South Carolina Democrat Annie Andrews is trying to rewrite her record on transgender athletes — and President Donald Trump is making sure voters see the receipts.
Andrews, a pediatrician challenging Republican Sen. Darline Graham in one of the cycle's most watched Senate races, told Fox News Digital this week that she does not support biological men competing in women's sports and does not support gender surgery on minors. She repeats the claim in a new direct-to-camera campaign ad, wearing a white lab coat and stethoscope, telling viewers: "I want you to hear me loud and clear."
The problem: that's not what she said when it counted.
When South Carolina passed the Save Women's Sports Act in 2022, Andrews went public against it. "This is shameful legislation that does nothing to protect or support women or children in SC. In fact, it is actively harmful. I will always support trans youth," she wrote at the time, per Fox News. The law required public schools and colleges to designate teams as male or female, closing women's teams to male students and men's teams to women, with private schools competing against public schools held to the same standard.
Republicans didn't let that post stay buried. As Andrews launched her 2026 bid, the old comments resurfaced — and Trump amplified them.
In a series of Truth Social posts this week, the president dubbed her "Annie Trannie" and accused her of backing transgender policies out of step with South Carolina values. He also shared an attack ad telling voters: "Annie Andrews is for they/them, not for our values, not for South Carolina."
Trump's post, as reported by Fox News, read in part: "Annie 'Trannie' Andrews is running against our wonderful Darline Graham for the Senate in South Carolina."
Sen. Graham, appointed to the seat following the sudden death of her brother, longtime Sen. Lindsey Graham, is hammering the same theme. Andrews "has spent years supporting biological males competing in girls' sports. Now that she's running for Senate, she's trying to hide from that radical record," Graham said, according to Fox News.
Andrews insists she's been misrepresented. "I don't support biological men playing in women's sports and I don't support gender surgery on minors," she told Fox News Digital on Thursday.
She is not the only Democrat sprinting away from the party's transgender orthodoxy. Rep. Marcy Kaptur of Ohio, running in a district Trump carried in 2024, has aired an ad touting that she "voted with Republicans to keep transgender ideology out of our schools." Blake Gendebien, a Democrat running in a Republican-leaning New York district, released an ad saying boys shouldn't play on girls' sports teams, according to The Guardian. The pattern is a party-wide retreat, not an isolated adjustment.
The politics are not complicated. Republicans spent more than $200 million targeting Democrats on transgender issues in the 2024 campaign, and Trump's "Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you" ad became one of the cycle's defining messages on the way to a sweeping GOP victory. A Fox News national poll last month found 76% of respondents backed banning biological men from women's sports. In red-state South Carolina, those numbers are not a wedge — they're a wall.
This spring, the Supreme Court upheld laws in two conservative states excluding transgender girls and women from female sports, handing Trump another win on the issue. Republicans have signaled they intend to run the same playbook through November.
"I want you to hear me loud and clear: I don't support biological men playing in women's sports, and I don't support and haven't ever performed gender surgery for minors." — Dr. Annie Andrews, in a new campaign ad, as reported by The Guardian
What Andrews has not done, at least publicly, is reconcile the two positions. Her current claim — that she never supported biological men in women's sports — sits alongside her own 2022 post calling the law that kept them out "shameful" and "actively harmful." Voters in the Palmetto State can read both for themselves.
Our Take
Here's the tell. If Democrats truly believed the party line on men in women's sports, they would be defending it on the stump instead of taping lab-coat ads renouncing it. Andrews isn't having a change of heart — she's having a change of polls. The moment her old social media posts threatened a Senate seat in deep-red South Carolina, the pediatrician who pledged to "always support trans youth" suddenly discovered the wisdom of the Save Women's Sports Act she once trashed.
Trump's nickname is brutal, and that's the point. It sticks because it's built on something real: a candidate who wagered her political future on a position her own state rejects by three-to-one margins, and who is now asking voters to forget what she wrote in her own hand. "I want you to hear me loud and clear" is what you say when the prior message is still ringing in everybody's ears.
And it isn't just Andrews. Kaptur in Ohio. Gendebien in New York. Across the map, Democrats are sprinting toward the exits on an issue they owned just two years ago. When an entire party goes quiet on its own platform right before an election, believe what the silence is telling you.
South Carolina voters don't have to guess where Annie Andrews stands. They have her posts, her ads and her opponent's commercials — three versions of the same candidate. The question is which one shows up in Washington if she wins. Patriots, this is what accountability looks like. If candidates can erase their records with a lab coat and a line reading, what's a campaign promise worth anymore?
