The Republican Senate Leadership Fund, a super PAC, is spending over a million dollars to air an anti-transgender attack ad targeting Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA). The ad highlights Ossoff’s opposition to the so-called “Fair and Safe Athletic Opportunities Act,” a GOP-led bill that prohibits students from playing on sports teams that match their gender identity. Ossoff’s office has responded by accusing Republicans of wanting to inspect female athletes’ genitals before allowing them to play sports.

The ads — aired by One Nation, the issue advocacy arm of the Senate Leadership Fund super PAC — will run during upcoming sports matches, including the Final Four men’s and women’s basketball games, the Masters pro-golf tournament, and Atlanta Braves baseball game broadcasts, Axios reported. The ads are just the latest Republican investment into anti-trans attack ads against Democrats, which have pressured some Democrats to publicly oppose trans inclusion in sports.

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In the ad, a basketball player who resembles Ossoff hits a basketball out of a cisgender female player’s hands, blocking her shot, pushing her down, screaming and laughing at her, and then scoring a long-throw 3-point shot and a slam dunk as she hangs from the rim, smiling and screaming some more.

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Using sports language, the ad’s female narrator says, “Running point for the radical left, a full court press against Georgia girls, man-to-man defense isn’t woke enough for Ossoff. He’s playing for they/them… Tell Senator Ossoff, ‘Stop dunking on defenseless girls.'”

In response to the ad, Ossoff campaign spokesperson Ellie Dougherty told Axios, “American parents don’t need federal bureaucrats confirming our children’s genitalia. Athletic associations and local school districts can ensure fair, safe competition in childhood athletics.”

The anti-trans sports bill mentioned in the ad would have amended Title IX — the federal civil rights law prohibiting sex discrimination in government-funded schools and education programs — to prohibit schools from allowing trans female athletes to participate in athletic programs or activities “designated for women or girls.” 

While the bill defines sex as “based solely on a person’s reproductive biology and genetics at birth,” the Congressional Equality Caucus noted that the bill “could force any student to answer invasive personal questions about their bodies & face humiliating physical inspections to ‘prove’ that they’re a girl.”

The Democratic Caucus referred to the bill as the “Child Predator Empowerment Act” and pointed out that the bill does nothing to address the sexism, unequal funding, and physical and sexual abuse that actually harms girls’ and women’s sports.

The bill would have applied to student-athletes of all ages, effectively blocking trans girls from competing with other cis girls, but it also could have influenced policies of non-school affiliated little league teams, physical education classes, and even intramural college sports teams, providing a blanket policy even when no awards or locker rooms were involved.

Ossoff faces a tough re-election. He only won his 2017 special election against his opponent by just over one percentage point. Republicans have not yet named an opponent against him. Ossoff’s campaign has raised over $11 million in first quarter fundraising, The Hill reported, the highest amount ever raised by a Senate incumbent during a non-election year.

Democrats’ responses to anti-trans attack ads has been insufficient, critics say

During the 2024 election season, Republicans invested about $215 million into airing anti-trans TV ads that repeated claims about Democrats wanting “boys to play girls sports” and supporting taxpayer-funded gender-affirming surgeries for inmates. 

Before the election, two Democratic congressional candidates were criticized for releasing ads clarifying that they don’t support trans athletes: Rep. Colin Allred (D-TX) and Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) — both men lost their congressional races against Republicans who ran transphobic ads. Democratic presidential nominee then-Vice President Kamala Harris never responded to the transphobic attack ads against her.

Reps. Tom Suozzi (D-NY) and Seth Moulton (D-MA) both recently said that Democrats shouldn’t be defending “biological boys… playing in girls’ sports.” Moulton’s campaign manager and political committee director resigned after Moulton’s comment.

Times columnist Philip Elliott wrote that Democrats who blamed trans issues for Democrats’ election losses were treating trans people as a “scapegoat,” adding, “Rather than ask why Democrats didn’t do more to explain that standing up for trans kids is just the right thing to do, these politicians are trying to absolve their compatriots’ silence.”

MSNBC columnist Hayes Brown noted that Democrats only spent $9 million to refute the GOP’s anti-trans attacks, rebuffing the idea that Democrats lost election races for embracing trans issues too tightly. Brown noted that numerous trans and nonbinary candidates won historic races on Election Day, rebuffing the idea that voters are transphobic.

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