Politico: “Republicans found years of political success uniting against transgender athletes, a push that helped them energize voters in a range of elections and divide Democrats.”
“But the movement is now fraying after two influential conservative organizations, including The Heritage Foundation, started openly attacking bedrock anti-sex discrimination policy that’s fueled women’s sports for decades.”
“Republicans across the most competitive House and Senate races have settled on a closing pitch ahead of Election Day: Democrats are too extreme to be given control of Congress,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“It is an effort, pressed in a flood of TV ads and in President Trump’s rally speeches, to urge voters who are angry about gas prices and broader economic conditions to redirect their frustration away from the party in power. To make their case, Republicans are calling renewed attention to a set of cultural issues that hurt the Democratic Party in 2024, among them transgender athletes in women’s sports, border security and the claim that Democrats want socialism.”
“The Trump administration has moved forward with its effort to return a controversial Confederate statue to Arlington National Cemetery next year,” the Washington Post reports.
“The Office of Army Cemeteries submitted final plans to the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts on Thursday to return the Confederate Memorial to a small section of the cemetery where more than 400 Confederate soldiers were reinterred in the early 1900s.”
“President Trump is hosting a Columbus Day celebration at the White House on Friday, renewing his push to honor the Italian explorer amid years of debate over his legacy,” NewsNation reports.
“The event comes months after Trump installed a 13-foot statue of Christopher Columbus on White House grounds — a replica of a monument that protesters toppled and threw into Baltimore’s harbor in 2020.”
“I don’t know what the term means anymore. I think in reality what it actually means in the American context is you want to replace American workers with foreigners workers, and you want boys to play in girls’ sports. That’s what unites the socialists that I see running across the United States of America today.”
— Vice President JD Vance, quoted by the HuffPost, when asked to define “socialism.”
“Annie Andrews, the Democratic nominee in South Carolina’s Senate race, released an ad Thursday urging ‘No men in women’s sports,’ days after President Donald Trump called her an anti-transgender slur,” the Washington Post reports.
“Trump dubbed Andrews ‘Annie Trannie’ in a social media post Monday and said she favored ‘Transgender for Everyone.’ He also shared a commercial attacking her on transgender issues.”
Said Andrews, in a direct-to-camera ad: “I want you to hear me loud and clear: I don’t support biological men playing women’s sports and I don’t support and haven’t ever performed gender surgery for minors.”
Washington Post: “Trump on Friday will host a celebration of the Italian explorer at the White House, highlighted by his installation of a 13-foot Columbus statue on the presidential grounds.”
”The event is timed ahead of Columbus Day, a holiday that Trump vowed to resurrect ‘from the ashes’ after years of historians and politicians rethinking the legacy of Columbus, whose 1492 arrival in the Caribbean set the stage for colonization and enslavement.”
The Atlantic: “Most of Donald Trump’s efforts to control the nation’s largest museum complex have been loud. He tried to fire a Smithsonian museum director on social media, ordered the placement of warning signs outside its American-history museum, and demanded that the museum take down a modernist sculpture he dislikes.”
”But while this political theater plays out publicly, the White House’s Office of Management and Budget is quietly using an obscure funding power as part of its campaign to influence how the Smithsonian tells the American story.”
“Late last month, according to previously unreported public records, OMB included a footnote in two recent apportionments of federal funds that conditions nearly $190 million for the Smithsonian on the institution’s compliance with Trump’s March 2025 executive order accusing it of spreading ‘divisive narratives.’ Essentially, the White House is trying to force adherence to its preferred version of history through a little-known but legally binding budget mechanism.”
New York Times: “As the midterm election approaches, some Democrats in battleground races are moving to respond to Republican attacks casting them as extreme on transgender issues. In some cases, Democrats have reacted by accusing Republicans of being out of touch with voters’ economic concerns, or desperate to change the subject. In others, Democrats have voiced their opposition to transgender female athletes participating in girls’ and women’s sports. At times, their opposition has drawn criticism from other Democrats.”
“The strategies show how the party has shifted on the issue since the last nationwide election — a pivot that has played out in various ways since early 2025, when Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat from deep-blue California considering a run for president, suggested that the participation of transgender athletes in women’s sports was ‘deeply unfair.'”
