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N.Y. attorney general: stopping care for trans youth will violate state law

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New York State Attorney General Letitia James has advised health care providers in the state that failing to provide gender-affirming care to transgender minors violates New York antidiscrimination law.

Donald Trump issued an executive order last week titled “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation,” targets the use of puberty blockers, hormone therapies, and surgeries for anyone under 19, referring to them as “chemical and surgical mutilation.” It directs federal agencies to rescind policies supporting such treatments, withdraw funding from institutions that provide them, and enforce existing laws limiting access to these procedures. This comes even though these procedures are endorsed by every major medical organization.

The order requires the Department of Health and Human Services to review and revise medical guidelines related to gender-affirming care. It specifically singles out the World Professional Association for Transgender Health and its Standards of Care, calling it lacking in “scientific integrity.” HHS is instructed to publish a review of the existing literature on gender dysphoria and develop alternative guidelines, while agencies like the Department of Justice are tasked with investigating providers and enforcing stricter legal measures against what the order terms “deceptive practices.”

In the wake of the order, NYU Langone, a New York City hospital, canceled appointments for some young trans people seeking care, The New York Timesreports. Two families told the Times their children’s appointments to receive puberty blockers had been canceled. The Times sought comment from NYU Langone, but a spokesperson declined.

In an open letter posted online Monday, James referred to a temporary restraining order stopping the Trump administration from freezing all federal funding. The Department of Justice issued the required notice of compliance with the order, which James quoted.

“The notice states that ‘federal agencies cannot pause, freeze, impede, block, cancel, or terminate any awards or obligations on the basis of the OMB memo, or on the basis of the President’s recently issued Executive Orders,’ such as those targeting DEI programs and gender affirming care for minors. The DOJ Notice further states that this prohibition ‘applies to all awards or obligations,’ including those made to grant recipients such as hospitals, non-profits, or other organizations or entities, and also applies to future grants of federal assistance.”

“Regardless of the availability of federal funding, we write to further remind you of your obligations to comply with New York State laws, including those that prohibit discrimination against individuals based on their membership in a protected class, such as sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, race, creed, color, national origin, citizenship or immigration status, military status, disability, or marital status,” she continued. “Electing to refuse services to a class of individuals based on their protected status, such as withholding the availability of services from transgender individuals based on their gender identity or their diagnosis of gender dysphoria, while offering such services to cisgender individuals, is discrimination under New York law.”

Puberty blockers are often given to cisgender people for treatment of early-onset puberty, endometriosis, and other conditions.

New York State Sen. Brad Hoylman-Sigal denounced the Trump administration’s move to restrict gender-affirming care for trans youth. “Simply put, this decision could put lives at risk,” Hoylman-Sigal, a gay man, said in a statement to the Times. “It is imperative that all New Yorkers, including those under the age of 19, are able to receive necessary and life-preserving gender-affirming care to which they are legally entitled to in the State of New York.”

Hospitals in some states have stopped providing gender-affirming care to trans youth because of the executive order, but others are standing up to Trump. In Oregon, for instance, officials with Oregon Health & Science University and Legacy Health, both based in Portland and major providers of this care, have said nothing has changed,The Oregonian reports. And the state’s attorney general, Dan Rayfield, said he is considering legal action.

He issued a statement calling the order “a clear example of the administration imposing its political agenda at the expense of some of the most vulnerable people,” according to The Oregonian. “How the order is implemented will impact how we approach our work to protect access to care,” he added. “All legal options are on the table at this point.”

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Federal healthcare plan halts gender-affirming care coverage for trans people under 19

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The government’s largest health insurance program for federal employees has officially ended coverage of gender-affirming care for anyone under 19 years old in compliance with Donald Trump’s executive order mandating it. 

The U.S. Office of Personnel and Management’s Healthcare and Insurance program – which covers “8 million Federal employees, retirees, former employees, family members, and former spouses,” according to the handbook – sent a directive to health insurance companies that work with the federal government stating they must comply with the order, along with another one Trump signed declaring there are only two sexes, male and female.

