Anti-trans ballot measures pass in four states, draw little national news coverage

While voters overwhelmingly rejected Republican candidates running for office who attacked trans rights, anti-trans ballot measures seeking to take trans girls out of girls’ sports look slated to pass across four out of five states. But that may not be evident from the front pages of national news sites like the New York Times and the Washington Post.

National newspapers have been some of the primary drivers of anti-trans misinformation that helped stoke Republicans’ strategy to fearmonger about trans rights, which proved unsuccessful in the 2026 midterms. In the coming days, if mainstream newsrooms are striving to capture the full story of the “blue tsunami”, their coverage must account for the ways anti-trans misinformation still affected ballot results while centering trans people affected by the ballot measures in Washington, Colorado, Nebraska, and Arizona. 

“Journalists really need to look beyond the race itself, examine who is funding these campaigns and how that misinformation is being distributed, and to whom and why,” said Mariah Moore, Transgender Law Center’s director of programs. “No one's life or experience deserves to be utilized as a wedge issue … You don't need to scapegoat anyone to win an election.”

A joint investigation between Them and The Advocate found that pushing anti-trans ballot measures intended to limit trans girls’ participation in sports has been a multimillion dollar affair.

“Folks are really trying to make informed decisions, but we cannot also ignore the fact that folks were inundated with misinformation,” Moore said. 

Moore’s work at the Transgender Law Center has found her trying to dispel that misinformation on the ground, with local organizers and groups trying to share more information about how anti-trans ballot measures operate.

“What I experienced while also on the ground in places like Colorado was that folks were very open to receiving information, learning more about these ballot measures,” she said. “In some instances, the things that they've seen — maybe an ad on television or a piece of literature that they've gotten — [it] wasn't the complete story.” 

Despite the New York Times having repeatedly denied bias in its coverage of trans communities, its coverage has fed directly into anti-trans legislation or rulings — Times stories were cited 29 times to justify a Tennessee ban on youth healthcare last year, motivating Trans News Network’s ongoing boycott of the publication. 

A Washington Post feature story of the Washington state anti-trans ballot measure, which would institute broad physical inspections for all girls in youth sports, focused on the billionaire backing the measure and the high school students supporting it. Quotes from the state’s nurses association and an LGBTQ+ advocacy group leader are included, but there is no perspective from trans girls — whether cited from another source or interviewed directly —  despite them being the direct targets of the measure.

The Trans Journalists Association and Berkeley Media Studies Group analyzed six major newsrooms’ coverage of President Donald Trump’s executive orders in the first hundred days of his presidency. They found that just 6% of the articles they reviewed — which included pieces from the Times and the Washington Post — neglected to include trans youth under 20 as sources. 

Still, national newsrooms’ coverage is far from being the end-all, be-all influence on local journalists. Local reporting has often gotten picked up (or cited without credit) by national papers. And local newsrooms, LGBTQ+ newsrooms, and national newsrooms explicitly reporting on policy, power, and gender have been covering the nuance behind anti-trans fearmongering being a largely unsuccessful candidate platform. 

But many people across the country get their information from national newsrooms’ push notifications or morning newsletters — especially the New York Times, which has over 13 million subscribers, or about 3.4% of the entire U.S. population. (In comparison: a 2026 Williams Institute survey says there are around 2.8 million trans adults and youth in the U.S., about 0.08% of the U.S. population.)

And increasingly strapped local newsrooms rely on the sourcing and access of national newsrooms to bolster their work. Last year, when the Wall Street Journal published an anonymously sourced — and later debunked — law enforcement bulletin claiming the bullets used in Charlie Kirk’s shooting contained engravings linked to “transgender and anti-fascist ideology,” the Trans Journalists Association found 43 outlets shared the anti-trans misinformation. 

“It's going to be critical, especially in these next two years, to continue to move together collectively and hold folks accountable — not just politicians, but journalists,” Moore with the Transgender Law Center said. “Stories deserve to be covered accurately … I think that's a responsibility that has been lost in recent years.” 

And that includes more than just quoting more trans people, argues Kae Petrin, president of the Trans Journalists Association.

“Quoting more trans people is a start,” they wrote in an commentary about the affinity group’s analysis last year. “But we need to think clearly about what stories we’re telling. What’s the point of so much news that doesn’t look beyond the theoretical realm of the political debate?”

In June, The Guardian’s U.S. paper published a story that centered trans girls and their families explaining how bans on trans student athletes have affected them. 

“If I had been forced to join the boys’ team, it would just be so uncomfortable for all of us,” student-athlete AB Hernandez said. “They’re failing to see, on my girls’ team, everyone is super happy and super nice and no one cares. We’re just high school girls trying to have fun and play a sport we all love.”

James Salanga is the co-director of The Objective.

This piece was edited and copy edited by Gabe Schneider.