Articles in The Daily Signal and The Washington Stand — a publication of the Family Research Council — followed this same framing, backing Earle-Sears’ mischaracterization of Spanberger’s pro-trans record as endangering children by supporting legislation that would supposedly “allow naked men inside girls’ bathrooms and locker rooms.”
One reporter in Virginia showed just how effective the right has become at turning local news into a delivery system for culture-war grievances. Nickolaus Minock — a former Trump administration press official now working at Sinclair-owned WJLA — consistently pressed the Spanberger campaign on transgender issues. For months, Minock chased Spanberger on camera with the same scripted questions, misgendering trans students and framing school policies protecting them as an issue gaining “national attention.”
An official from Loudoun County schools eventually filed a 36-page complaint to the Federal Communications Commission accusing the station of “broadcast news distortion,” including six instances of “dishonest and distorted” reporting that “injures the public interest.”
But Minock didn’t stop. He continued producing bathroom-panic segments as if refusal to indulge the premise was proof of guilt. The result was a pipeline that laundered a national talking point through a local broadcast feed to make it look organic.
Right-wing media followed the same script in New Jersey. Coverage in the New York Post asserted that Republican nominee Jack Ciattarelli could win the governor’s race “by opposing transgenderism,” while Fox News cited polls from November 2024 and January 2025 to argue that Sherrill’s pro-trans voting record would threaten her electability.
Although Republicans devoted millions of dollars in ad money to the issue — including a majority of all ad spending by the Earle-Sears campaign — polling showed a vanishingly small number of voters listing transgender issues among their top concerns. Both races ended the same way: The anti-trans messaging campaign failed. Spanberger and Sherrill both won.
The 2022 “red tsunami” never happened — but right-wing media claimed it did anyway
In 2022, right-wing media insisted that Republicans had turned “gender ideology” into a losing issue for Democrats — even as election results undermined their claims. The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh claimed Democrats were “doomed” by their stance on trans rights. Manhattan Institute senior fellow Chris Rufo framed the election as proof that voters were rejecting “radical gender surgeries.” The American Principles Project boasted that it had spent $15 million turning “the transgender issue” into a “litmus test issue” for the midterms.
In reality, the “red tsunami” never arrived. Democrats out-performed midterm expectations, Republicans under-performed when compared to historic averages, and exit polls failed to show LGBTQ issues as a top concern for voters.
But instead of abandoning the narrative, right-wing media reframed the failure: Republicans lost because they didn’t attack hard enough.
Trump’s 2024 win convinced the right their strategy had finally worked — but they mistook the messenger for the message
When Trump won in 2024, right-wing pundits declared vindication. They treated his closing attacks on “they/them” as proof that anti-trans messaging had become a universal wedge among the electorate.
But the attack functioned differently in 2024 than it did in 2022 or 2025. Trump used anti-trans rhetoric as a proxy for class resentment — not as a standalone issue. “Kamala is for they/them” was presented less as a policy critique than as a cultural code for elite detachment, campus liberalism, and Democratic priorities. The effect was specific to Trump’s delivery, and the issue worked only when attached to a much broader narrative about who the government serves and who it ignores — and even then, it functioned as part of a composite message, not a single-issue referendum.
Right-wing media took the wrong lesson from 2024, concluding that the issue was the driver rather than the messenger. Republicans in Virginia and New Jersey this year thus attempted to run the 2024 playbook without its central ingredient. The results were the same as in 2022: No backlash wave, no realignment, no measurable voter movement.
Even with blanket coverage, even with sustained amplification on Fox News, even with paid ads regurgitating right-wing media narratives, the messaging failed to change outcomes. Spanberger won. Sherrill won. Voters did not list “transgender issues” as a priority, and when pressed, declared that they prefer Democratic messages on the issue anyway.
Right-wing media’s own mixed messages might have reduced the salience of the issue for their base. By October 2025, figures like Matt Walsh were already declaring that “transgenderism is effectively over” and calling it the “clearest and most decisive cultural win that conservatives have ever achieved.” APP’s Terry Schilling published an op-ed before polls closed on Election Day claiming that the reason “Democrats are struggling in Virginia and New Jersey” was in large part their “support for policies allowing biological men in girls’ private spaces, and their backing of taxpayer-funded medical interventions for gender-confused minors.” When the loudest voices on the right announce the fight over transgender rights is already won, it should come as no surprise when the issue stops functioning as a voter-mobilizing grievance.
Conclusion: Right-wing media sold Republicans the wrong lesson. Again.
The midterms in 2022 disproved the claim that anti-trans messaging was an effective backlash engine. The presidential election in 2024 seemed to validate it only because Trump acted as a cultural amplifier. Now, with 2025 elections removing Trump from the equation and producing the same results as 2022, we see once again that the attacks failed to move voters.
The pattern is now clear. Right-wing media can continue producing bathroom panics for clicks, but their electoral theory has failed twice in three cycles — and only “worked” once under conditions they likely cannot reproduce.
Democrats who answer the attacks and re-center voters’ priorities keep winning. Republicans who mistake Fox News programming for the electorate keep losing.