“All Carriers for Plan Year 2026 ‘will exclude coverage for pediatric transgender surgeries or hormone treatments’ for the purpose of gender transition,” the directive states, according to Huffington Post. “OPM recognizes that there are some bona fide medical conditions, such as precocious puberty, or therapy subsequent to a traumatic injury, where hormone treatments for individuals under the age of 19 may be lawfully covered by Carriers.”

Precocious puberty is when a child goes through puberty too young. These kids often take puberty blockers to keep them aligned with their peers. As such, the directive makes it clear that cisgender kids can use puberty blockers, but transgender kids can’t. 

Trump’s executive order on gender-affirming care bans people under 19  from accessing puberty blockers, hormone therapy, and surgical procedures — or, as the order calls them, “chemical or surgical mutilation” — as gender-affirming care for transgender individuals. The order threatens prosecution against sanctuary states that protect this care. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has already pledged to sue to block its enforcement.

“Across the country today, medical professionals are maiming and sterilizing a growing number of impressionable children under the radical and false claim that adults can change a child’s sex through a series of irreversible medical interventions,” the order states, omitting the fact that gender-affirming care has been safely provided to cisgender and trans children for decades and is suggested as a best medical practice by most major American medical and psychological associations.

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EEOC won’t advocate for trans and nonbinary people, in keeping with Trump’s ‘two sexes’ order

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The acting chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is implementing Donald Trump’s “two sexes” executive order by removing many protections and information for transgender and nonbinary people.

Acting Chair Andrea Lucas “announced that one of her priorities — for compliance, investigations, and litigation — is to defend the biological and binary reality of sex and related rights, including women’s rights to single-sex spaces at work,” an EEOC press release states.

She has removed the agency’s pronoun app, which allowed employees to display their pronouns alongside their name on their Microsoft 365 profiles; ended the use of the X gender marker during the intake process for filing a discrimination charge; ordered the removal of Mx. from the list of prefix options; and removed materials that she says promote “gender ideology” from the EEOC’s internal and external websites and documents.

Lucas, who was appointed to the EEOC by Trump in 2020 and was named acting chair last week, does not have the authority to unilaterally remove references to gender identity from certain documents. These include the Enforcement Guidance on Harassment in the Workplace, the EEOC Strategic Plan 2022-2026, and the EEOC Strategic Enforcement Plan Fiscal Years 2024-2028. They were all adopted by a 3-2 vote in 2023, with Lucas voting against them.

She opposed harassment guidance that said harassing conduct under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 includes “denial of access to a bathroom or other sex-segregated facility consistent with [an] individual’s gender identity” and “repeated and intentional use of a name or pronoun inconsistent with [an] individual’s known gender identity.”

“Biology is not bigotry. Biological sex is real, and it matters,” Lucas said in the press release. “Sex is binary (male and female) and immutable. It is not harassment to acknowledge these truths — or to use language like pronouns that flow from these realities, even repeatedly.”

“Because of biological realities, each sex has its own, unique privacy interests, and women have additional safety interests, that warrant certain single-sex facilities at work and other spaces outside the home,” she added. “It is neither harassment nor discrimination for a business to draw distinctions between the sexes in providing single-sex bathrooms or other similar facilities which implicate these significant privacy and safety interests. And the Supreme Court’s decision in Bostock v. Clayton County does not demand otherwise: the Court explicitly stated that it did ‘not purport to address bathrooms, locker rooms, or anything else of the kind.’”

In Bostock, the Supreme Court ruled in 2020 that Title VII’s ban on sex discrimination in employment includes discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. The case involved two gay men, Gerald Bostockand Donald Zarda, and a trans woman, Aimee Stephens. Stephens’s case started with a complaint to the EEOC.

Her case, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission v. R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes, dates to 2013, when the Stephens, a funeral director, informed the Michigan-based company that she would begin presenting as female at work. She was fired two weeks after handing her coming-out letter to her supervisor.

