Punchbowl News founder Jake Sherman shared a photograph Wednesday of a large print-out displayed by House Republican leadership during a press conference, the content of which elicited a collective sigh from onlookers.
The photograph depicts a large sign split vertically, with the left side championing “common sense” Republicans for “cutting your taxes,” and the right side mocking “crazy” Democrats for “trans-ing the mice,” a reference to the past misleading claim made by President Donald Trump that taxpayers funded medical research to make “mice transgender.”
“They have no new ideas,” wrote political strategist Mike Nellis in a social media post on X to his more than 130,000 followers.
“This will surely turn things around for them,” sarcastically quipped Max Steele, the communications director for the anti-gun violence advocacy organization Everytown.
The false claim that mice were being made “transgender” using taxpayer dollars, as described by the progressive media organization MeidasTouch, was a misreading of medical research studies using “transgenic mice,” mice whose DNA has been altered, often for disease research purposes.
“Republicans are standing next to signs saying Democrats were ‘trans-ing the mice’ because they don’t want people to realize they’re talking about transgenic mice – genetically modified mice used in lifesaving medical research on cancer, Alzheimer’s, diabetes, and neurological disorders,” reads a statement from MeidasTouch.
“People could die because Republicans saw that important medical research has the word ‘trans’ in it."
Republicans are standing next to signs saying Democrats were “trans-ing the mice” because they don’t want people to realize they’re talking about transgenic mice—genetically modified mice used in lifesaving medical research on cancer, Alzheimer’s, diabetes, and neurological… https://t.co/gNdd8YyNd5
— MeidasTouch (@MeidasTouch) June 3, 2026