Trump and Vance make anti-transgender attacks central to their campaign's closing argument

ATLANTA (AP) — Donald Trump has made his opposition to transgender rights central to his closing argument before Election Day, using demeaning language and misrepresentations to paint an exceedingly narrow slice of the U.S. population as a threat to national identity.

The former president and Republican nominee’s campaign and aligned political action committees have spent tens of millions of dollars on advertising that attacks Democratic nominee and Vice President Kamala Harris for her previous statements supporting transgender rights.

His rally speeches now feature a spoof video mocking trans people and their place in the U.S. military. The montage, interspersed with clips of the Vietnam War movie “Full Metal Jacket,” typically draws loud boos at his rallies, as do Trump's false claims about female athletes and his mocking impression of what he says is a trans woman lifting weights.

“We will get ... transgender insanity the hell out of our schools, and we will keep men out of women’s sports,” Trump said at his recent Madison Square Garden rally, drawing an approving roar from the crowd of 20,000-plus. He regularly claims, falsely, that “your kid goes to school and comes home a few days later with an operation” changing their sex.

Trump's running mate, JD Vance, alleged Thursday that white teenagers in the “middle class or upper-middle class” can identify as transgender to more easily get into elite universities.

“Is there a dynamic that’s going on where if you become trans, that’s the way to reject your white privilege?” Vance told podcaster Joe Rogan, citing conservative anger about affirmative action and other programs geared toward historically disenfranchised groups. “That’s the only social signifier,” Vance continued, “the only one that is available in the hyper-woke mindset, is if you become gender nonbinary.”

While often overshadowed by his emphasis on migrants, Trump's broadsides against LGBTQ people have seemed to grow more frequent and ominous in the campaign's final days, intended both to stir his core supporters and coax votes from more moderate voters who may not mesh with Trump on other matters. It's part of an overall campaign in which Trump has pushed his own brand of hyper-masculinity, most recently referring several times to CNN anchor Anderson Cooper, who is gay, by a woman’s name, “Allison Cooper.”

Harris has largely ignored Trump’s attacks but has pushed back on his characterization of her stances, noting that federal policy giving U.S. military personnel access to gender-affirming medical care and transgender surgery was in place during Trump’s presidency.

“I will follow the law,” Harris said in a Fox News interview on Oct. 17. “And it’s a law that Donald Trump actually followed. You’re probably familiar with now. It’s a public report that under Donald Trump’s administration, these surgeries were available on a medical necessity basis, to people in the federal prison system.”

On “The Breakfast Club” podcast earlier this week, she added that Trump was “living in a glass house” with his attacks. She compared the number of people involved: She said two U.S. service members have sought transgender surgery, while millions of people could be stripped of their health insurance if Trump and Republicans succeed in their efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

Harris' campaign aides, meanwhile, see Trump’s approach as appealing only to hardline supporters already behind him, thus ceding issues, especially the economy, that resonate with many more voters who are not interested in another culture war battle.

Polling suggests a divided electorate on transgender rights. About half of Americans, 51%, say changing one’s gender is morally wrong, according to a Gallup poll from May. About 7 in 10 Americans say transgender athletes should only be allowed to compete on sports teams that match their birth gender, according to a 2023 Gallup poll. Yet about 6 in 10 Americans oppose laws that ban treatments and medical procedures that help transgender individuals align with their gender identity, according to a Gallup poll from May. About one-third favor such bans.

Civil rights advocates, meanwhile, express concerns over what a second Trump administration would mean for LGBTQ rights, and say his campaign messaging already threatens the security of transgender people, regardless of who prevails.

Trump has vowed to target transgender people if elected. He has said he would ask Congress to pass a bill stating there are “only two genders” and to ban hormonal or surgical intervention for transgender minors in all 50 states.

Sarah Kate Ellis, president of the LGBTQ advocacy group GLAAD, said Trump's approach attacks “vulnerable people” who make up about 1% of the population “and already are marginalized” by much of society.

“Why are we debating trans people's medical care? Because there's a lack of understanding, and there's a lack of humanizing about who trans people are,” Ellis said. “It's not easy to be transgender, to wake up every day in a body that might not fit who you are, and instead of having empathy, they're met with hostility. That's the culture Trump is creating.”

Writer and activist Charlotte Clymer added on the social media platform X: “It really ... sucks to watch any sports event as a trans person right now because of the Trump commercials, and I just need everyone to know that: yes, we do see the ads, and it's demoralizing to know this entire subset of people sees us as subhuman.”

Indeed, Trump’s campaign has since Sept. 1 spent about $35 million airing three ads based on statements Harris made in 2019 as a candidate for Democrats’ 2020 presidential nomination. Clips show Harris affirming her support for federal policies that allow federal prisoners access to medical care including gender-affirming hormone treatments and, potentially, transgender surgery.

“It sounds insane because it is insane,” the announcer states in an ad that, as of Thursday, had aired almost 28,000 times across presidential battlegrounds and national television. “Kamala’s agenda is ‘they-them,’ not you,’” the ad concludes, referring to non-gender-specific pronouns.

Harris, in her 2019 presidential campaign, wrote in an ACLU questionnaire, “I support policies ensuring that federal prisoners and detainees are able to obtain medically necessary care for gender transition, including surgical care, while incarcerated or detained.”

She also worked as California attorney general to grant access to such care for state prisoners. But Harris is correct in noting that similar federal policies were in place under Trump’s presidency, both for immigrant detainees and federal prisoners.

At Trump's rallies, he often addresses LGBTQ issues with generalizations and emotional appeals. He routinely blasts U.S. military leaders for being “woke,” blaming Harris and President Joe Biden.

