GOP hard-liners who promised voters they’d use their new majority in Washington to enact anti-trans legislation are increasingly frustrated their leaders don’t seem to share the same commitment.

A record number of bills that would roll back access to health care, sports participation and military service for transgender individuals have been introduced over the last year and a half after Republicans spent tens of millions of dollars campaigning on the issue in 2024.

The party has struggled, however, to get more than a handful to President Donald Trump’s desk, and some Republicans worry the weak showing could deflate red state voters come November as the GOP fights to keep control of Congress.

These members are now looking toward legislative packages — like the annual defense policy bill or party-line budget reconciliation bills — as their last chance to codify restrictions on the trans community this year. But leaders are still not making the issues a priority, they say.

“It just amazes me that they aren’t listening on this issue, I really don’t understand that,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) said in a recent interview.

Hawley has failed to convince leaders to attach a provision in the current immigration enforcement-focused reconciliation bill that would defund Planned Parenthood, which offers gender-affirming care he called “risky” and “dangerous” for children.

While he successfully zeroed out Medicaid funding for the health care provider in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act — one of the few anti-transgender measures Congress has enacted — that provision will expire in July, upping the pressure to get it reauthorized.

“I’ve absolutely been telling [leaders] I want this in the next bill because taxpayer money shouldn’t be funding transgender treatment for minors,” added Hawley, who is now looking ahead to the potential third reconciliation bill the party could advance later this year.

U.S. medical associations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, support gender-affirming care for adolescents.

Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) has introduced a bill that would bar funding from entities that allow individuals to use single-sex restrooms or locker rooms that don’t match their sex assigned at birth. Asked why that measure hasn’t moved through the House, Mace said in an interview, “It’s a great question for the speaker.”

A spokesperson for Speaker Mike Johnson’s office noted that besides last year’s health care funding limitation, measures blocking trans women from joining women’s sports teams at military universities and cutting some diversity, equity and inclusion program initiatives have also successfully been enacted as part of the latest defense authorization bill.

And three GOP bills have passed the House this Congress, including former Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-Ga.) bill to establish criminal penalties for performing or providing gender-affirming care to minors.

A person familiar with Senate Majority Leader John Thune’s thinking, granted anonymity to speak candidly, disputed the claim that he doesn’t share the same urgency for anti-trans action as ultraconservatives, pointing to the South Dakota Republican’s moves to bring related GOP measures to the floor and attributing their failure to a lack of bipartisan support necessary to clear 60-vote procedural hurdles.

That roadblock has been the source of growing calls from frustrated conservatives for Thune to push through a Senate rules change to allow more bills to pass by a simple majority — a drastic action he opposes and says he lacks the votes to achieve.

“I’ve called on Thune to nuke the filibuster. It has to be done,” said Rep. Greg Steube (R-Fla.). “There’s no other way conservative legislation like this passes.”

Steube introduced a bill, which passed the House last January, that would prohibit schools receiving federal funding from allowing trans girls to play on female sports teams. Senate Democrats have four times defeated a similar measure introduced by Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), most recently as an amendment to a stalled partisan elections bill known as the SAVE America Act.

“At some point it does get frustrating that we’re not doing every single thing we can get done,” Rep. Burgess Owens (R-Utah) recently complained. “And until somebody picks this up and says ‘I am going to be a true advocate,’ then we have no way of pushing it any further.”

Owens co-sponsored a measure that passed the House before the recent weeklong recess that would strip federal funds from public schools that alter a student’s name or pronouns in their records without parental permission.

Conservative Republicans started 2025 eager to capitalize on an issue that, in the lead-up to the 2024 election, appeared to galvanize voters. House and Senate Republicans and their affiliated campaign arms unleashed over $110 million in ads on issues such as rejecting gender-affirming care for minors and banning transgender women from participating in women’s and girls’ sports, according to AdImpact data.

Trump, in the closing days of his presidential campaign, spent more on ads criticizing Vice President Kamala Harris for supporting rights for transgender people than on any other subject.

House and Senate Republicans sought to ride the perceived wave of public opinion by introducing record levels of legislation they say are designed to protect the rights of women and girls and shield taxpayers from paying for gender-affirming care they call harmful and exploitative of minors.

Gallup polling before and after the election found that 69 percent of U.S. adults believe that transgender athletes should only be allowed to play on sports teams that match their birth sex. Still, advocates counter that 85 percent of Americans surveyed believe transgender people should have the same rights as everyone else, according to the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBTQ+ rights group.

More than 125 anti-transgender measures were introduced in 2026 alone — up from 109 in 2025 and 88 in 2024, according to counts from Trans Legislation Tracker, a research organization monitoring state and national bills that impact trans and gender-diverse people across the country.

But few of Congress’ legislative efforts have crossed the finish line.

Republicans have been foiled by mobilization from Democrats, who largely argue such restrictions amount to gender discrimination that contributes to serious considerations of suicide among two thirds of transgender youth. Democrats were also able to strip more than 40 “anti-LBGTQ+ riders” from annual government funding bills for the current fiscal year, according to the nearly-200 member Congressional Equality Caucus.

“Every time an anti-LGBTQI+ bill or amendment comes to the floor, members of the Congressional Equality Caucus organize a response and whip as hard as we can against them,” Caucus Chair Mark Takano (D-Calif.) said in a statement.

Meanwhile, despite the GOP’s lack of progress in Congress, White House executive actions and GOP-controlled legislatures have enacted a soaring number of anti-trans policies.

Trump, within the first days of his second administration, signed executive orders to: declare the government would only recognize two sexes, male and female; withhold federal funding for institutions that deliver gender-affirming care to minors; and ban transgender people from the military, among other efforts.

Before Trump started his second term, transgender women had been allowed to compete in women’s categories in the Olympics since 2003 and the NCAA since 2010.

At least 50 anti-trans bills have passed this year alone in red states like Florida, Tennessee, Utah, Kansas and Idaho. And states overall have passed more than 350 anti-trans bills since 2021.

The real-world impact of these efforts has jeopardized the mental and physical wellbeing of transgender individuals, many of whom have also faced violent threats as the issue becomes more deeply politicized, advocates say.

And since most major U.S. medical organizations say gender-affirming care is well-tested, safe and can be medically necessary, many parents of transgender minors have been forced to make a difficult choice: watch their child grapple with what can be extreme distress or move their families to less restrictive states or outside of the U.S to continue care that has been blocked or restricted.

“It would be a mistake to measure the threat to transgender Americans solely by what has or hasn’t passed Congress,” said David Stacy, vice president of government affairs at the Human Rights Campaign.

“The Trump administration has used executive overreach to dismantle hard-won protections, and state legislatures across the country are moving in lockstep.”

Back on Capitol Hill, Republicans insist that codifying some of these policies nationwide is important, while conceding the reality of doing so before November is unlikely.

“Look, it’s absurd that we allow men in women’s sports in our society when I think the vast majority of Americans don’t support it either,” said Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis). “But are we going to get something done this legislative session? Time’s running out, to be honest.”

House Republicans have already packed at least 18 anti-LGBTQ+ policy riders in partisan versions of fiscal 2027 appropriations bills that Democrats are eyeing for removal, according to the Congressional Equality Caucus, and some GOP lawmakers aren’t interested in the risks involved in fighting for the survival of these partisan provisions.

“You could just run out of runway,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said in an interview. “And we’ve got to prioritize. If I’ve got a choice between some of those [trans] issues and getting the NDAA and farm bill out, then I’ve got to favor NDAA and farm bill.”

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