She complained to the EEOC, a quasi-independent agency of the federal government, and it found her case compelling and sued Harris Funeral Homes. The American Civil Liberties Union began handling the case during Trump’s first term, fearing the EEOC would not represent Stephens as effectively as it would have under President Barack Obama. Before the Supreme Court ruling, a federal appeals court ruled that Title VII applied in Stephens’s case. She died shortly before the Supreme Court ruled.

Also, the Trump administration fired two of the EEOC’s Democratic members, Charlotte A. Burrows and Jocelyn Samuels, Monday night. “Their ousters may leave the agency without a quorum that would allow it to take formal actions,” The New York Times reports. A third Democrat, Kalpana Kotagal, appears to still be on the commission.

Firing them, as they are Senate-confirmed commissioners and their terms are not yet up, may be beyond Trump’s authority, the Times notes. Burrows has hired a lawyer and is exploring her options, she said in a statement. All three Dems on the commission had objected to Trump’s lifting of the order banning discrimination by federal contractors, which President Lyndon B. Johnson had issued in 1965.

Trump also fired the EEOC’s general counsel, Karla Gilbride, Monday night, and the National Labor Relations Board’s general counsel, Jennifer Abruzzo, along with Democratic NLRB member Gwynne Wilcox. Abruzzo’s firing was expected, as presidents usually change people in that position when they come into office, but the firing of Wilcox, “confirmed by the Senate in September 2023 to a second five-year term, is without modern precedent and could prompt legal challenges,” according to the Times. She is looking into legal options. The board protects workers’ rights, including the right to form unions.

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Target dropped DEI, so Minnesota’s largest Pride festival dropped Target’s sponsorship — and raised even more

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After Target made the decision to drop diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, Minnesota’s largest Pride festival decided to drop them as a sponsor. Now, Twin Cities Pride has more funding than they started with.

Target issued a memo on Friday announcing the end of its three-year DEI goals, including its Racial Equity Action and Change (REACH) program and “all external diversity-focused survey’s including HRC’s Corporate Equality index.” The Human Rights Campaign effort, which provides benchmarks on corporate policies relevant to LGBTQ+ employees, previously gave Target a score of 100 percent, dubbing the company a “Leader in LGBTQ+ Workplace Inclusion.”

In response, the largest Pride organization in Minnesota and the largest free Pride celebration in the United States, Twin Cities Pride, announced this week that it would be dropping Target as a sponsor for its 2025 events. The company had initially pledged $50,000, and had been involved in Pride celebrations for around two decades. 

TCP executive director Andi Otto tells The Advocate that Target executives called him before their announcement, as they “wanted me to hear it from them before it had hit mainstream media.” The company insisted that “they were still very much committed to being at Pride and very much committed to sponsoring and continuing to support our year-round programming.” 

Target was not backing down on its $50,000 pledge, but Otto says that TCP and their allies still saw the move as a betrayal, as the company is “taking away safety for the community not only in their employees, but in their suppliers.” As the community was “looking to us to hold them accountable,” TCP’s board made the decision to remove Target as a sponsor.

“This isn’t about the money,” Otto says. “Because if the money wasn’t there, would we even be questioning this decision? The answer is no. The reality of it is, is that it’s the right thing to do for our community.”

The end of DEI programs and LGBTQ+ inclusivity initiatives marks a significant shift for the Minnesota-based company, which once withstood protests from hate groups over its inclusive bathroom policies and Pride displays. However, the change was not sudden, as Target pulled some of its Pride Month merchandisein 2023 amid threats and violent protests in stores.

Target is among over a dozen major companies that have ended their DEI initiatives in the past year. Meta announced the end of its DEI programs by citing the shifting “legal and policy landscape surrounding diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in the United States.” McDonald’s also cited the Supreme Court decision against affirmative action, as well as changes among “other companies.”

Target executives said in their public statement and in private statements to Otto that the decision to end DEI programs was “due to changes in the landscape” — a nod to the Trump Administration, which has taken a hard stance against DEI in its first weeks by signing executive orders firing government employees and rescinding 1960s civil rights protections. 

