to force children to transition, a wildly untrue claim with no basis in reality.
Republicans have spent nearly $200 million on anti-trans ads this election cycle election, even though recent polling shows that voters are far more concerned about the economy and AI data centers.
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“I care about our children,” said Texas Governor Greg Abbott (R) during an October 27 Fox News appearance. “I don’t want to see them transgendered at school.”
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Abbott’s comment is notable, seeing as his fellow Republican politicians in the state have already banned schools from hosting LGBTQ+-related clubs and helping trans students socially transition; though a judge temporarily blocked the law.
It’s also worth noting that Abbott has repeatedly accused schools of forcing a “woke Leftist agenda” onto kids — even going so far as to lie about schools allowing student “furries” to use “litter boxes” — as a way to promote the redirection of public taxpayer funds into private charter “school choice” voucher programs.
When campaigning in Texas on October 27, Trump lied about Democratic US Senate candidate James Talarico, saying, “Not only did Talafreako state that God is transgender, he actually said that if Jesus Christ himself came and visited the Texas legislature, Jesus would be promoting sex changes for little children.”
Talarico, who is a progressive Presbyterian seminarian, said in a 2021 Texas House floor debate over an anti-trans sports ban that “God is both masculine and feminine and everything in between” and that “God is non-binary.” He later clarified that his comments were meant to be a “deliberately provocative” way of saying that “you can’t use human categories to define God.” He accused Republicans of seizing on his comments to distract from their own corruption.
Talarico has never said anything about Jesus Christ promoting “sex changes for little children.” In a 2021 Texas House floor debate over the aforementioned ban, Talarico did say, “Trans children are God’s children, made in God’s own image. There’s nothing wrong with them. Nothing at all. They are perfect, they are beautiful, and they are sacred.”
But that hasn’t stopped Trump from repeating similar lies.
In the same speech, Trump said, “Timmy leaves home and comes back Sarah,” implying that schools are somehow transitioning children without parental consent; another right-wing lie meant to vilify schools with trans-inclusive student policies.
The Trump administration has repeatedly persecuted school districts with policies allowing educators to refer to students by names and pronouns that don’t match the name and sex listed on students’ birth certificates. Some districts allow educators to do this without parental consent to avoid informing potentially abusive or non-supportive parents, but Trump and other right-wingers have said that these policies allow schools to secretly “trans” kids.
At an October 25 rally in Michigan, MAGA rapper Nicki Minaj told attendees, “We don’t want our children to be bombarded with sex changes, right? We don’t want that for our children. We want people to leave the children alone. Leave them out of it.”
“MAGA Minaj,” as some call her, has become an increasingly outspoken supporter of Trump, partly due to her opposition to transgender people’s rights. At a Turning Point USA event in December 2025, she said that Trump was “handsome” and then told trans girls to “be boys”: “It’s nothing wrong with being a boy. How about that? How powerful is that? How profound is that? Boys will be boys, and there’s nothing wrong with that.”
Democrats have far from perfected their responses to these attacks. Nevertheless, some Democrats are trying hard not to fall into the GOP trap and, instead of engaging, are mocking Republicans for being obsessed with trans people at the expense of other issues.
“It is becoming increasingly clear that the political landscape is shifting, and the tired culture war playbook that anti-equality extremists have relied on for years is facing growing resistance,” the Human Rights Campaign said two days ago.
Even Republican politicians are balking at all the anti-trans GOP messaging. Former Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan (R) said earlier this month, “We’re still running transgender ads. It’s just not resonating… The 8 to 10 percent of voters in the middle who are going to decide this election, when they hear stuff about boys in girls’ sports, they don’t even know what you’re talking about… What Republicans are talking about is just not what the swing voter is really interested in.”
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