The spoof video that is played on screens at Trump's rallies alternates between scenes of intense military training, sometimes with drill sergeants yelling at troops, and scenes depicting what are supposed to be LGBTQ members of the military, each displaying exaggerated feminine affects. The latter scenes, the video states, reflect the U.S. military under Biden and Harris.

By the time Trump takes the stage, multiple speakers have primed the audience on the issue.

“We’re in the middle of a national identity crisis. Faith in God, patriotism, hard work, family -- these things have disappeared only to be replaced by ‘wokeism’ and transgenderism” and other philosophies, said former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy at Madison Square Garden. “These are symptoms of a deeper void of purpose and meaning in our country, and right now we need to step up and fill that void with our own vision.”

Associated Press writer Linley Sanders in Washington contributed to this report.

Supporters listen as Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally at Rocky Mount Event Center, Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2024, in Rocky Mount, N.C. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally at Rocky Mount Event Center, Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2024, in Rocky Mount, N.C. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump watches as a video plays during a campaign rally at Greensboro Coliseum, Tuesday, Oct. 22, 2024, in Greensboro, N.C. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — Most Maine schoolchildren know about the boy lost for more than a week in 1939 after climbing the state’s tallest mountain. Now the rest of the U.S. is getting in on the story.

Opening in 650 movie theaters on Friday, “Lost on a Mountain in Maine” tells the harrowing tale of 12-year-old Donn Fendler, who spent nine days on Mount Katahdin and the surrounding wilderness before being rescued. The gripping story of survival commanded the nation’s attention in the days before World War II and the boy’s grit earned an award from the president.

For decades, Fendler and Joseph B. Egan's book, published the same year as the rescue, has been required reading in many Maine classrooms, like third-grade teacher Kimberly Nielsen's.

“I love that the overarching theme is that Donn never gave up. He just never quits. He goes and goes,” said Nielsen, a teacher at Crooked River Elementary School in Casco, who also read the book multiple times with her own kids.

Separated from his hiking group in bad weather atop Mount Katahdin, Fendler used techniques learned as a Boy Scout to survive. He made his way through the woods to the east branch of the Penobscot River, where he was found more than 30 miles (48 kilometers) from where he started. Bruised and cut, starved and without pants or shoes, he survived nine days by eating berries and lost 15 pounds (7 kilograms).

The boy’s peril sparked a massive search and was the focus of newspaper headlines and nightly radio broadcasts. Hundreds of volunteers streamed into the region to help.

The movie builds on the children's book, as told by Fendler to Egan, by drawing upon additional interviews and archival footage to reinforce the importance of family, faith and community during difficult times, director Andrew Boodhoo Kightlinger said.

“Times are dark in the country in a weird way. You know, there are political divisions, society is a little on edge, and everything. And I thought, here’s a movie that reminds people about just the power of community, the power of caring about your neighbors. And the themes were so basic and simple. And for some reason, we just sometimes seem to be reminded of those things,” he said.

The movie brings a vintage vibe to the big screen.

Filming took place in the woods of upstate New York, with the crew battling insects and wading through shoulder-height water for scenes in a canoe. Other scenes were filmed on Mount Katahdin and a replica mountaintop built in a soundstage, complete with lichen-covered granite stones, blowing wind and rain and lightning.

The movie gives the perspective of the distraught family as well as the terrified boy, played by Luke David Blumm. His father is played by Paul Sparks (“House of Cards,” “Boardwalk Empire”). Maine native Caitlin FitzGerald (“Masters of Sex,” “Succession”), who read the book and met Fendler as a girl, takes on the role of Donn's mom.

FitzGerald isn’t the only Mainer involved in the film. A producer Ryan Cook, who also grew up in Maine, partnered with another Mainer, Dick Boyce. Both were familiar with the book and Cook became close to Fendler and previously produced a documentary about him.

Fendler was generous with his time and often told his story at school assemblies. “I tell every one of them they have something inside them they don’t know they have,” he told The Associated Press in 2011, five years before his death at age 90. “When it comes up to a bad situation, they’re going to find out how tough a person they are in the heart and the mind — it’s called the will to live.”

Sylvester Stallone's Balboa Productions took on the project because he liked the story of the plucky underdog.

Kightlinger, who hiked Katahdin to audition for the job of directing the movie, said adventure stories are a dime a dozen. This one, he feels, was made stronger by the backstory of the difficulties Donn and his father had connecting.

“It’s ultimately about a kid who just wants a hug from his dad,” Kightlinger said. “That’s such a pure, simple message, and I think more movies should aspire to just do that and remind people of the simple things, because there’s a lot of noise in our world now, and the simple things sometimes get lost.”

Nielsen said the story is both riveting and practical. In her classroom, the book inspires discussions about geography, plants and wildlife; preparation and survival skills; and resilience in the face of adversity.

Her teenage son learned a valuable lesson from the book: Stay together in the wilderness.

The 16-year-old was hiking Mount Katahdin with friends a few weeks ago. After hiking above the trees, they were traversing rocks when a storm came in. The three made the difficult decision as a group to turn back.

“My son wanted to keep going, but he knew that they had to stay together. He learned that lesson from the book. I’m 100% certain,” she said.

FILE - In this Oct. 15, 1940 file photo, Boy Scout Donn Fendler, of Rye, N.Y., is honored by President Franklin Roosevelt with a gold medal for valor at the White House in Washington. (AP Photo, File)

FILE - Donn Fendler chats with a young reader at a book signing in Bangor, Maine, Nov. 19, 2011. (AP Photo/Michael C. York, File)

FILE - In this Aug. 7, 2017, file photo, the first rays of sunlight color the clouds over Mount Katahdin in this view from Patten, Maine. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty, File)