As Target had long stood by DEI and LGBTQ+ initiatives when it was politically beneficial, Otto says that the company’s reason for ending them “just didn’t sit right with us.”

“A lot of companies that are overturning [DEI] are doing it out of fear,” Otto says. “They look ahead and say, ‘This is what the next four years is going to be like.’ If we’re standing up for the diversity and inclusion, then we’re going to be, ironically, in the minority.”

“It’s crazy when you truly think about it — standing up for a minority group of folks, but when the other shoe drops, you don’t actually want to be part of that group,” he adds.

Companies’ willingness to abandon the LGBTQ+ community contributes to the long-standing debate among activists over “Rainbow Capitalism,” which refers to the trend of companies marketing to or profiting off the queer community without meaningfully supporting them. Examples include Disney using a rainbow logo while cancelling or censoring LGBTQ+ projects, Netflix claiming to support LGBTQ+ people while hosting Dave Chapelle’s harmful jokes about transgenderpeople, or Target scaling back Pride displays after pressure from extremists despite decades of precedent. 

“I get a lot of push back about why we have sponsors at Pride. Pride was a protest, et cetera. But those sponsors allow me to do things,” Otto says, adding, “I get to pay every performer on the stage. I get to have a rainbow wardrobe, free personal care items, free clothing. We fed 300 people a holiday meal for free. … It allows us to have smaller costs for small businesses and LGBTQ and BIPOC businesses at our festival.”

While Otto did not believe it would be too challenging to find a replacement for Target, he “did not expect to be paid forward by the community.” TCP made the money back in less than 24 hours, raising nearly $78,000 just from individual donors as of Wednesday morning. Other organizations offering grants or sponsorships have brought that total to well over $100,000 — more than twice what Target promised. 

“Everybody’s talking about eggs at this point. I know people are watching their money very closely, and I don’t blame them. Me as an individual, I’m doing the same thing,” Otto says. “So, I didn’t expect this outcome. It’s inspiring.”

Otto, who has heard from many community members that have decided to no longer shop at companies ditching DEI, emphasizes that “I’m not asking you to boycott Target — I’m asking you to make the best decision for your family.” Still, he hopes “companies see this and realize that this is going to cause people to really start selecting where they’re gonna shop.”

“I won’t close the door on Target. I want them to show their true colors, whatever that looks like in their world,” Otto says. “And my hope is that in 2026, they can come back. They can be loud, they can be proud of what they’ve done with their company, and we can move forward. But I need to see that beforehand.”

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Trans service members say they want to fight for their country, not for their jobs

When Alivia Stehlik, an Army major, came out as a transgender woman in the spring of 2017, she said she was nervous about how her colleagues and other soldiers would react, especially because she’s a physical therapist.

“You have to physically touch most of your patients, and I had some nerves initially that folks would be uncomfortable,” she said. However, in the eight years since she came out, she said she’s been “overwhelmingly, pleasantly surprised at every single turn.” 

“My bosses, the people that I’ve worked with, the people who’ve worked for me, my patients — nobody cares that I’m trans,” she added. “They just see me as Major Stehlik or Dr. Stehlik. That’s it.”

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Monday barring trans people from serving openly and enlisting in the military. The policy argues that the medical and mental health care that some trans people need to treat gender dysphoria — the medical term for the distress caused by a misalignment between one’s gender identity and sex at birth — is inconsistent with the military’s high standards for  “troop readiness, lethality and cohesion, honesty, humility, uniformity and integrity.” 

It’s unclear exactly how the order will affect the thousands of trans service members like Stehlik. Unlike a similar policy Trump issued in 2017 during his first term, this order says being trans fundamentally “conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life.”

“A man’s assertion that he is a woman, and his requirement that others honor this falsehood, is not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member,” the order states. 

NBC News spoke to trans service members who could be affected by the order, and they all communicated a similar plan of action: They will continue doing their jobs, and they plan to fight the order.

“I’m just resolved,” said Stehlik, who is stationed at Fort Campbell on the border of Kentucky and Tennessee, when asked how she’s felt since Trump signed the order Monday. Stehlik was commissioned as an officer after graduating from West Point in 2008.

