The Communists Created Trans Attack on the American Family will be ENDED by Donald Trump's Administration
READ: Two of the Biggest Funders of the Radical Transgender Movement in the U.S. Are China-Linked Billionaires
by Gabrielle M. Etzel, Washington Examiner, December 29, 2024
President-elect Donald Trump will likely hit the ground running in his second term in office on transgender matters, particularly by restricting federal funding for medical transition procedures for minors.
Transgender medical procedures for minors, sometimes referred to as gender-affirming care, have gripped the public discourse for several years, becoming a salient matter in the 2024 presidential election.
“My sense is that President Trump is very likely to do something on so-called gender-affirming care for minors in the very beginning of his presidency,” Jay Richards, a researcher at the Heritage Foundation specializing in cultural matters, told the Washington Examiner.
Richards said he thinks this will likely take the form of blocking federal funding for youth transgender medicine and may also include an official definition of sex and gender as solely male and female.
“So much of the battle legally and administratively in the last few years has been the result of us not actually having a federal definition of sex and of male and female,” said Richards.
Trump promised in August that he would sign an executive order on the first day of his presidency “instructing every federal agency to cease the promotion of sex or gender transition at any age.”
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Jon Schweppe, policy director for the conservative American Principles Project, told the Washington Examiner that the president-elect has also discussed altering federal safety standards for hospitals and healthcare providers to receive Medicare and Medicaid funds as a tactic to effectively prohibit conducting transgender medicine on minors.
“I think you’re going to see kind of a cacophony of various policies kind of building up to what the policy of this administration and of the Republican Party will end up being,” said Schweppe.
Transgender ad central to Trump victory
Schweppe said the transgender matter became a central message at the closing of the Trump campaign, making it a critical tool in swaying voters before Election Day.
“I think ultimately, as the reviews of this race are being written, it seems like everyone pretty much agrees that the transgender issue played an enormous role in defeating Kamala, including the Democrats,” said Schweppe.
Trump’s largest ad campaign, to the tune of $11 million, targeted Vice President Kamala Harris’s support for taxpayer-funded cross-sex surgical procedures for trans-identified inmates in prison. The ad, with the tagline “Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you,” aired over 30,000 times in swing states.
The ad used a clip from a 2019 interview between Harris and transgender rights activist Mara Keisling, in which the then-Democratic presidential candidate referenced her time as district attorney of San Francisco when she started an assistance program for trans-identified inmates.
In line with the theme of the ad, Richards hopes that Trump will also take action to prevent trans-identified biological males from being placed in female prisons. There have been several prominent cases of biological males in female prisons sexually assaulting female inmates since 2020.
“The idea that a male should be able to be housed with female prisoners simply because he identifies as female is an outrage against justice,” said Richards, noting that the prison matter gets much less attention than the female sport or bathroom matters or transgender procedures for minors.
Department picks and the transgender agenda
Republicans are also optimistic that Trump’s Cabinet picks and other agency leadership nominees will play a positive role in rolling back the pro-transgender policies of the Biden administration.
Schweppe said Republicans are encouraged by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s nominee for health and human services secretary, and his skepticism of the pharmaceutical industry although the transgender medicine fight has not been a large part of his “Make America Healthy Again” campaign.
“I think once he starts doing the leg work of looking at how pharma was involved here, and what their incentives are, and how they potentially marketed hormones and puberty blockers for use they’re not supposed to be used for, I think he’s going to be very interested,” said Schweppe.
Transgender legislation in Congress
Two bills have been introduced in the House and Senate, respectively, that Richards thinks could have enough support next year to pass.
The Defining Male and Female Act, introduced in July by Rep. Mary Miller (R-IL), stipulates that sex is an observable, binary characteristic and not “determined by stipulation or self-identification.”
Sen. Roger Marshall’s (R-KS) bill, introduced in December, would prohibit gender transition procedures for minors and would authorize the HHS secretary “to impose civil penalties on persons who perform gender transition procedures on minors.”
Schweppe also hopes that the power of the purse will be used to prohibit federal funding not only for transgender medical procedures but also for funding to gender clinics, including Planned Parenthood.
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“I think it’s very possible that you could have some Republicans that could go one way or the other,” said Richards. “They’re going to need to feel the heat of the Republican base, I think, to do the right thing.”
According to Associated Press exit polling from the November election, a majority of all voters, 55%, reported feeling that support for the transgender movement writ large has “gone too far.” That includes 85% of Trump voters and 24% of Harris supporters.
Nearly half, 47%, of all voters reported supporting laws that ban transgender medical treatment for minors, including 55% of parents of children under the age of 18.
The future of transgender medicine for minors
Richards said he thinks cross-sex hormone therapies, puberty blockers, and surgeries for minors are “not long for this Earth.”
In mid-December, the United Kingdom put an indefinite ban on puberty blockers for minors, warning that the medications pose an “unacceptable safety risk” to children. The National Health Service in March announced a plan to ban puberty blockers outside of use in clinical trials with the intention of improving research into the safety and efficacy of the drug for treating severe gender dysphoria.
The change was sparked as a result of the independent review of evidence for puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones commissioned by the NHS and conducted by renowned British pediatrician Hilary Cass, which found insufficient support for their continued use.
Five other European countries, including Norway, Sweden, Denmark, France, and Finland, have also, in recent years, significantly curtailed access to puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, only prescribing them if the patient meets strict eligibility requirements.
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Richards predicted that the practice would be finished in the United States within the next three to five years, either because of legislative interventions or because of medical malpractice lawsuits from detransitioners — people who underwent medical transition as minors and grew to regret their treatment as adults.
“A court awards a detransitioner a settlement in one of the many lawsuits out there, then the price for malpractice insurance for these procedures will go up, and doctors will have to stop doing it,” said Richards. “Realistically, I think it’s probably going to come to an end as a combination of both legislative action at the state and federal level and civil court action.”
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