Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen, executive director of Advocates for Trans Equality, emphasized on CNN that these ads aim to drive a wedge among voters, exploiting the fact that few Americans personally know a trans person. Only about 30% of Americans report having a transgender person in their lives, which is correlated with a higher likelihood of supporting transgender rights. Heng-Lehtinen spoke personally to this phenomenon: “My family are all Republican, and they are lifelong conservatives. And then I came out as transgender, and it was a shock to them, just like it is for many people. … Thankfully, they stood by me. They may not have really understood what it meant to be transgender yet, but they knew that family is family and parents don't abandon their children.” [CNN, CNN This Morning Weekend, 10/20/24; Advocates for Trans Equality, accessed 10/30/24; Data for Progress, 10/11/23; Public Religion Research Institute, 8/24/23; Pew Research Center, 6/28/22]

Journalist Parker Molloy spoke with CNN’s Jake Tapper about the role that trans people’s participation in sports plays in building those personal connections. “For the most part, sports is where people come together to form a community, to play with their friends,” Molloy said, “And these laws, pushing to divide trans people out of this, is essentially saying, ‘You don’t belong, you’re okay to bully, you’re okay to exclude.’ And I think that that’s shameful.” Molloy also emphasized that trans issues are a low priority for most voters. [CNN, The Lead with Jake Tapper, 10/29/24; Data for Progress, 10/24/24]

“They’re trying to convince the public that trans people are scary in order to motivate Republican votes, and it just doesn’t work,” nonbinary journalist and Vice editor Nico Lang told MSNBC. Lang also noted that past emphasis on trans issues contributed to conservatives “underperform[ing]” in 2020 and 2022. This was the case in the 2022 midterm elections and Herschel Walker’s subsequent runoff, as well as for an Ohio ballot initiative in 2023. “Americans, as you see there, they don’t care about this. They care about issues that impact their lives,” Lang said. “They care about their trans friends. They care about their trans neighbors. And we just need to move on from this.” [MSNBC, Alex Witt Reports, 10/20/24; Media Matters, 11/10/22, 12/8/22, 8/9/23; Vice, accessed 10/31/24]

Montana state Rep. Zooey Zephyr stressed that the anti-trans culture war was not a pressing concern for the average voter. “It distracts us from important issues. That they’re trying to say that a teacher’s performing a surgery, they’re ignoring the fact we’re drastically underpaying teachers across this country. That is a far more salient issue,” Zephyr said, referencing Trump's false claim that children were undergoing gender-affirming surgery at school. [MSNBC, Ayman, 10/20/24; Media Matters, 9/10/24]

“I think it’s an expensive tactic to take cheap shots at the trans community,” activist Raquel Willis said on ABC. Willis highlighted a GOP pattern of painting marginalized groups as “villains,” pointing to recent attacks on Haitians and migrants. [ABC News, ABC News Live, 10/22/24; Media Matters, 9/17/24, 10/9/24]

Gina Chua, executive editor at Semafor, critiqued the ads in a New York Times op-ed, arguing that they paint trans acceptance as “far outside what is normal.” Chua noted that social attitudes evolve, pointing to progress on interracial marriage, gay marriage, and suffrage as evidence that one day, trans people might also be seen as “ordinary.” [The New York Times, 10/23/24]

Mainstream outlets remain far from balanced. In the first six months of 2024, just 8% of mainstream cable segments on anti-trans legislation featured trans voices. Only one openly trans person appeared in coverage that mentioned fatal violence against the trans community in 2023, with a majority of coverage from MSNBC, CNN, and broadcast networks sensationalizing the death of Banko Brown. In print, The New York Times neglected to quote trans people in 66% of its stories and failed to correct anti-trans misinformation in 18% of them from February 2023 to February 2024. [Media Matters, 8/1/24, 3/14/24, 3/26/24]