In the summer of 2018, just after she came out, Stehlik was deployed to treat soldiers in Afghanistan for nine months. She said that experience, combined with patches she wears on her uniform that show she went to specialized combat training schools, helps her patients trust her and make her good at her job.

“Trans folks are every bit as ready and every bit as deployable as anyone else,” she said. “We have to meet the same physical fitness standards, the same medical standards to be deployable. And even as we speak, there are trans service members deployed all around the world in harm’s way, having already met those standards to deploy.”

Six trans service members and two trans people who want to enlist sued the Trump administration Tuesday over the executive order.

Nicolas Talbott, a second lieutenant who has served in the Army Reserves for almost a year, said he joined the lawsuit because he fears the worst-case scenario: that Trump’s executive order will force all trans service members out of the military completely. 

“That’s going to have a huge impact, not only on myself personally — where I would be facing losing my job, losing my future career, losing all of the benefits that come with being a member of the military, which includes my health insurance — but this would be a huge impact on the United States military itself,” he said, adding that removing thousands of trans service members would hurt readiness overall. 

Nicholas Talbott
Nicolas Talbott said he joined a lawsuit challenging the ban because he fears losing the job he has fought for since 2017.Courtesy Nicholas Talbott

Talbott was a plaintiff in a lawsuit against the 2017 Trump ban, which prevented Talbott from enlisting then. He said he decided to join the suit filed Tuesday because “it’s the right thing to do.”

“The ultimate goal is that we don’t want trans people or any other minority member of the military to have to face this every single time a new politician is elected into office,” he said. “Our service should not be contingent on who holds political power at the time.”

Like Talbott, this isn’t Navy Cmdr. Emily Shilling’s first go-round with a trans military ban. Shilling — who emphasized she was not speaking on behalf of the Navy or the Pentagon  — came out in 2019, two days after the first Trump ban took effect. As a result of the ban, she told NBC News in 2021, she was forced to live a double life: She was living as a trans woman in her personal life, but at work she had to continue serving as her birth sex. 

After Biden signed an executive order in 2021 allowing trans people to serve openly, she began to thrive, she said. She was promoted to commander, and she fought for and won her medical clearance to fly high-performance jets again, which she said set a precedent that allowed other trans service members to do the same. 

Emily Shilling
Emily Shilling is the highest-ranking out trans person in the Navy after having served for nearly two decades.Courtesy Emily Shilling

Since Monday, she said, she’s felt like she’s on a mission. In addition to serving for nearly two decades, she is also the president of Sparta, an advocacy organization for trans members of the military and veterans. She said she would like to have conversations with officials at the Pentagon or the White House about what real trans Americans and service members look like. 

“We’ve served openly for nearly a decade, and we’ve been able to show that all of the original arguments for why transgender service should not be made open are all just false,” she said. “Our medical costs are minimal. Our time being down is minimal, and the effect on unit cohesion, morale, it’s nonexistent.” 

Since last week, Trump has issued a number of executive orders targeting trans rights. Hours after his inauguration, he signed an order declaring that the U.S. government will recognize only two sexes, male and female, and that “these sexes are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality,” resulting in the State Department freezing all passport applications requesting a sex-marker change. 

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Doctors Group Sues Over Removal Of Health Websites

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A medical advocacy group on Tuesday sued the main U.S. health agencies over the sudden removal of websites containing public health information in response to an executive order by President Donald Trump targeting what his administration deemed to be “gender ideology extremism.”

Doctors for America said in the lawsuit filed in Washington, D.C. federal court, that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has removed “numerous” longstanding websites since the order.

Those include a page on behavioral health risks among youth, which the lawsuit says is important for understanding health challenges faced by young people, including bullying and vaping; pages with data on the prevalence of HIV and associated risky behaviors; and a page on getting tested for HIV, which the lawsuit called “an important communication tool for physicians.”

The liberal-leaning group also said in its lawsuit that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has removed pages recommending the inclusion of more women and underrepresented groups in clinical trials. 

