Metal Hennessy, a 19-year-old trans man who lives in Kansas, quoted one of his state’s most enduring exports – The Wizard of Oz – when describing the defeat of Roger Marshall, the incumbent Republican senator, on Tuesday: “Ding dong, the witch is dead.”
This US midterm season, Kansans like Hennessy were subjected to a wave of anti-trans attacks as Marshall attempted to fight off a challenge from Democratic and Methodist megachurch pastor Adam Hamilton. The AP reported that Republicans pumped $7m into related ads, which aired 7,000 times in the state.
Hennessy was not surprised that Republicans would target his community to win votes – earlier this year, a law took effect invalidating the drivers licenses of trans people in the state and requiring them to use bathrooms in government buildings associated with their sex assigned at birth. Nor was Hennessy surprised the strategy failed.
“I don’t think trans issues are a swing issue to the average cis-het population. Most people are concerned about gas prices or the economy,” he said.
In the weeks leading up to Tuesday, Republicans spent an estimated $183m on ads about transgender issues. Elon Musk poured millions into political groups that attacked trans rights, intensely targeting Democrat James Talarico’s Senate run in Texas. Trump, who successfully leveraged the culture war issue in 2024, stumped on it again, calling gender affirming care “mutilization” (meaning “mutilation”). Conservative candidates actively campaigned on the platform, calling their liberal opponents supporters of an overly woke agenda.
“Prior to election day,” said Zein Murib, an associate professor of political science at Fordham University, “there was a lot of concern in trans rights circles that whatever way the races broke for certain candidates who had taken up anti-trans messaging would signal that was a winning strategy.”
But Texas and Kansas – along with the US Senate and House – flipped blue. Alabama elected its first transgender lawmaker, Allison Montgomery, an incoming state representative, despite her Republican challenger’s incendiary comments about her identity. Five other states – Georgia, Washington, Wisconsin, Michigan and Florida – elected trans and non-binary candidates at the state level for the first time.
“I think this is probably as positive of an outcome that we could expect at this moment,” said Murib.
The “blue wave” can be seen as a repudiation of the Trump administration’s most divisive policies: violent immigration enforcement, the war in Iran, economically devastating tariffs. Some trans Americans also see it as a repudiation of his party’s aggressive rhetoric.
Republicans’ anti-trans ads were “a huge waste of money”, said Verniss McFarland, founder and executive director of The Mahogany Project, a Black-led nonprofit dedicated to supporting the trans and gender-expansive community in Houston, Texas. Wulf James, 41, a Two Spirit Indigenous person who lives in Kansas, called the ads a “fear-mongering exercise”. “There have always been trans and queer people, and no amount of big spending is going to change that,” they said.
Soraya Sobreidad, 67, an artist who lives in New York, said the ads were “something that the Republicans thought up to use as a way to weaponize and take the focus off of bigger issues”, and pointed out that only 1% of Americans aged 13 and up are transgender.
“Multimillions of dollars are being invested to spread false narratives about trans people,” she said. “That’s just a fraction of dollars that gets invested back into the community. [Trans] lives shouldn’t be strictly experienced around somber moments, anti-trans policies, or political ads. Trans people, and especially Black trans people, should experience life in totality.”
It wasn’t just Republicans. Indeed, some Democratic candidates parroted anti-trans messaging and won their midterms races. Josh Turek, the incoming Iowa senator, released an ad saying he was against “males competing in female sports” and “taxpayers paying for sex changes.” (Turek said he released the ad to respond to false claims put forth by his Republican challenger.) In Ohio, Marcy Kaptur, the incumbent representative, flaunted that she voted “with Republicans” to keep “transgender ideologies out of schools”. Kathy Castor, in Florida’s 14th congressional district, also said she did not believe “biological males” should take part in girls’ sports.
“Instead of guiding the public toward an attitude that could be more accepting, some Democrats capitulated,” said Andrew R Flores, an associate professor of government at American University. “To me, the indictment is: where do we go now, so the Democratic party doesn’t feel like it needs to follow [Republicans] on this issue?”
