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Three weeks later, the second Trump administration is already flooding with absolutely overwhelming amounts of executive orders, tariff threats and what Elon Musk is doing. So this week I will focus on two behaviors that target children. Trans children in particular have been at the heart of the culture war that has been waged by adults for several years.
First, Donald Trump last week signed an executive order seeking to withdraw federal funds for gender-affirming care for people under the age of 19.
The order not only attempts to ban federal insurance programs like Medicaid from covering such care, but also threatens to strip the federal government funds from hospitals that provide it. The executive order is not a law, and supporters say Trump's orders do not legally require immediate action by providers. However, this move has already had a calm effect. Hospitals across the country have stopped treating trans children, with some families not sure where treatments can be directed to reduce gender discomfort and allow young people to live according to their identity.
For many, those treatments are urgent. Gender-affirming care has been shown to reduce the risk of suicide, and advocates are worried about what will happen if children across the country lose access to the care they need. “My fear is that many trans young people will make a hurry to decide to take their lives,” Jay Douglas, a 21-year-old activist who works with nonprofit capitalists and defends youth, told me. Ta.
Meanwhile, the second executive order signed last week appears to threaten federal funding for schools that allow trans students to use bathrooms that match their gender identity, saying, “The Society of Minor Students It even suggests that teachers will be prosecuted to “unlawfully promote a transition” or “practice illegally.” Medicine by providing diagnosis and treatment without the necessary license. “The order is broadly vague and the way (or even if) it actually takes place in schools is unknown, but “it is intended to give permission to those who want to discriminate against trans students.” said Elizabeth Gill, senior adviser. ACLU's LGBTQ and HIV projects.
Lambda Legal, the ACLU and other advocacy groups have already filed lawsuits challenging gender-affirming care orders. “The president's order to refuse care is morally condemned and patently illegal,” Omar Gonzalez Pagan, senior adviser and health care strategist at Lambda Legal, said in a statement. “The federal government, particularly this administration, has no right to insert it into conversations and decisions that belong only to patients, their families, and healthcare providers.”
The order that affects trans kids in schools can also face legal challenges. But for now, the administration's actions have sparked fear and concern among families and trans young people. They have never asked to politicize healthcare and education. “They're in the spotlight,” Douglas said. “It's inhumane.”
Trump's executive order on gender maintenance care explained
Trump's first executive order on trans kids, signed last Tuesday, said it was “to ensure that agencies receiving federal research or education grants end their children's chemical and surgical amputations. , and instructs them to take appropriate measures immediately.” In fact, the goal is to ban hospitals, medical schools, and other institutions that earn federal funding from providing gender-affirming care.
Federal funding from research grants and insurance programs such as Medicare and Medicaid is extremely important for many hospitals. For example, NYU Langone Health in New York City has received $4.4 billion from the federal insurance program in the last year, according to the New York Times, which is almost half of the total funds the hospital system has made in patient care.
The executive order also could threaten doctors and other staff by filing a lawsuit, and asks the Department of Justice whether gender-affirming surgery is considered illegal under federal law prohibiting genital mutilation in women. I will instruct you to investigate.
For now, at least, some hospitals are already responding by halting gender-maintaining care. The Children's National Hospital in Washington, DC, said in a statement last week that it “suspended prescriptions of adolescent blockers and hormone therapy to comply with the directive, while further assessing the situation.” Nyu Langone Health has not issued an official statement but has cancelled the appointment of two 12-year-olds who are scheduled to take adolescent blockers, the Times reports.
The child's mother told the Times that her family has called other hospitals for treatment, “I don't think we have many options.”
Access to adolescent blockers is time sensitive, says trans people and advocates. Because if they do not match a person's gender identity, the effects of adolescents on the body can be irreversible and extremely painful. Drugs are routinely prescribed to Cisgender people due to conditions like precocious adolescents.
Trans youth in many Republican-controlled states have struggled for years to get care, with 26 states that have enacted gender-affirming treatment restrictions for minors already in the midst of their own (although (Many of these restrictions have been challenged in court). Some families travel across state lines to get the medicine their children rely on. The new executive order could make it even more difficult by pushing hospitals to drop gender-affirming care, even in blue states.
Douglas, who lives in Florida, a state with a hostile environment for gender-affirming care, has not had access to estrogen therapy for a while. As a result, they told me, “The older I get, the more my body changes and I have less control than my future.” “Everyone controls their lives, their destiny, and [their] The power slips out of their hands and is taken by someone else. I feel deprived of autonomy and choice. ”
How Trump's Order in Schools Impact Trans Children
Adding to the horror among trans children and families is an executive order targeting the experiences of trans children in schools, which states that “federal funds to support or support or grant directly or indirectly.” Instructs the institution to plan to block the use of “Middle Students.” ”
According to the order, actions that support a student's social transition include changing the “person's name (“James”” or pronoun (e.g. “he” to “she”). is called “non-binary.” The use of intimate facilities and accommodations such as bathrooms and locker rooms specially designated for people of the opposite sex. Specially designated for school athletics and for people of the opposite sex. I'm participating in other extracurricular activities.”
It is not entirely clear what the order means by using federal funds to “grant” the transition, and the legal authority the president will direct how these funds will be distributed to schools. It's not clear that they have it. “Congress will pass funding measures,” said Gil, an ACLU advisor (although Republicans in Congress are happy to abandon their powers to the Trump administration and Musk, at least for now. It seems there is).
However, the order, which also includes provisions regarding “promoting patriotic education” and “indoctrination of the end” regarding race and racism, is to say that people can “have their own hands, depending on the range of language and the range of language.” They are trying to take measurements to their hands by their limbs. They are not, by suggesting that the teacher is somehow engaged in medical practice.” Gil said.
Retracting school support can be devastating for many trans children, supporters say. “I was socially trans kid in high school,” Douglas said. “No one in the house knew, but I was very open to school.”
“Having people called me them and them and being supported in school made me feel like I was looking at me in a way I never felt,” they said. “Unsupported trans kids are aggressively ghaslits that they are just evil and that they are something abominable, as if it's not true.”
How schools, hospitals and supporters are fighting back
The executive order has caused fear and anxiety among trans children and their families, but some institutions and ordinary people have already retreated. San Francisco school district. St. Paul, Minnesota; Harrisonburg, Virginia, has issued a statement pledged to continue to support all students. Julie Yang, president of Maryland's Montgomery County Board of Education, wrote in a letter to her family last week. “We intend to use all the legal measures necessary to support them.”
Despite the well-known suspension, many hospitals and healthcare providers continue to provide gender-affirming care to younger patients. Meanwhile, New York Attorney General Leticia James warned hospitals that denying care for children based on gender identity violates the state's anti-discrimination laws.
Meanwhile, protesters, including parents and children, gathered outside Nyu Langone on Monday after news of the cancelled appointment broke. “This is the last thing we need to worry about,” one parent told The Times “a political system that attacks our families.”
Amidst the chaos, trans kids should know that people across the country are fighting for them, Douglas said.
“I'm sorry you're the point of political talk,” they said. “You should be allowed to enjoy your childhood.”
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The rise of wife content during the Trump era makes me wonder what it would be like to be a child of a family that was traded. TradWife's ideology is clearly complicated (and perhaps the biggest traditional influencers have a life that doesn't seem to be the kind of thing that most people do). But I would love to hear from readers who are homeschooled or otherwise feel that their upbringing has something in common with today's trade spirit. You can contact [email protected].
