In a last-minute blitz of TV and radio ads and slick mailers, Republicans are seeking to make gains in the upcoming election by scapegoating Transgender children and youth.
According to the Human Rights Campaign, the ad campaign has spread to at least 25 states and is orchestrated by former Trump aide Stephen Miller. Miller's group, America First Legal, has reportedly spent more than $4 million on ad buys in Atlanta, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and Detroit — all key cities in states with competitive elections.
The ads feature solemn, even ominous, music and a voice-over claiming that Democrats want to force children to get puberty blockers and gender-affirming surgery.
"The Biden administration is pushing radical gender experiments on children," the narrator says in one radio spot. "Tell Joe Biden and left-wing leaders across America, 'Hands off our kids.'"
According to Politico, America First Legal has also sent mailers to Black and Hispanic households in states, including Georgia, Texas, and Nevada.
In Spanish- and English-language mailers, Miller's group warned against "radical and irreversible gender experiments," including anecdotes from unnamed people who regretted "destroying their lives" with gender-affirming care and surgery.
Another ad more specifically goes after Biden, surrounding a picture of the president with anti-Transgender headlines related to schools from Fox News and the Daily Wire.
Citizens for Sanity, another group formed by former Trump administration operatives, has spent tens of millions on late advertising, including TV buys targeting Trans issues in battleground states, including Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada.
Geoff Wetrosky, the HRC's national campaign director, said the ads are an effort to suppress turnout.
"If they were looking to motivate voters to get to the polls and support particular candidates, I don't think it would be using the particular language and messaging that they're using," he said. "It's meant to fly under the radar as much as possible. Voter suppression efforts are typically done at the last minute and behind the scenes."
Wetrosky noted that organizations made similar efforts to create divisions between LGBTQ individuals and Black and Latino voters when campaigning against marriage equality a decade ago.
"This is not a new playbook. It's just a new chapter and an unfortunate playbook that we think is outdated. And it didn't work for marriage," he said.
NAACP President Derrick Johnson said the organization sent letters to radio stations asking them not to run the anti-Trans ads, which he called "the worst I've seen" in this election cycle.
"This is playing to the lowest common denominator of hate and otherizing, targeting the LGBT community," Johnson said. "When you create this type of negative reaction to individuals who [don't] present any societal grief, you only create space for people to feel justified for attacking them physically and through public policy."
America First Legal's vice president and general counsel, Gene Hamilton, defended the radio ad.
"The Biden administration and its allies are advancing a radical agenda that denies biology, denies reality, and denies that they are threatening children," he said in a statement. "We believe in biology, and we believe that confused children should not be harmed permanently by individuals with radical agendas."
Miller says he launched America First Legal to be a "conservative version of the American Civil Liberties Union." It has taken part in several lawsuits challenging instruction about racism in public schools, voting, LGBTQ and immigration policies, as well as claiming Biden's administration is "anti-white."