“The removal of this information deprives researchers of access to information that is necessary for treating patients, for developing clinical studies that produce results that accurately reflect the effects treatments will have in clinical practice, and for developing practices and policies that protect the health of vulnerable populations and the country as a whole,” the lawsuit said.

Trump, a Republican, signed an executive order on his first day back in office that the United States will recognize two sexes, male and female. On Jan. 29, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management issued a memorandum instructing agencies to take down any public-facing materials that promote what they deem to be “gender ideology.”

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Tuesday’s lawsuit names the CDC, FDA, and their parent agency the Department of Health and Human Services as defendants. It asks the court to rule that OPM’s memorandum exceeded the agency’s authority and to order the websites to be put back online.

HHS and the CDC declined to comment. The FDA and OPM did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Doctors for America was founded in 2008 by Vivek Murthy, who served as U.S. Surgeon General under Democratic Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden; Mandy Cohen, who served as CDC director under Biden; and Alice Chen, now a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles’ medical school. 

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Trans young adults and parents sue over Trump’s orders restricting transition care

Two transgender young adults and five families of trans minors filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday challenging two executive orders President Donald Trump issued over the last two weeks that aim to prohibit federal funding of transition-related health care for anyone under 19, and define sex as biological, only male and female and unchangeable. 

“The Executive Orders were issued for the openly discriminatory purpose of preventing transgender people from expressing a gender identity different from their sex designated at birth—and expressing governmental disapproval of transgender people who, by definition, have a gender identity that does not align with their sex designated at birth,” the lawsuit states. “These Orders are part of a government-wide effort by the Trump Administration to restrict legal protections and essential services for the transgender community.”

One of the plaintiffs, Kristen Chapman, said she and her family moved to Virginia in the summer of 2023 after their home state of Tennessee passed a law banning gender-affirming medical care for trans minors like her 17-year-old daughter, Willow. The family struggled to find a provider in Virginia who would accept Medicaid, which is a government health care program for people with limited income. Chapman said the family paid for Willow’s care out of pocket, but it became “prohibitively expensive.” After trying for a few months, she said they were finally able to schedule an appointment for Jan. 29 at VCU Medical Center in Richmond, which would take Medicaid. 

“The day before our appointment, President Trump signed the executive order at issue in this case. The next day, just a few hours before our appointment, VCU told us they would not be able to provide Willow with care,” Chapman said in a statement shared by the ACLU. “I thought Virginia would be a safe place for me and my daughter. Instead, I am heartbroken, tired, and scared.”

The lawsuit, filed in the District Court of the District of Maryland, requests that a judge immediately block the executive orders, which it argues are illegal and unconstitutional because the president does not have the authority to withhold federal funds that have been previously approved by Congress. The suit also argues that the order restricting transition care violates parents’ fundamental rights and the rights of trans people under 19 by discriminating against them based on sex, as the order allows people under 19 who are not trans to continue receiving the same treatments for other medical conditions.

The White House and the Department of Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

The American Civil Liberties Union, Lambda Legal, ACLU of Maryland and private law firms Hogan Lovells and Jenner & Block filed the suit on behalf of the families and young adults who are all members of PFLAG National, a nonprofit that supports the friends and families of LGBTQ people. PFLAG and GLMA, the largest national association of LGBTQ and allied health professionals, some of whom have had federal funds withheld under the orders, are also named as plaintiffs. 

Omar Gonzalez-Pagan, senior counsel and health care strategist for Lambda Legal, called the orders “morally reprehensible and patently unlawful.”

“The federal government — particularly, this administration — has no right to insert itself into conversations and decision-making that rightly belongs only to patients, their families, and their medical providers,” he said in a statement. “This broadside condemns transgender young people to extreme and unnecessary pain and suffering, and for minors, it subjects their parents to agonized futility in caring for their child — all while denying them access to the same medically recommended health care that is readily available to their non-transgender peers.”

