Nevada Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo knows he has an uphill battle for reelection. (I hadn’t heard of him until today.)
So he’s turning to ballot measures to drive conservative voter turnout—and he’s betting that throwing trans kids under the bus will secure him another term.
But is he the only one?
As my colleague Madison Pauly reported today, anti-trans measures are on the ballot in at least four states, with three others in the works, and a lot of them sure look like “ballot candy.”
In Nebraska, a dark money group is spending more than $1.6 million to cement a law against trans girls playing in women’s sports into the state constitution—a law that, to be clear, is already in place, signed by the governor last year.
Fewer than 10 trans students have reportedly participated in either girls’ or boys’ sports in Nebraska between 2015 and 2025. So is the proposed amendment really about those kids? Or is it a way to drive voters to the polls? Read Madison’s breakdown of the forces at play here.
—Sophie Hurwitz
