Millions of dollars from Republican groups and individualstransgender Ads criticizing policies that support the transgender community are among the least important concerns motivating voters heading into the 2024 elections. According to Gallup’s latest poll.

LGBTQ advocates fear the intensified campaign will sow fear and hatred against a group that makes up less than 1% of the U.S. adult population and already faces high rates of discrimination and violence, according to an analysis of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data.

“After the election, trans Americans will have to deal with the dangerous consequences of the shameful lies and misinformation deliberately spread by many political candidates,” GLAAD President and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis said in a statement. he said.

In advertisements, former President Donald TrumpHis campaign said he would end transgender care in jails and prisons and restrict access to gender-affirming care, transgender participation in sports and more.

In interviews, Vice President Kamala Harris Referred to by some LGBTQ groups as part of the most “pro-LGBTQ” administration, he has said he will follow the law when it comes to transgender care and has expressed support for the Equality Act. Protect LGBTQ Americans from discrimination.

Here’s what we know about the problems and how Every candidate is expected to enact transgender policies.

Allegation of ‘trans operations’ in prisons

Trump’s campaign capitalized on Harris’ past comments affirming her support for transgender inmates receiving care.

In 2019, he supported “providing the medical care necessary to provide transitional treatment.”

But Harris’ campaign hit back at Trump’s latest criticism, noting that the Bureau of Prisons under the Trump administration has a policy that allows incarcerated transgender individuals to receive gender-affirming medical care if necessary based on individual evaluation. needs. BOP documents confirm the policy.

“Do you still support using taxpayer money to help prison inmates or detained illegal aliens transition to another gender?” Fox News anchor Bret Baier asked Harris during an interview in October.

“I will follow the law that Donald Trump actually follows,” Harris said. “As you probably know by now, this is a public report that under Donald Trump’s administration, these surgeries were being offered to people in the federal prison system on the basis of medical necessity.”

According to the American Civil Liberties Union, none of the hundreds of transgender people detained in BOP custody each year had undergone gender confirmation surgery by the time of the first trial in 2023.

BOP officials told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that as of early October, only two federal inmates had undergone surgery.

Allegations of trans ‘operations’ against children in schools

During the campaign, Trump often depicted hypothetical or unfounded scenarios about children undergoing “surgery” at school without parental permission. The former president has repeatedly claimed, without any evidence, that schools secretly send students for surgeries, saying: “There are some places where your son goes to school, comes back as a girl. OK? Without parental consent.”

According to Planned Parenthood, parental consent is required for any gender-affirming care given to minors, including puberty blockers or hormone therapy.

A study by researchers at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health found little or no use of gender-affirming surgeries by transgender and gender diverse minors in the United States; instead, it found that cisgender minors and adults benefited from such gender-affirming surgeries at significantly higher rates. They have more surgeries than their transgender counterparts.

According to the study, the rate of gender confirmation surgery for transgender youth ages 15 to 17 was 2.1 per 100,000, with the majority of these being breast surgeries. Doctors and researchers told ABC News that surgeries for people under 18 occur rarely and are evaluated only on an individual basis.

Doctors say they are working with patients and their parents to create a personalized and individualized approach to gender-affirming care for transgender patients, meaning not every patient can receive any kind of care. They also said that receiving this care is often a long process.

Multiple medical organizations, including the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and the CDC, have said access to gender-affirming care is essential to the health and wellness of gender diverse people.

When asked in an October interview with NBC News whether transgender Americans deserve access to gender-affirming care, Harris said “I will follow the law,” later adding that such care “is a health decision for doctors to make.” What is medically necessary.”

Additionally, vice presidential candidate Tim Walz signed an executive order as governor of Minnesota in March 2023 that protects and supports access to gender-affirming healthcare for LGBTQ people in the state.

Allegations about trans athletes

In a podcast with former professional wrestler The Undertaker or Mark William Calaway, Trump also made false claims about the controversial Olympic boxing match between Italian boxer Angela Carini and Algerian boxer Imane Khelif.

Khelif became the target of controversy after reports surfaced falsely claiming that Khelif was a transgender woman; According to the International Olympic Committee, she is not a woman and was assigned female at birth.

Carini’s abandonment of the Olympics match after just 46 seconds led to false accusations. The Algerian Olympic and Sports Committee (COA) and the IOC spoke out about Khelif’s gender and misinformation regarding her gender.

“The Algerian boxer was born a woman, she is registered as a woman, she lived her life as a woman, she has a women’s passport,” the IOC said at the press conference.

Trump then referenced a women’s volleyball game played by San Jose State against New Mexico, falsely claiming that a transgender athlete on the San Jose State team (for having repeatedly misled him) hurt other female players with the ball. San Jose State told the Los Angeles Times that the ball bounced off the student-athlete’s shoulder, that the athlete was not injured and did not miss any games.

“There was a guy on the team and he was way up high and he smashed that ball, you know, you can’t see that and it came at him at such a speed, you know. Trump, he didn’t see it at all, he actually got hit but the other volleyball players were injured as well,” he said.

Trump also promised in many speeches to “keep men out of women’s sports,” and this became a major theme of his campaign.

LGBTQ advocates say claims that transgender women are “taking over” women’s sports are misleading; Sports advocacy group Athlete Ally estimates on CNN that fewer than 40 of the 500,000 athletes in the NCAA are transgender women.

To learn more about the candidates’ LGBTQ policy backgrounds, read: Here.