Fulfilling yet another 2024 campaign promise, President Donald Trump has succeeded in shutting down dozens of so-called “gender clinics” nationwide, protecting children from dangerous, life-altering surgeries amid his administration’s broader crackdown on gender ideology.
On January 28, Trump signed an executive order on “Protecting Children From Chemical and Surgical Mutilation,” which mandated a whole-of-government response to “the radical and false claim that adults can change a child’s sex through a series of irreversible medical interventions.”
“This dangerous trend will be a stain on our Nation’s history, and it must end,” Trump declared. The executive order required all agencies that provide federal funding to hospitals and medical schools to ensure they “end the chemical and surgical mutilation of children” or lose their taxpayer support. This included lucrative Medicaid funding that many hospitals receive.
What gender ideology proponents euphemistically refer to as “gender-affirming” surgeries include elective operations to remove healthy breasts from girls and to reconfigure healthy male genitalia on boys into a grotesque approximation of female genitalia. Double mastectomies have been performed on hundreds of girls as young as 12 since 2017 alone.
Trump’s order targeting this practice has been a smashing success so far, with at least 20 facilities that provide so-called “gender-affirming care” to minors announcing they will stop operations, according to the Epoch Times. The New York Times, meanwhile, reported in July that “Hospitals are limiting gender treatment for trans minors, even in blue states.”
Within just two days of Trump signing the order, Denver Health announced it would halt “gender-affirming surgeries” for people under 19, according to Colorado Public Radio. VCU Medical Center in Virginia and Children’s National Hospital in Washington, D.C. also announced on January 30 they would be halting their transgender procedures for minors. Connecticut Children’s Hospital, one of the largest providers of transgender surgeries for minors in the country, began “winding down” its youth gender program last month.
Other prominent hospitals also announced they would stop providing transgender drugs and surgeries to kids, including Lurie Children’s Hospital in Chicago, Northwestern Memorial Hospital, and Stanford Medicine, according to a list compiled by the White House.
Another major victory came last month when Children’s Hospital Los Angeles announced it would be closing its “Transyouth Health and Development and Gender-Affirming Care” program.
The hospital, reportedly “one of the country’s oldest and largest public providers of gender-affirming care,” according to NPR, blamed the Trump administration for the decision. Specifically, the hospital said it would be forced to close entirely within two months if it was cut off from Medicaid funds. The hospital “says it relies on federal funding more than any other pediatric hospital in the state, and losing access to funds would impact the ability to provide essential care to low-income children and teenagers,” according to ABC 7.
While these clinic closures are a resounding success, a future Democrat president could reverse Trump’s decision and allow Medicaid to begin funding gender surgeries again. But Trump appears to have shifted all the cultural momentum away from the gender ideology movement in a way that the left cannot easily reverse. 60 percent of Americans now say it’s impossible to change a person’s gender, up from 56 percent in 2021 and 54 percent in 2017.
Moreover, legal victories Trump laid the groundwork for during his first term have paved the way for conservatives to protect kids from transgender ideology at the state level. In June, the Supreme Court upheld a Tennessee prohibition on surgeries for minors in U.S. v. Skrmetti, clearing the way for similar prohibitions in at least 27 other states to take effect.
The 6-3 majority included all three of Trump’s Supreme Court nominees during his first term. If Hillary Clinton won in 2016, it is a virtual certainty that this case would have gone the other way.
The Trump administration is also turning the tables on the gender ideology narrative through robust study and data collection. For years, supporters of “gender-affirming care” argued they were backed by science and the “experts.” But a 400-page comprehensive report released in May from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) confirmed that the evidence supporting transgender interventions is “very low” and “very uncertain” – adding to similar findings like the Cass Review out of Britain.
The Federal Trade Commission under Trump is also exposing the “dangers of gender-affirming care” and seeking to expose “deceptive trade practices” from unscrupulous medical practitioners. Whistleblowers have alleged that medical professionals at children’s transgender clinics often use emotional manipulation to convince parents and kids to sign off on the procedures.
