G.O.P. Bid to Target Transgender Athletes Falls Flat in the Senate

Senate Republicans tried and failed on Saturday to attach a measure targeting transgender athletes to the restrictive voter ID bill they are seeking to push through Congress, resurfacing an issue aimed at putting Democrats on the defensive ahead of midterm elections the G.O.P. is at risk of losing.

President Trump, who has made the voter ID bill his top legislative priority, had demanded that it include two provisions related to transgender Americans, neither of which have anything to do with elections. One would bar transgender women and girls from playing in women’s and girls’ sports, and another would criminalize gender transition treatments for minors.

Neither of those measures, nor the voter ID bill itself, have the 60 votes necessary to move ahead in the Senate and become law.

But that all-but-certain defeat did not stop Senate Republicans from seeking to shove the measures into the debate over voter identification and proof of citizenship, as G.O.P. lawmakers seek to capitalize politically on an issue that many Democrats remain deeply uncomfortable discussing.

“These are common sense issues, and they are very afraid of them,” said Senator Eric Schmitt, Republican of Missouri, who has sponsored a proposal to add both transgender provisions to the elections bill. “They are very afraid of having to vote on these things.”

Fearful or not, every Democrat who voted on Saturday opposed the restrictions on transgender athletes, leaving them far short of the support needed to advance. The vote was 49 to 41, blocking the proposal from being included in the elections bill.

Still, no Democrat rose to speak against the transgender proposals. The lone public objection came from Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, who said that she was “not happy” to see them “tucked into” the bill because they were not germane.

“I don’t know that that has anything to do with voting,” Ms. Murkowski said on Thursday. But on Saturday, she voted with the rest of her party in favor of adding the provisions.

Other Senate Republicans cast the effort as an attempt to highlight Democratic resistance to what the G.O.P. frames as proposals with broad support.

“Those are also issues that are overwhelmingly supported by the American people, and issues on which there is legislation up here,” Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the majority leader, said on Saturday. “And so, yeah, they’re part of a package, a broader package.”

With Republicans increasingly anxious about their chances of keeping control of Congress in November’s elections amid rising gas prices and widespread disaffection about the economy, Saturday’s vote signaled that they are planning to resuscitate a line of attack from the 2024 elections: that Democrats are out of touch with mainstream views and overly focused on identity politics.

There is scant evidence that transgender rights were a top concern motivating voters in the 2024 election, and transgender and nonbinary people are estimated to be about 1 percent of the country’s population.

Yet Mr. Trump in particular made attacks on transgender athletes and fear-mongering around medical care for transgender children a mainstay of his political rallies. Early in his second term, he signed executive orders addressing both issues.

At a House Republican summit earlier this month, the president made explicit that his latest push to attach the provisions to a completely unrelated elections bill was a way to revive something he believed won favor with voters, part of what he suggested was a kind of “greatest hits” of his political repertoire.

“These are best of — you know, best of, these are called best of Trump,” Mr. Trump said, claiming that the transgender measures had near-universal support. “We should also add on to this bill.”

Senators Tommy Tuberville of Alabama and Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, Republicans running for governor in their states, spearheaded the failed effort on barring transgender women and girls from women’s and girls’ sports.

Though polling has found that Americans have grown more supportive of restrictions on transgender people in recent years, their popularity falls short of Mr. Trump’s claims. A Pew poll from last year reported that two-thirds of Americans favored restrictions on transgender athletes, and 56 percent supported restrictions on medical care for transitioning minors.

Both measures are less popular among Democrats. But the party has debated the role that transgender issues played in its losses in elections up and down the ballot in 2024.

The voting measure sought by Republicans would have sweeping effects on elections, requiring voters to show approved photo identification to vote in federal elections and proof of citizenship to register. It would also require states to turn over voter rolls to the Department of Homeland Security to remove those flagged as noncitizens. And Mr. Trump is seeking to curtail the use of mail-in ballots, which would have wide-reaching effects.

Democrats and some L.G.B.T.Q. advocacy groups have argued that Republicans are dwelling on the issue in order to divert focus away from topics of more concern to Americans, like the cost of living, health care and the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.

“When the wheels are coming off the country and they don’t have any answers for their own failings, they reach for trans people and try to throw them under the bus,” said Brandon Wolf, a spokesman for the Human Rights Campaign.

Michael Gold covers Congress for The Times, with a focus on immigration policy and congressional oversight.

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