# "Kamala Is for They/Them" Ad In the last seven weeks of the [[2024 Presidential Election]], [[Donald Trump]]'s campaign ran a set of thirty-second ads about a subject almost no voter had named as a priority: gender-affirming medical care for people in prison. Each ended on the same line: "Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you." They aired tens of thousands of times, heavily during football games. The Harris campaign never answered them with an ad of its own. Democrats and Republicans alike came to describe the line as the most effective of the race, and in 2026 Republicans reused it across the midterms. ## The ads The spots use video of [[Kamala Harris]] from her first presidential run, in 2019, saying that transgender people in prison would have access to transition-related surgery. A narrator describes this as taxpayer-funded sex changes for prisoners and for immigrants in detention. Then the tagline, and Trump's voice approving the message. There were several versions. One was built around a California prisoner convicted of murder who received surgery under a state program. Another used radio host Charlamagne tha God reacting to the first ad on his own show and saying he did not want his tax dollars spent that way; he objected to being used and sent the campaign a cease-and-desist letter. The tagline does two jobs. "They/them" names a group most viewers do not belong to and turns a pronoun into a punchline. "For you" says the opponent's attention is somewhere else. Trump's political director made the second point explicitly after the election, saying the ad was about misplaced priorities. ## Who made it and who paid The Trump campaign paid for the ads and released the first in the third week of September 2024; its rapid-response account posted it on September 20. The campaign was managed by [[Chris LaCivita]] and [[Susie Wiles]]. The super PAC [[MAGA Inc]] ran a similar spot of its own. According to the ad-tracking firm AdImpact, the campaign spent more than **$19 million** on two of the television versions between October 1 and October 16 alone, for nearly 55,000 airings. Across all Republican candidates and groups in 2024, AdImpact counted about **$215 million** in television advertising on transgender issues; this ad was the flagship. ## Was it true? The quotation was real. Harris said in 2019, in a candidate questionnaire for the [[ACLU]] and in an interview with a transgender rights group, that people who depend on the state for medical care, including prisoners and detained immigrants, should have access to transition-related treatment. What the ad left out: - **It was already federal policy, including under Trump.** [[PolitiFact]] found that federal law requires prisons to provide necessary medical care, that courts have held this can include gender-affirming care, and that the [[Bureau of Prisons]] acknowledged that obligation during Trump's first term. - **It almost never happens.** The Bureau of Prisons told fact-checkers that two federal prisoners had ever received such surgery, the first in 2022 and both after years of litigation. - **Harris was not running on it.** Her campaign said the 2019 questionnaire was not what she was proposing in 2024. Asked on Fox News in October, she said she would follow the law and noted that the Trump administration had operated under the same one. ## Reaction The Harris campaign made no ad in reply. Reporting after the election said a response had been drafted, tested poorly and was shelved. The [[Lincoln Project]] ran its own rebuttal. Transgender advocates said the ads' real effect was on trans people, not on Harris. After the election the verdict was close to unanimous among people who run campaigns. [[Chris Christie]] called it Trump's most effective ad. [[Gavin Newsom]], in conversation with [[Charlie Kirk]] in 2025, called it a great ad and said Harris's silence had made it worse. [[Sarah McBride]], the first openly transgender member of Congress, said its force was in the idea that Harris was for a small group and Trump was for "you." ## Did it work? Two studies point in different directions, and both are worth keeping in view. - The main pro-Harris super PAC, Future Forward, tested Trump's ads and found that one of the "they/them" versions moved viewers **2.7 points** toward Trump, which made it one of his most effective spots. - A randomized trial by the research firm Ground Media, released by [[GLAAD]], found **no significant effect** on how viewers said they would vote. It did find that viewers came away three to four points less accepting of transgender people. Both can be true. An ad can shift a tested audience in the moment, do little to the final vote, and still change how a minority is seen by the people who watched it thousands of times. ## What happened next The line became a format. In the 2026 midterms Republicans ran versions of it against Democratic Senate candidates, including [[James Talarico]] in Texas, where the super PAC [[Texas PAC]] aired a spot saying he was "for they/them, not you," and [[Mary Peltola]] in Alaska. AdImpact estimated that Republicans had spent **$183 million** on transgender-themed television ads by late October 2026, ahead of the 2024 pace, with about $58 million of it in the Texas Senate race. Talarico won. ## Why it's on the map - **It is the wedge ad in its purest recent form.** The subject was chosen because it divides the other side's coalition and costs the attacker nothing. The wiki's page on [[Wedge Issue]] describes the technique; this is the case study. - **Silence was the story.** The [[Swift Boat Veterans for Truth Ads]] taught campaigns to answer attacks fast. Twenty years later a well-funded campaign chose not to answer this one, and members of its own party said afterward that the silence did the damage. - **Same strategist, same structure.** [[Chris LaCivita]] made the Swift Boat ads in 2004 and co-managed the campaign that ran this one. Both took something the candidate had said or done years earlier and made it the present-tense argument. - **It tested a limit in 2026.** A line that was credited with helping win a presidential race was the centerpiece of a midterm in which the party using it lost ground. Whether the ad worked in 2024 or merely ran alongside a win is the question the 2026 results reopen. ## Connections - [[2024 Presidential Election]] · [[Donald Trump]] · [[Kamala Harris]] - [[Chris LaCivita]] · [[Susie Wiles]] · [[MAGA Inc]] - [[Transphobia]] · [[Wedge Issue]] · [[Culture War]] - [[Texas PAC]] · [[James Talarico]] — the 2026 reuse - [[Political Ads Hub]] · [[Swift Boat Veterans for Truth Ads]] · [[Hands Ad]] · [[Willie Horton]]