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Transphobia Isn’t Winning Votes. But It Is Making Our Lives Much Worse.

Trans people must now live out another election cycle knowing our friends, family, coworkers, and neighbors are being flooded with agitprop designed to dehumanize us.

Last week, the conservative group American Principles Project sent a memo to GOP candidates running in the 2026 midterms about one of the party’s biggest attack issues this cycle: transgender rights. In the memo, the APP, which focuses its political work heavily around anti-trans themes, assured these candidates that the transphobic advertisements and messaging it has sold them on for nearly a decade “can still be used to move persuadable voters.”

But then the group pivoted. It warned that this hate-filled strategy on its own “may not be sufficient” without a “compelling message on the economy,” an issue that ranks as the top priority for voters—unlike trans people and our healthcare, which typically have much lower saliency.

One memo from one group may not seem that important. But APP has spent years convincing Republican campaigns and donors about the potency of anti-transgender attacks against Democrats. This is despite the fact that transphobia-themed attacks have failed to seal the deal in competitive statewide and House races in 2019, 2020, 2022, 2023, and 2025. Their apparent success in 2024 was more likely a fluke, deployed against a weakened candidate on a shortened timeframe with a deflated base trying to carry the baggage of another president whose popularity was sunk by the rising cost of living.

The group’s warnings are also bearing out in the polls thus far this year; even after heavily investing in anti-trans advertising in key midterm races across the country—and getting substantial outside assistance from figures like Elon Musk, whose super PAC is spending $100 million in advertisements almost solely focused on demonizing trans people in many of these races—Republicans stand a real chance of losing the House and potentially even the Senate.

While it makes meek references to “economic populism” to ward off voters’ increasing........

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