In reality, the Biden administration has held that Title IX bars discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity " but Education Department rules do not explicitly address transgender athletes. Federal law that Trump ads cited does require people in U.S. government custody to have access to gender-affirming medical treatments. Those policies were in place throughout Trump's 2017-21 term; they are not something Biden's administration instituted specifically.

And it is not legal in any state for a school to determine and carry out surgical treatment for minor students.

"You gotta fight back" with those explanations, Moulton said, adding that the silence compounds the negative effects for transgender people. "What did we show about our willingness to stand up for trans people by just being silent and ignoring the issue and ignoring the attack?"

Still, Moulton said Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill and in statehouses should give individual elected officials and voters the space to take more conservative positions, and he defended his own comments that he doesn't want his daughters competing in athletics against men.

"I don't want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete, but as a Democrat I'm supposed to be afraid to say that," Moulton told The New York Times last week.

Before he resigned his post as Texas Democratic chairman, Gilberto Hinojosa said supporting transgender rights doesn't necessarily have to include public funding for gender reassignment surgery.

"We can say, 'OK, we respect people's right to say, we don't want my taxpayer money to be used for that,'" Hinojosa told Texas Public Radio. Hinojosa later apologized via social media, saying LGBTQ Americans "deserve to feel seen, valued and safe in our state and our party."

Ellis, the CEO of GLAAD, pointed to Delaware voters choosing to make state Sen. Sarah McBride the first transgender member of Congress as evidence that Americans "don't hate trans people."

For her part, McBride, a Democrat from Delaware, noted that she did not run on her identity " though it was not a secret " and instead talked to voters about "affordable health care, housing and child care" for everyone.

"The party that was focused on culture wars, the party that was focused on trans people was the Republican Party," McBride told reporters on Capitol Hill after her victory. "It was Donald Trump," she added, who "was trying to divide and distract from the fact that he has absolutely no policy solutions for the issues that are actually keeping voters up at night."

Certainly it's difficult, if not impossible, to pinpoint single issues that can tip a national election, and there are mixed findings on what voters think about transgender rights.

According to AP VoteCast, a survey of more than 120,000 people who cast ballots this fall, more than half of voters said support for transgender rights in government and society has gone too far. About 2 in 10 said support has not gone far enough and another 2 in 10 said it's about right. But among Trump voters, 85% said transgender support had gone too far.

Still, slightly more than half of all voters oppose banning gender affirming medical treatment such as hormone therapy and puberty blockers, while slightly less than half support such proposals.

About one-quarter of Harris voters said support for transgender rights in government and society has gone too far. About 4 in 10 said it's been about right and about 4 in 10 said it hasn't gone far enough.

Trump and Republicans were relentless in trying to capitalize on the issue. They piled on transgender athletes, with Trump falsely labeling two Olympic boxers as transgender women. They used Harris' comments as a presidential candidate in 2019 - before she became vice president - effectively to blame her for laws granting transgender health care to federal prisoners and detainees.

And Trump repeatedly and falsely claimed that "your kid goes to school and comes home a few days later with an operation" changing their sex.

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