President-Elect Donald Trump has announced a plan that went viral over the weekend to ban transgender-related treatments for kids.
He also wants to denounce male participation in female sports and pull federal funding and support from transgender treatments for all ages.
“On Day 1, I will revoke Joe Biden’s cruel policies on so-called gender-affirming care,” said Trump in a video now widely circulated on X, formerly Twitter.
Trump then listed a multi-step plan involving issuing executive orders, working with Congress and sending strong warnings to hospitals and school districts that rely on federal funding.
Both a supporter of the plan and a detractor of it say Trump is likely to succeed.
The Detractor
“A number of these policy actions can be achieved with Executive Orders,” wrote Dr. Tara McKay, Director at the Vanderbilt LGBTQ+ Policy Lab, in a Monday email to Cowboy State Daily.
Executive orders don’t have to go through the legislative process to become active.
For example, Trump said he’s going to direct his Department of Education to warn teachers and school district staffers against telling children they were born in the wrong body. Teachers may be in violation of civil rights standards if they do so, Trump added.
McKay, who disagrees with the policy, said it will only embolden red states to enact more laws along the same vein.
“A main challenge that conservative controlled legislatures faced in achieving their anti-trans policy agenda was the friction they encountered at the federal level with the Biden administration,” wrote McKay. “That guardrail is gone now.”
McKay said she does not “love” the transgender movement’s chances in courts either.
A potential landmark case, U.S. v. Skrmetti, is now being reviewed by the U.S. Supreme Court. The argument there is whether Tennessee and other states violated a constitutional right by outlawing transgender treatments for kids, including surgeries, puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones.
While a transgender child initially brought that lawsuit against Tennessee, the child has had the backing of Biden’s administration during the Supreme Court fight. Several people arguing on the child’s side of the issue have claimed that a parent should have a parental right to provide his or her child with transgender-related treatments. Those voices have cited Americans’ constitutional right to the care, custody and control of their children.
McKay said states have already laid some groundwork for Trump’s plan.
“Many of the policy actions that Trump is espousing in this video at the federal level have already been tests and realized in states like Tennessee – gender affirming care bans for minors, closure of pediatric gender clinics, criminal liability for physicians, witch hunt investigations of providers,” wrote McKay.
The Supporter
Darin Smith, a Cheyenne attorney and state senator-elect in the Wyoming Legislature, was thrilled with Trump’s plan Monday. He said he believes the plan should be in place within the next couple years.
The legislative components will take longer than the executive order measures, he said.
For example, Trump is calling upon the upcoming Republican-controlled Congress to ban “mutilation” of children via transgender treatments in all 50 states.
He’s also asking for a law giving “victims” of those treatments a lawsuit mechanism to sue doctors who altered their bodies when they were kids.
And Smith said this issue played a role in the most recent general election, which nationally was a blowout victory for Republicans.
“The majority of Americans, regardless of their political affiliation, are against the neutering of children — the castration of children,” said Smith.
Twenty-six states have passed bans or restrictions on transgender treatments for kids, though courts have blocked those bans in two states, the Human Rights Campaign reports.
Smith said he hopes a national ban “has some teeth in it,” as some of the states’ laws are on the softer side.
He theorized that even more centrist Republicans in Congress will feel the need to vote for the ban after the most recent election so they don’t lose their next election challenges.
“The pendulum is swinging back,” he said. “Most parents realize this has gone too far, and that’s one of the reasons Trump won in every single swing state.”
Smith said Trump shouldn’t have major issues with his executive order changes. For example, for Trump to cut military funding of soldiers’ transgender treatments “would be his prerogative.”
Challenges will come, but Smith said he believes the U.S. Supreme Court is unlikely to humor those arguing that the federal government should pay for transgender treatments, or similar arguments.
“There are going to be plenty of obstacles,” said Smith. “The left never sleeps. They’re going to fight tooth and nail; they’re going to work to bring these Marxist policies back in.
“But the cost of freedom has always been eternal vigilance.”
Specifically …
Trump listed his plan in rapid sequence in the video, along with the rebuke, “Can you believe this (is happening)?”
He said he will:
• Sign an executive order telling every federal agency to cease programs that promote the concept of sex and gender transition at any age.
• Ask Congress to permanently block federal taxpayer dollars to be used on sex transitions.
• Ask Congress to pass a law prohibiting “child sexual mutilation” in all 50 states.
• Declare any hospital or health care provider that gives chemicals or surgeries to kids for sex changes will no longer meet Medicaid and Medicare safety standards and will be purged from the program.
• Support the creation of a private right of action for people to sue doctors who gave them sex changes as kids.
• Have the Department of Justice investigate “big pharma and the big hospital networks” to “determine whether they have horrifically covered up long-term side effects of sex transitions in order to get rich at the expense of vulnerable patients.”
• Investigate whether “big pharma” or others have marketed hormones or puberty blockers, “which are in no way licensed or approved for this use.”
• Have his Department of Education tell school districts that if staffers suggest a child may be trapped in the wrong body they’ll face severe consequences, up to the elimination of federal funding.
• Promote positive education about the nuclear family and celebrating rather than erasing “the things that make men and women different and unique.”
• Ask Congress to pass a bill saying the only genders the federal government recognizes are male and female.
• Clarify that Title IX prohibits men from participating in women’s sports.
• Will protect parents from “being forced to allow their minor child to assume a gender identity which is new” without their consent.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
