I Want To Point Out Some Facts.

100% of the people need to eat, but the price of food is skyrocketing!

100% of the people need to heat or cool their homes, but the cost of oil is out of sight!

100% of the people travel to work, but they can’t afford the gas!

0.5% of the people are trans and just want to live their lives in peace!

The GOP’s Culture-War Hail Mary

Will it work?

The Atlanitc

By Elaine Godfrey

October 2, 2026

Last week, as the war with Iran dragged into its seventh month, gas prices shot up to an average of $4.50 a gallon, and polling showed President Trump about twice as far underwater with American voters as he was at this point in 2018, Republican senators determined that the time had come to discuss something else entirely: youth sports. “Girls’ sports are for girls. Boys’ sports are for boys,” Senator Marsha Blackburn said in a news conference.

With 32 days to go until the midterm elections, Republicans’ closing strategy is obvious: They’re going all-in on trans. (It seems to have worked for them before, after all. More on that in a minute.) In Texas, Republicans are running an unsettling AI-generated ad that shows the Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico dressed as Maria von Trapp and singing about girls with mustaches. A spot in Iowa accuses the Senate candidate Josh Turek of supporting “sex changes for kids.” On X, former Representative Matt Gaetz offered a tidy summary of his party’s agenda: “I hate the war too,” he told a concerned voter. “But the Democrats want to trans your kids.”

People are starting to say… we don’t want your diversions!

Activists view the whole situation as an alarming shift among Democrats—one that portends worse to come. “Targeting trans people isn’t the winning strategy some people think it is,” Equality Ohio, an LGBTQ-advocacy group, told me in a statement. Childrey said that “the triangulation thought process is that we have to throw trans rights under the bus” to win elections: “We’re leaning in a direction that loses the heart and soul of what it means to be a Democrat.” In an online interview with a transgender political commentator last week, Childrey implied that she wouldn’t be voting for Acton in November, saying that activists need to show Democrats nationwide “that transphobia will not be a successful selling point.” The big risk, she explained, is that in 2028, “you’re going to have the choice between a transphobic Republican and a transphobic Democrat for president.”

Here is how I think we should answer those questions… with a question: “How many trans people are there? Do you even know? But I know people will be frozen out of their homes this winter! And I know people will be going hungry because of the price of food. Those are the issues we should be talking about!”

The voters demand answers to their urgent, basic needs for a roof over their heads, food, heat, and gas , while Republicans are overly fixated on culture-war distractions. And what gets me, is that for some their hate is more important than food on the table.