Taken together, all of these actions send a clear message from the Trump administration: gender-confused kids should not be subjected to permanent, painful, untested, and potentially life-threatening medical practices that leave them physically and emotionally scarred. Instead, gender-confused kids should be given the support and encouragement they need to embrace who they are and be allowed to grow up without being put under the knife.
Matt Lamb is a contributor for AMAC Newsline and an associate editor for The College Fix. He previously worked for Students for Life of America, Students for Life Action, and Turning Point USA. He previously interned for Open the Books. His writing has also appeared in the Washington Examiner, The Federalist, LifeSiteNews, Human Life Review, Headline USA, and other outlets. The opinions expressed are his own. Follow him @mattlamb22 on X.
Every time I hear the left say that the President (and they never call him the President, it’s always just Trump) is acting like a dictator, turning the USA into his personal kingdom, etc, I try to point out to them that this is leadership. He is a leader who is accomplishing what he promised. The left does not recognize or understand what leadership looks like because they have no leaders.
It is bad enough with the abortion of many babies (65+ million so far and continuing in the USA) along with the elimination of 1/3 of the Gen Z population at this time, the Demos have brainwashed many children about their gender, and many parents and teachers have allowed this situation to happen. Remember that the One World Order wants population control so they will be able to control the populace when their time comes.
The shooting yesterday is another sign of the dangers of TRANS ideology. IDK how far along this guy was, but obviously he had MENTAL problems BEFORE he started “transitioning.” Instead of getting him REAL help, his parents/teachers/friends decided to go with PHONY “affirming care.” How did that work out? NOBODY should be advised to go “trans;” they should get REAL help!
Doctors are not God, God is the only one that can decide a person’s gender, all a doctor can do is make a bonified Queer.
The news media needs to stop giving the Queer Notoriety!
The Democrats need to look at their own policies, they caused this mass shooting!
The left leaning morons kill people, and they go after the 2nd Amendment, take guns from people who commit no crimes!
I always said it should be illegal to do any kind of gender changing surgery on anyone under the age of 21. If you wanted a boy and got a girl, go adopt a boy. Too many liberal laws today.
Democrats continually amaze me! On one hand they say a young child is intelligent enough to know what sex they want to be and to be surgically mutilated. On the other hand if a young adult commits a crime they say well you can’t punish him because his brain isn’t totally developed till he’s 25. Which one is it? And when will the Democrats actually come out and take a stance on crime? The ought to at least take the mask off and say they support it. Everything they do says they support it. I wouldn’t surprise me cuz they’re so involved in committing crime. Mortgage fraud is not a crime if Lisa Cook commits him only if we do the peons
The radical liberals are not going to change any of their policies, that is clear. They are doubling down on them even as President Trump is doing a great job of cleaning up their messes. The whole LGBTQ+ push onto our kids is disgusting. The transgender thing is one of the worst. Taking children who are mentally confused about new sexual feelings and instead of trying to help them by sending them to a psychologist or psychiatrist, the teachers are deciding in their classroom without even contacting parent that surgery or drugs is the answer! It is outrageous. It would be interesting to know how many American kids have been physically and mentally damaged by these radical nonsensical plots. And how many people in general who have been killed or physically damaged by the total of their policies on illegal immigrants???
Who would have thought back in the 50s and 60s that we would ever see this kind of craziness going on in the USA, trying to make boys into girls and girls into boys.
A reminder again: “Nouns have gender, people have sex.” Can we quit talking nonsense, please. Either you believe in science or you don’t. A medical organization should trust to science, not to some other weird belief structure. Th medical community should know that it is not possible yet to change a human’s chromosomes from xx to xy and vice versa. All this surgery is merely cosmetic and the people doing this crap have more in common with Mengele and Ishi than Schweitzer, Lister and Pasteur
What horrifying things have been going on in this country. For years children have been mutilated at a time when hormones are starting to confuse them. A child of 12 doesn’t know what this kind of surgery entails. Parents don’t know sometimes what schools have been telling these kids. These clinics are becoming rich and we the taxpayers via Medicaid are paying for it. How many children have been mutilated unnecessary and will become confused and suicidal adults? Instead of giving them counseling they just mutilated them and create a bigger problem. Like the hospital in LA said without trans surgery they could not stay in business. Sounds like Nazi tactics to me. Are the teachers being reimbursed for every student they could provide to the hospital? It has created a group of confused adults that don’t see a way out and become mass murderers. The latest shooting in Minneapolis proves that. We have done away with mental health care and made freaks out of these kids. Like opioids made drug addicts out of people. Which started in the health industry and is now a disaster of mega proportions. Can we ban the trans surgery and trans drug treatments for good? President Trump has made a start but the evil on the left will not give in easily. Like abortions years ago back room surgeries and gender affirming drugs will go on for awhile. Until the communists are back in power. We will have to get another Roe v Wade ruling like with abortion. Gender affirming care is a form of genocide.