One of the orders, “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government,” declared that the U.S. government will recognize only two sexes, male and female, and that “these sexes are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality.” It prohibits agencies from promoting gender ideology and argues that it will “defend women’s rights and protect freedom of conscience by using clear and accurate language and policies that recognize women are biologically female, and men are biologically male.”

The other order at issue in the lawsuit, titled “Protecting Children From Chemical and Surgical Mutilation,” prohibits federal funding from covering transition-related medical care — including puberty blockers, hormone therapy and surgery — for children, which it defines as those younger than 19. Medical schools and hospitals receiving federal research or education grants also have to “end the chemical and surgical mutilation of children,” the order states. 

The sweeping order could affect more than just programs receiving federal funds. For example, it also directs the secretary of health and human services to change section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act, which prohibits health care discrimination and, as a result, has required health insurance plans under the act to cover transition-related care. It also instructs the director of the Office of Personnel Management to bar trans care for minors in the Federal Employee Health Benefits and Postal Service Health Benefits programs for 2026. 

The order argues that the country has an obligation to protect children from “irreversible medical interventions.”

“Countless children soon regret that they have been mutilated and begin to grasp the horrifying tragedy that they will never be able to conceive children of their own or nurture their children through breastfeeding,” the order states, using inflammatory language to describe transition-related care. It goes on to allege without citing evidence that these youths’ “medical bills may rise throughout their lifetimes, as they are often trapped with lifelong medical complications, a losing war with their own bodies, and, tragically, sterilization.”

More than half of states across the U.S. have already enacted measures to restrict transition-related care for minors, but since Trump’s order last week, a number of hospitals in states without these restrictions have stopped such care for patients under 19 or announced that they are reviewing it. The White House announced in a news release Monday that hospitals in New York City, Colorado, Virginia, Illinois, Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C., have either suspended or announced that they are reviewing their transition care programs for minors. 

Though Trump’s order seeking to restrict such transition care implies that it is a widespread threat to children, recent research has shown that a small number of minors actually access this type of care. A study published in JAMA Pediatrics in January found that less than 0.1% of adolescents with private insurance in the U.S. are transgender or gender-diverse and are prescribed puberty blockers or gender-affirming hormones.

Most major medical associations, such as the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Psychological Association, support access to transition care for minors and oppose restrictions on it. 

Trump issued multiple executive orders during his first two weeks in office that seek to restrict trans rights. In addition to the two mentioned in the lawsuit, he also signed  an order prohibiting trans people from enlisting and serving in the military. At least three other lawsuits have been filed against these orders — two from transgender women serving time in federal prison who would be denied transition care under the order and transferred to men’s prisons, and one from transgender service members and those seeking to enlist. A judge blocked prison officials from transferring one of the trans inmates on Sunday. 

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To erase transgender people further, Trump administration implements policy prohibiting pronouns in emails

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The Trump administration has ordered federal employees to remove pronouns from their email signatures, a move widely seen as an attack on transgenderworkers and a broader attempt to erase LGBTQ+ identities from government workplaces. The directive, which applies to agencies including the State Department, Department of Defense, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Department of Transportation, follows a series of executive orders targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.

Federal workers were instructed to comply with new guidelines by 5:00 p.m. Friday, ABC News reports. The orders, issued through internal memos and the Office of Personnel Management, cite Trump’s “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth” executive order, whichmandates that the federal government recognize only two genders based on sex assigned at birth: male and female, denying the existence ofnonbinaryand transgender people.

This crackdown extends beyond email signatures. Agencies, including the State Department, have been directed to review and remove references to gender identity in programs, contracts, and grants. An OPM memo further instructed agencies to turn off features that prompt users to include pronouns and to place employees involved in gender-focused DEI work on administrative leave. The administration has also ordered a federal facilities bathroom ban, barring transgender employees from using restrooms aligned with their gender identity.

For transgender workers, the impact is profound, according to GLAAD. Removing pronouns from email signatures erases a vital form of self-identification in professional spaces. Prohibiting the use of nicknames forces transgender employees who have not legally changed their names to use their deadnames, subjecting them to misgendering and outing them against their will.