Murib pointed to Abdul El-Sayed, the Michigan senator-elect who reiterated support for trans rights during a 60 Minutes interview the Sunday before the election. “He wasn’t going to throw trans people under the bus,” Murib said. “Democrats need to stick with that to be different. They can’t just go further right on the issue like the Republicans and some of their colleagues have done.”
No matter where the rhetoric comes from on the political spectrum, it has real life consequences, say trans Americans.
Jane, a 20-year-old Kansas college student, felt an “aura” around the state because of the influx of anti-trans ads. “Because of those ads, it’s much harder for me to live my life,” Jane said. “Nobody’s attacked me or called me names. But you can tell that you’re being watched constantly, or judged silently. I don’t think that’s a particularly new phenomenon for trans people, but the midterms are not helping much.” (Jane did not want their last name printed out of safety concerns.)
Max Mowitz, executive director of One Iowa, the state’s largest LGBTQ+ organization, has complicated feelings about being expected to support a Democratic candidate such as Turek simply because they had no better option. “It’s been very hard to constantly need to center the fact that trans people are humans,” Mowitz said. “It can sometimes feel delusional to be hopeful and optimistic, but I would rather be delusional than to just give up.”
Shira Berkowitz, the senior director of public policy at PROMO Missouri, an LGBTQ+ advocacy organization, described feeling “sick to my stomach” because of anti-trans attacks. But they also described a recent encounter that buoyed their spirits: two of their group’s canvassers knocked on the door of an older couple who was not interested in talking about trans issues. As the canvassers walked away, a car drove up and out climbed a gender-expansive teenager – the couple’s child – who noticed the canvassers’ rainbow lanyards. The teen asked the canvassers to come back.
“They returned to the door together and had this conversation where they witnessed their parents’ hearts expanding a little,” Berkowitz said. “It is possible to change somebody’s heart and mind.”
On Tuesday, Berkowitz’s home state, which is reliably red, voted to protect abortion rights and gender-affirming care for minors.
Despite positive developments this election season, trans Americans still face bigotry and a deeply transphobic presidential administration. The day after Trump won the 2024 election, The Trevor Project, a nonprofit focused on suicide prevention for LGBTQ+ youth, reported a 700% increase in calls, texts, and messages to its crisis hotline. There are 154 national anti-trans bills under consideration in the US, with 63 passing in 2026. Various states have restricted access to gender affirming care for minors and banned transgender athletes from competing on teams that do not match their sex at birth.
While trans issues were far from the top election issue for the vast majority of voters – not compared to cost of living, government corruption and immigration – polling from Pew Research found that 73% of US adults are uncomfortable with transgender athletes competing on sports teams that match their gender identity. This sentiment was borne out in some state midterms elections. Arizona approved a ballot measure expanding the state’s ban on trans athletes; Nebraska voters added a ban to the state’s constitution. Washington passed a sports ban that requires girls to undergo “medical testing” to prove their sex via genital check or hormone test. (Colorado’s sports ban is too early to call but looks likely to pass.)
Critics call these laws unnecessary and discriminatory, while advocates say they make sports “fair” for girls.
Murib, the Fordham professor, said that discourse around trans sports bans “manufactures this idea that women and girls are in need of protection”. “This is the product of over 40 years of rightwing mobilization to create a logic in which the gender binary is considered natural and unquestionable,” they added.
Hennessy, the 19-year-old trans Kansan, went to bed early on election night. They woke up to results that made them feel vindicated – and laser-focused on kitchen table issues such as the cost of living and stalled job market.
“Americans have bigger issues, and trans people have bigger issues, too,” they said. “As a trans person, there is more to worry about than bathroom bans and other laws that unfortunately affect my day-to-day life. Like, we all gotta eat. Let’s celebrate for like the next 28 hours and then let’s get to work.”
