This story originally appeared on Them.
A group of North Carolina drag queens have issued cease-and-desist orders to the funders of a political ad for Republican Jennifer Balkcom after being depicted as deepfaked versions of themselves dancing with Democratic opponent Jamie Ager.
The ad in question, which was approved by Balkcom, features Ager dancing with several drag queens — including Sister Domina Trix, Sister Helen Bedd, and Divine Holeburn — in an event that the ad claims was a real event. Balkcom, currently a member of the North Carolina House of Representatives, and Ager, a first-time political candidate, are currently running against one another in the state’s 11th district for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.
- YouTube www.youtube.com
The ad opens with Jager yelling, “Do you know what we need more of in Washington, D.C.? Barn dances!”
A voiceover then announces that Jager hosted a barn dance featuring drag queens and children. However, according to local NBC and CBS affiliate WYFF, while Agers’ farm did host a dance in 2019 that was advertised as featuring drag queens, the campaign says the queens did not show up.
One queen featured in the ad, Nova, told WYFF that she “never met that man in my life,” and that she had never been to his property or done a performance there.
Divine Holeburn, speaking to WYFF, had a similar story. “I have never met Jamie Ager,” she told WYFF. “I have no affiliation with him at all.” She continued, “I didn't even know he had a barn until this; this barn dance event was not real.”
Divine and Nova, along with other queens deepfaked in the ad, have sent notices of cease and desist to Balkcom’s campaign, as well as the National Republican Congressional Committee, which bankrolled the television spot. The cease and desist gives the campaigns until November 2, the day before the election, to pull the spot or face legal action.
“I felt used,” Divine added to WYFF. “I felt like, what if this person used my image and body to do other things?”
Nova suggested bringing up “new legislation” that can stop AI deepfakes.
Republican candidates in the midterms have used deepfakes several times in the election cycle, especially to link candidates to the LGBTQ+ community. In Texas, Republicans have been working overtime to link rising Democratic nominee James Talarico to the LGBTQ+ community by using AI to render him as a woman and to create a musical ad based on the Sound of Music in which Talarico sings about his “favorite things,” including trans kids.
“We’ve seen ads on TV where there’s editing, getting involved in ways that people might be distorting the truth. But now we have this new tool that we as a society are not trained to recognize,” Phil Yanov, founder of Tech After Five, a networking group for the tech community in South Carolina, told WYFF. “Somebody probably is watching that and thinking, ‘I guess that happened.’”
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Currently, 31 states have some sort of legislation against the use of deepfakes in political ads, per the National Conference of State Legislatures. However, many do not outright ban them, and instead simply require a disclosure to be made that AI was used in creating the ad. North Carolina has no such law requiring disclosure or prohibiting the ads entirely. While there have already been several court cases over the issue, per the NCSS, none have yet made it to the Supreme Court.
The Republican deepfake ad in North Carolina is based on a real Jager campaign spot called “Barn Dance.” Aside from the AI drag queens, the Republican attack ad also features a Progress Pride flag digitally added into the event that is not featured in Jager’s original TV spot.
The attack ad ends by saying that “Ager talks like you and me, but he’s dancing with they/them,” echoing the infamous television spot used by the Trump campaign in the 2024 presidential that said that “Kamala is for they/them.”
The “they/them’ ads ran over 30,000 times in swing states and used anti-trans hysteria to great effect, with one such ad shifting the race 2.7 percentage points in Trump’s favor after people watched them, according to an analysis cited by the New York Times. While trans people have been a wedge issue for the GOP for several election cycles now, some Republican forecasters are saying that the anti-trans messaging is no longer working given the ongoing U.S. affordability crisis.
Earlier this month, former Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan told Texas Monthly that the GOP’s focus on “culture wars” wasn’t resonating with voters.
“We’re just not paying attention to the issues that matter,” he said. “We’re still running transgender ads. It’s just not resonating. $100 million in ads, $125 million in ads, and nothing’s moved the needle here in Texas in a month in the Senate race.”
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