Elon Musk’s America PAC has dropped $100 million to support the GOP in critical races that could control the future of the Senate. It includes TV commercials, digital ads, and a social media blitz across platforms Musk owns and platforms he doesn’t. The eleventh-hour push is a brazen attempt to stoke the anti-trans moral panic and turn equal rights for transgender people into a make-or-break campaign issue.
“The PAC’s emphasis on trans issues is striking because that’s been a much less prominent theme in GOP Senate ads so far this election cycle, per AdImpact, which tracks political advertising,” Axios’s Mike Zapler reports. “On its face, the strategy is at odds with what voters say they want candidates to talk about. Concerns about the economy dominate; trans and LGBT issues barely register. But Republicans remember how lethal the Trump campaign’s ‘Kamala is for they/them ads were to Kamala Harris’ campaign in 2024.”
The ads are a smattering of anti-trans hysterics and culture war talking points attacking James Talarico in Texas, Sherrod Brown in Ohio, Josh Turek in Iowa, Mary Peltola in Alaska, and Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan. (Musk is also funding some ads in New Hampshire and Maine, but they did not seem to target trans people.) Ads are running on the airwaves, as well as online on sites like Google, Instagram, and Facebook.
With grainy, high-contrast images and ominous music, the ads warn: “James Talarico believes there are six genders.” They said Brown put “the trans agenda ahead of Ohio’s values” and supports “men in women’s sports.” They said Turek “voted to spend our tax dollars on sex change surgeries for children,” that Peltola wants “your daughter to share a bathroom with a man,” and El-Sayed peddles “sex changes for minors.”
This comes after many of these candidates capitulated anyway. Brown put out an ad in 2024 relying on anti-trans stereotypes and grainy images of swimmer Lia Thomas in an apparent attempt to quell right-wing attacks. And Turek recently issued his official statement opposing equal rights for transgender women in sports and his campaign said he further opposed “taxpayer-funded sex changes.” Not to mention early and eager defectors like Rep. Seth Moulton, who left his Massachusetts congressional seat for a failed Senate run, only to be subdued by incumbent Sen. Ed Markey. Polls showed voters in that race were significantly less likely to vote for a candidate who espoused anti-trans and exclusionary views.
None of that stopped Republicans from using the existence of trans people as a cudgel to attack the Democrats and move the conversation further to the right—a strategy explicitly outlined by conservative operatives in the past. Famously, Terry Schilling of the far-right American Principles Project boasted to CNN: “The women’s sports issue was really the beginning point in helping expose all this because what it did was, it got opponents of the LGBT movement comfortable with talking about transgender issues.”
Plans for some sort of major push from the America PAC were first reported in July and August by Axios and the New York Times, respectively. In addition to TV and digital ads, Musk is also expected to aggressively utilize mailer campaigns and door-knocking initiatives to get out the vote in favor of the GOP.
Musk has been a primary antagonist for the trans community for years now. His daughter, model Vivian Wilson, came out as transgender in 2020, infuriating Musk. He once said she “was killed by the woke mind virus” of gender.
“Now, the woke mind virus will die,” Musk continued.
Still, some Democrats are pushing back on Musk’s attempts to bend the election to his own whim. The most prominent example of this might be Michigan’s Abdul El-Sayed, a progressive with a background in health care, whose candidacy has drawn substantial comparisons to that of New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Last month, he sparred with Jesse Watters on Fox News, who tried to goad him into a fight about transgender rights. El-Sayed wouldn’t take the bait.
“It’s no surprise that the world’s first trillionaire would be trying to buy a Senate seat,” El-Sayed spokesman Cole Wozniak said in a statement to the local press after Musk’s latest round of ads.
Rather than pivoting on civil rights issues, El-Sayed’s campaign strategy has been to remain laser-focused on the issues that matter most to voters.
“Michiganders will see right through this,” Wozniak said, “and will send Abdul to the Senate this November to take on the corruption by getting money out of politics, putting money in your pocket, and passing Medicare for All.”
Fuck Musk! 😡🤬😡
I think trans rights is a strength, for our side, this year. Not-future-Gov. Acton missed that boat. It's the discrimination against people, for no reason, that is a thing that can affect people's votes, we've seen the occasional Republican official with a heart say "well I looked at the evidence and it's there", with regard to transgender identity being a sound concept, I say Tim Walz should be prominent in our campaign, double down, say proudly that we will accept no less than an egalitarian, equally fair society.