Donald Trump signed an executive order restricting people under the age of 19 from accessing medical treatments or procedures intended to help them undergo a gender transition.
The order, issued on January 28 and titled “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation,” prohibits federal funds from being used to cover the cost of such treatments for minors.
The order also directs federal agencies to ensure that medical schools and hospitals receiving any research or education grants are not conducting research on — or providing minors with access to — gender-affirming treatments.
The order directs all federal agencies to rescind guidance from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), a nonprofit association that has adopted guidelines for how and when gender-affirming treatments are to be administered to transitioning individuals.
Critics of WPATH have claimed that the organization’s more recent guidelines were based on a political or ideological stance rather than on science.
Trump’s order asserts that “impressionable children” are being lied to and pushed to pursue transition-related treatments that will lead to sterilization and “lifelong medical complications.” It also claims that a large number of minors who do seek out gender-affirming treatments will eventually come to regret their decision to transition.
The order requires TRICARE (the Department of Defense’s insurance plan), Medicaid, and federal employee health insurance plans to refuse to cover the costs of gender-affirming treatments prescribed to minors.
It directs the Department of Justice to “prioritize investigations” of medical providers who “may be misleading the public about long-term side effects of chemical and surgical mutilation.”
Twenty-six states have passed laws restricting individuals under the age of 18 from accessing certain types of gender-affirming care. However, a recent study published in JAMA Pediatrics earlier this month found that less than 0.1% of adolescents with private insurance in the United States are transgender and have been prescribed either puberty blockers or hormone therapy.
And yet, Republican politicians have seized on anti-transgender sentiment as a cultural wedge they can use to rally voters to their side in elections.
Most major medical associations, including the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the American Psychological Association, have opposed state-level attempts to restrict access to gender-affirming care.
The Williams Institute, an LGBTQ policy think tank, estimates there are about 300,000 transgender youth aged 13 to 17 in the U.S. About one-third of them are believed to live in states with restrictions on gender-affirming care.
“Only eight days into his second term, President Donald Trump has blood on his hands,” Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen, the executive director of Advocates for Trans Equality, said in a statement.
“This executive order not only prohibits but intends to set forth a path to potentially criminalize the provision of safe, evidence-based, medically necessary gender-affirming care, endangering the lives of tens of thousands of transgender adolescents under the age of 19.”
Heng-Lehtinen continued, “Denying trans youth medical care will not stop them from being trans. Our trans community survived long before the government ever recognized us.… Trans existence is unyielding, and we will endure.”
The Gender Research Advisory Council + Education (GRACE), a transgender advocacy group, accused Trump of bending to the will of conservative activists who authored Project 2025. The blueprint for conservative governance calls for eradicating LGBTQ legal protections and refusing to recognize transgender identity.
GRACE asserted that the executive order strips away the rights of parents, who previously had been allowed to make medical decisions for their children. It has also criticized the hypocrisy of Republicans, who frequently trumpet the idea of “parental rights” when it comes to educational curricula, and who were vehemently opposed to mask and vaccine mandates during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Our nation is witnessing firsthand the attempted eradication of people who are transgender,” GRACE Founder and President Alaina Kupec, said in a statement. “Our dehumanization by religious extremists is starkly similar to what took place in 1930s Germany.
“When our country’s leaders like President Trump and [House] Speaker [Mike] Johnson [R-La.] use the weight of the government to promote a radical agenda denying our existence, all Americans should stand up and take notice. It may start with the transgender community, but as history has proven, it will not stop with us.”
U.S. Catholic bishops have voted to bar Catholic hospitals from providing transgender patients with gender-affirming care, including hormones and surgical procedures.
The vote, taken last week during the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' plenary assembly in Baltimore, updates the "Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services," the Church's rulebook governing medical procedures it deems immoral.
The directives spell out how Catholic-affiliated hospitals and staff should respond to medical situations that may clash with personal religious beliefs or Church teaching on issues like end-of-life care, contraception, abortion, or gender identity.
Federal Judge Victoria Calvert has permanently blocked a portion of Georgia’s law banning prisoners from receiving gender-affirming care, ruling on Dec. 3 that the state’s blanket ban on hormone therapy violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.
Signed by Gov. Brian Kemp in May and implemented in July, the law bars prisoners from receiving hormone therapy or other treatment for gender dysphoria -- even when a doctor deems it medically necessary. It prohibits the state from funding such care and blocks transgender inmates from paying for it themselves. Non-transgender prisoners, however, may still receive hormone therapy and other gender-affirming treatments so long as the care is not related to gender transition.
The Trump administration is working to bring a transgender woman back to the United States after immigration officials wrongly deported her in violation of a federal judge's order.
Britania Uriostegui Rios, a Mexican transgender woman who came to the U.S. in 2003 and later became a lawful permanent resident, lost that status in 2023 after pleading guilty to felony assault with a deadly weapon, according to The Guardian.
She received a suspended sentence for the assault conviction, then was sent to a men's immigration detention facility as officials prepared to deport her to Mexico.
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