Elaine Godfrey: “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 the most pressing issue of the 2026 campaign: transgender athletes. ‘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.”
“For much of the past year, the financial alarm bells at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts have been going off among the stewards of the iconic art institution,” CNN reports.
“There were warnings that its accounts had deteriorated under President Donald Trump’s chairmanship, according to records and internal presentations obtained by CNN that cover Kennedy Center finances from fiscal year 2024 through this year.”
“After the Kennedy Center board voted to place Trump’s name on the building in December 2025, gifts to the arts institution plunged 42% and donation pledges dropped more than 100% from January to April compared to the three months prior, one document revealed.”
“Two years ago, President Donald Trump’s campaign buried then-Vice President Kamala Harris with ads on transgender issues as he stormed back into the White House,” CNN reports.
“Now, Democrats are confronting a fresh wave of attacks that sound like Trump’s – and this time, after a party reckoning about how to address the topic with voters, they are responding more forcefully.”
“Some Democrats in competitive races are stating their clear opposition to trans athletes playing in girls’ sports teams or even saying they oppose trans ‘ideology.’ Candidates like James Talarico in the Texas Senate race are trying to reconcile past positions receiving new scrutiny. And others, like former Sen. Sherrod Brown in Ohio, are downplaying certain issues altogether, noting their states already have laws addressing them.”
“Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) claimed the airline industry is full of members of the ‘furry’ subculture in a bizarre speech from the Senate floor connecting transgenderism to mental illness,” the New York Post reports.
Said Tuberville: “Gender confusion is an extremely serious mental problem that our society better start addressing. Unfortunately, these gender-confused individuals aren’t just harming themselves; they’re also turning into violent people and hurting other people.”
“A new photo shows President Donald Trump eyeing a poster that appears to reference the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts being demolished, hours after he warned that the building ‘will end up being ripped down’ if he is not properly recognized for his efforts to renovate it,” CNBC reports.
“The Kennedy Center Board of Trustees voted Tuesday to immediately close the performing arts venue, a few hours after a federal judge ruled that President Trump’s name could not be restored to its facade,” the Los Angeles Times reports.
“It remains unclear when the venue might actually close since U.S. Federal Judge Christopher Cooper would have to lift his preliminary injunction against the closure — an action that will almost certainly be fought in court.”
Deadline: Trump says no renovations unless his name is restored.
“The second-most powerful man at the State Department put the brakes on a U.S. international exhibit featuring a bull statue because he worried it might look like Baal, a pagan god some associate with Satanic child sacrifice,” Axios reports.
“The anecdote illustrates the quirky interests of Deputy Secretary of State Chris Landau, according to department critics, who say he spends too much time on social media focusing on the unimportant.”
“Leaders of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, installed by President Donald Trump, say the center is on the brink of bankruptcy and argue that putting the president’s name on its facade — and thus ensuring his fundraising efforts — may be the only way to avoid imminent and ‘certain fiscal collapse,'” the Washington Post reports.
“The bleak assessment is laid out in a 57-page packet distributed to the center’s board of trustees ahead of a special meeting Tuesday, when the Trump-led board is scheduled to consider two resolutions aimed at addressing twin crises confronting the national performing arts center: one financial, the other physical. Center officials say they could be unable to make payroll or pay routine maintenance contracts ‘within a matter of weeks’ and argue that publicly recognizing Trump could secure his help raising enough money to keep the institution afloat.”
“Two years after Donald Trump’s campaign hammered then-Vice President Kamala Harris over transgender issues, Democrats running in competitive races are hoping to push aside similar Republican attacks ahead of the midterm elections,” NBC News reports.
“In at least five battleground races — campaigns for governor in Ohio, Nevada and Iowa and Senate races in Iowa and Texas — Democratic candidates have declared their opposition to transgender athletes competing in women’s and girls sports, a pivot from their party’s long-standing position of inclusion for trans athletes.”
Taegan Goddard
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire -- which for more than two decades has been one of the nation's most influential political news sites.
More about Taegan Goddard →