On October 5, The New Republic ran an opinion column by editor Michael Tomasky calling the GOP’s trans-themed midterm ads a “vile closing argument.” CNN, citing AdImpact, counts more than 190 such ads and $60 million. Two adjectives hold the headline up. “Pathetic” and “Vile” are verdicts, and they reach the reader before any ad does. Under them sits an opinion column by editor Michael Tomasky, filed under the kicker “LAST GASP,” with no count of ads, no dollar figure and no sponsor. Its third paragraph opens “It’s pathetic.” The tell is the adjective standing where a number should be: when the judgment comes first and the count never comes, you are handed a feeling to carry, not a fact to weigh. CNN, citing AdImpact, reports more than 190 GOP TV ads on transgender policies and more than $60 million since January. Punchbowl’s narrower count finds 82 broadcast ads in House and Senate races, most in GOP primaries. Axios names one sponsor: Elon Musk’s America PAC, with ads against Sherrod Brown, Josh Turek, James Talarico and Mary Peltola. PolitiFact found a Kansas ad that stitched separate sentences into a quote Adam Hamilton never said. None of it reaches the headline. The same eyes for the other side. In Byron Donalds’s line, quoted in the column itself, the word “boys” names trans girls and settles the question before an argument starts. The headline’s villain is “Republicans” alone, while Democrats Marcy Kaptur, Lindsay James and Sarah Trone-Garriott run ads against trans athletes in girls’ sports, Kaptur in the phrase “transgender ideology.” Trans people are the subject of every ad and every headline here, and no headline quotes one.
