PolitiFact’s Caleb McCullough was at it again with more Senate campaign cherry-picking shenanigans on Friday. This time McCullough focused on Iowa Republican Ashley Hinson’s recent ad that accused Democrat Josh Turek of supporting sex changes for minors. McCullough called it “false,” but his actual article suggested it was not quite that simple.
The controversy arose over an ad that “makes two similar but distinct claims. Its narration says Turek ‘supports kids changing gender without parental consent.’ But the on-screen text says ‘sex changes for kids,’ while video of surgeons in an operating room plays behind an image of Turek. Hinson’s social media post sharing the ad also used the phrase ‘sex changes for kids.’”
If McCullough focused on the narrator, it is likely he would never have written the article because PolitiFact tends not to publish articles about Republicans being true. Instead, McCullough focused on the text:
‘Sex change’ is not a standard medical term. Gender-affirming care can include a range of approaches to support a person's gender identity including, for minors, using a different name or pronouns. According to medical best practices, gender-affirming treatments are available only to adolescents and can include puberty blockers, hormone therapy and in rare cases, surgeries for older teens. Medical intervention for minors requires parental consent.
The ad distorts Turek’s position. The law cited in the ad as evidence does not mention medical interventions or ‘sex changes.’ It has to do with notifying parents when a student expresses a different gender identity at school.
Which is exactly what the narrator said and McCullough even admitted was correct:
The ad cites Iowa's Senate File 496, a 2023 law that regulated school library books with explicit themes and prohibited instruction on gender identity and sexual orientation. Turek voted against the bill. The Republican-led Legislature passed the bill and Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds signed it into law.
The law requires school districts to inform parents if a student requests "an accommodation that is intended to affirm the student's gender identity," including requests that employees "address the student using a name or pronoun" that differs from the school’s records.
McCullough also cited “Hinson campaign spokesperson Addie Lavis” as having “said the ad was not referencing gender-affirming surgeries. In an email to PolitiFact, she said the ad was using gender and sex ‘interchangeably as is the case under Iowa law and nowhere do we mention surgery.’"
In that case, the ad is once again correct. Still, when it came to hormones for minors, McCullough tried to give Turek a pass, “Iowa lawmakers had already prohibited medical gender-affirming procedures for minors in 2023. Turek was not present for the vote on that bill, and the Iowa House Journal shows he was granted a leave of absence that day.”
He then continued, “Citing the American Medical Association — which said in February that gender-affirming surgeries should ‘generally be reserved until adulthood’ — Turek campaign spokesperson Hannah Goss said he does not support gender-affirming surgeries for minors.”
In his summary, McCullough used all that to conclude, “A separate bill the same year banned gender-affirming medical treatments for minors; Turek was absent from the vote. His campaign said he opposes such surgeries for minors.”
Every single Democrat in the Iowa House of Representatives voted against the bill that banned gender-altering hormones for minors. There is no reason to believe that if Turek were present, he would have been the lone Democrat to join with Republicans.