Left has always try to push their Woke policies and this one! Especially. the child doesn’t know what is going on!
A shame on parenting, that our Federal Government, namely this very observant President, needs to step in and put a stop to this criminality. And also a shame that one of our political parties is a threat to our vulnerable children.
Could this be a communist plot to destroy our upcoming generation? Any politician who supports this horrible procedure should automatically be denied the right to run for office.
Any medical personnel who engages in this should be jailed, or have the same thing done to him/her, IMO
I have a grand daughter who began transitioning hormones in high school, because she thought she wanted to be a man, and the school encouraged her. She even changed her name to one that sounds more masculine and asked to be referred to as he, or him. One day she met a man who thought she was a trans man, and they fell in love and married; both wore tuxes. She stopped transitioning when she miscarried their first baby. Now they have two lovely children, one girl and one boy. She has not returned to transitioning because she has decided that she likes being a woman and Mom.
How many kids who go in for transitioning will deeply regret such an extreme permanent transition as surgery would give them. I truly pray that President Trump is successful in protecting those who, like my granddaughter, are being encouraged to transition before they are old enough to know who they really are. God bless his efforts in this matter.
Destroying the unborn and sexually mutilating the young is part of the Left’s plan to eliminate the Nuclear Family and make all citizens subservient to the Leftist State. The Left is totally evil, un-American and dedicated to destroying our Constitutional Republic. REAL American’s must resist it at every turn or kiss their Freedoms goodbye.
Great news!! Thank you President Trump!!
TG Surgery costs 50-75K per & then added fees
Underwriten since Avg Voter CANT afford
We’re really talking about how to protect kids from loony leftist parents. Anyone who would sign off on this being inflicted on a kid is a rudderless piece of flotsam swirling around the drain. But they imagine theyre sailing under their own power.
no taxpayer funds of any kind should be used for this surgery!
Democrats are obsessed with children’s sexuality, but that was I am sure not the topic of their agenda at the time of campaigning, none of them is doing what is their job , but are ready to attack everyone who opposes their perverse ideas, time for the voter to act. Place for a child predator is prison.
This a great victory to be celebrated! But, tragic that it was ever a battle to be fought. Parents have lost sight of their role of helping their children over the bumps and confusing places in life as they grow. Kids were never meant to lead the way. Scripture is under utilized! There is great wisdom and the highest quality counsel in it’s pages! One of the names of the Messiah is, Wonderful Counselor! He is just a prayer away!
These children are brainwashed with the “Woke Culture”.! We need to get rid of all of this woke madness!
I don’t know how a surgeon could go in there and mutilate a child, do they not have a conscience? Or are they just in it for the money?
This is so sad. What these children need is intense psychological care, not surgery. And with therapists that are not wanting to just agree with the children!
Even the Minneapolis killer expressed his remorse for becoming trans. HHS should establish a Hotline for the victims of this Frankenstein Surgery and provide free legal help in suing the monstrous perpetrators.
I don’t get how Dr Mengele revisited ever got back in as healthcare. But I guess anything goes with these people.
We thought that Frankstein was fictional. Now we see these fiends playing God and creating distortions and destroying them for the rest of their lives. God decided to ordain the sex of every child, and that is immutable. These fiends are serving their god, the god of this world, Satan.
But what is he doing to PROTECT MINORS FROM PREDATORS? Answer: Nothing, except let Tom Artiom Alexandrovich flee back to his home country and Ghislaine Maxwell get better prison accommodations.