Recent blitz of anti-trans ads attacks Harris. Advocates question their effectiveness, call them harmful.
Commercial breaks from Sunday football have also brought on a series of ads attacking Vice President Kamala Harris for her support of the transgender community.
"Kamala supports tax-payer funded sex changes for prisoners," one of the ads states. "Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you."
Pro-Donald Trump groups have poured millions into airing the ads, especially around weekend NFL games, according to CNN and ABC News.
The themes of the advertisements aren't inconsistent with previous messaging from the former president. Trump has previously attacked the Biden administration's record protecting health care for transgender inmates. In a viral moment at the presidential debate, Trump said Harris wanted to "do transgender operations on illegal aliens that are in prison."
Polling by Ground Media released Thursday by LGBTQ media advocacy group GLAAD showed the ads did not have a statistically significant impact on viewers' candidate choice or likelihood to vote, compared with those who saw an unrelated ad. However, GLAAD said the ads do carry harmful consequences for the trans community, as the study participants who viewed the ads reported feeling less accepting towards the trans community after viewing the ads.
"What this demonstrates is that attacking the trans community isn’t just a weak and feckless political strategy ? it’s a deeply cynical one,” David Rochkind, CEO of Ground Media, said in a statement. “These ads weaponize trans-identity to sow fear and division, making our country less safe for everyone.”
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Prisoners entitled to healthcare, including gender-affirming care
As GLAAD has previously pointed out, Harris has stated she would ensure medical care for transgender and nonbinary people who "rely on the state ? including those in prison and immigration detention," according to a 2019 ACLU questionnaire.
Detained people are legally entitled to healthcare, and every major medical association supports health care for transgender people, according to GLAAD.
Harris was pressed on this topic in a Fox News interview with Bret Baier recently, she said she would follow the law and pointed out that Trump followed the law when he was in office too. Trump-appointed officials at the Bureau of Prisons also provided gender-affirming treatments for some inmates who requested it, the New York Times first reported.
"Frankly, that ad from the Trump campaign is a little bit of like throwing stones when you're living in a glass house," Harris said in the interview. Trump's campaign argued he never advocated for the surgeries, according to The Times.
The Lincoln Project, a former Republican anti-Trump group, has released ads highlighting this contradiction, saying he is "gaslighting America."
"Trump is for he/him, Kamala is for us," the ad states.
The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Ads continue harmful misinformation about the transgender community
The transgender community has increasingly become a target for far-right attacks in recent years, leading to hundreds of bills introduced across state and federal legislatures aimed at restricting health care for youth, bathroom access and the ability to participate in sports.
Imara Jones, CEO of TransLash Media, said today's pushback against the trans community started before this election cycle and even the last election cycle.
"There's nothing about where we've arrived in this conversation around trans people and it being politicized that's an accident," Jones told USA TODAY in an interview. "This is something that the Christian Nationalist movement ? which has now moved into, become the heart of the Republican Party ? has been fighting for for a really long time."
Ideologically, it fits into the core idea of controlling people's bodies, and, politically, it galvanizes people, she explained.
She called politicizing health care for detained people "bogus" since Trump's administration did the same thing. Also, she said it is not central to the issues trans people are facing in this country today.
"I think trans people are concerned about their safety, which is made much harder by these ads," Jones said, citing increases in suicidality and hate crimes for trans people due to widespread transphobic rhetoric. "Trans people are concerned about housing, are concerned about jobs...there's lots of things that I think trans people care about, and this conversation is not helping."
The lack of a coordinated counterattack from the other side has stood out to Jones.
The Harris campaign declined to comment specifically for this story, but pointed to Harris' response when being pressed on the issue in an interview with NBC News.
"I believe that all people should be treated with dignity and respect, period, and should not be vilified for who they are, and should not be bullied for who they are," she told NBC News' Hallie Jackson in the Oct. 22 interview. "And that is a true statement for me my entire career. And that has not changed."
In another approach to countering the anti-trans ads, GLAAD is running a trans storytelling ad campaign "Here we are," highlighting the stories of everyday trans people.
Harris' and Trump's record on the LGBTQ community
The 2024 election is looking like an incredibly close race where young voters, the most publicly LGBTQ generation in history, could sway the outcome.
GLAAD, which has tracked Trump's moves affecting LGBTQ people, says he has made more than 220 "attacks" in speeches, presidential actions and legislative support. One of the "20 core promises" of the GOP platform is aimed at transgender women, vowing to to keep them "out of women's sports." Trump has also falsely stated kids are receiving gender-affirming surgeries at school, vowed to stop gender-affirming care for youth and aided the rollback of the federal right to an abortion, GLAAD cites.
Harris has more than 65 moves on her record for the LGBTQ community, according to the GLAAD accountability tracker. Harris supported same-sex marriage as early as 2004 and refused to defend a same-sex marriage ban while in office as California attorney general. Although she denied gender-affirming care to transgender inmates as AG, she worked to change the policies internally, the Advocate reported. As Vice President, she spoke about violence against LGBTQ people in Guatemala being a root cause of immigration, criticized anti-LGBTQ legislation in Florida and supported the trans community on the Transgender Day of Visibility.
Contributing: Joey Garrison
This story was updated to fix a reference to Ground Media.
Kinsey Crowley is a trending news reporter at USA TODAY. Reach her at [email protected], and follow her on X and TikTok @kinseycrowley.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Anti-trans ads target Harris, tout Trump: Advocates question impact