“In my decade-plus years at CDC, I’ve never been told what I can and can’t put in my email signature,” one federal employee told ABC News.

In response to these sweeping attacks, Delaware Democratic U.S. Rep. Sarah McBride has spoken out against the administration’s targeting of transgender Americans.

“Since January 20, I’ve heard from transgender constituents and their families who are living in fear of the Trump administration’s relentless attacks on them,” McBride, the first out trans member of Congress, said in a statement. “From day one, the administration has taken actions that would force the outing of transgender people, stripping them of their privacy and safety.”

McBride also condemned Trump’s rollback of transgender military protections, the bathroom restrictions for federal workers, and policies that threaten inclusive schools and medical care.

“Each time the Trump administration attacks a small, vulnerable community, the ripple effects of hate echo across our society,” she said.

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Trump administration declares Title IX does not protect trans students from discrimination

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The Trump administration has notified public schools at every level that it will not be enforcing the Biden administration’s revised interpretation of Title IX, which included the protection of LGBTQ+ students from discrimination. 

In June 2022, President Joe Biden’s Education Secretary Miguel Cardona announced that Title IX, the 1972 education law that prohibits discrimination in federally funded schools “on the basis of sex,” should rely on the Supreme Court’s 2020 decision in Bostock v. Clayton County. That court decision found that Title VII’s ban on sex-based workplace discrimination includes discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

The notice repealing this interpretation referred to Donald Trump’s executive order on “restoring biological truth,” which declared, “It is the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female.  These sexes are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality.”

The letter – sent from the United States Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights – states that the order is “fatal” to the Biden interpretation of Title IX because it “directly contradicts the vacated rule’s novel and expansive meaning of ‘on the basis of sex.”‘ It then emphasized executive power: “As a constitutional matter, the President’s interpretation of the law governs because he alone controls and supervises subordinate officers who exercise discretionary executive power on his behalf.” 

It also justified the order based on a January 9, 2025, Kentucky District Court decision that ruled Biden’s interpretation of Title IX is unenforceable, claiming “expanding the meaning of ‘on the basis of sex’ to include ‘gender identity’ turns Title IX on its head.” 

The notice also aligns with another Trump executive order seeking to endtransgender-inclusive policies and anti-racist education in K-12 schools. The order calls to cut off federal funding to trans-inclusive and anti-racist schools, to force schools to out trans students to their potentially unsupportive parents, and accuses supportive teachers of “sexually exploiting minors” or “unlawfully practicing medicine.” 

The Trump administration also declared in the letter that it will return to policies from Trump’s first term that provided stronger rights to students accused of sexual assault or harassment and limited schools’ liability in those cases. 

“This is an incredibly disappointing decision that will leave many survivors of sexual violence, LGBTQ+ students, and pregnant and parenting students without the accommodations critical to their ability to learn and attend class safely,” Emma Grasso Levine, a senior manager at Know Your IX, said in a statement. “Schools must step up to protect students in the absence of adequate federal guidance.”

Department of Education employees themselves have also become victims of Trump’s war on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI). According to NBC News, dozens who attended a diversity training course that was encouraged by the Trump administration during the president’s first term have been placed on paid leave.

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Some hospitals pause gender-affirming care to evaluate Trump’s executive order

Hospitals in Colorado, Virginia and the nation’s capital said Thursday they have paused gender-affirming care for young people as they evaluate President Donald Trump’s executive order aimed at cutting federal support for such care.

Denver Health in Colorado has stopped providing gender-affirming surgeries for people under age 19, a spokesperson confirmed Thursday, in order to comply with the executive order and continue receiving federal funding. It is unclear whether the hospital will continue providing other gender-affirming care for youth, including hormone therapy and puberty blockers.

In Virginia, VCU Health and Children’s Hospital of Richmond said they have suspended gender-affirming medication and gender-affirming surgical procedures for those under 19 years old.

In Washington, D.C., Children’s National Hospital said the hospital had “paused prescriptions of puberty blockers and hormone therapy to comply with the directives while we assess the situation further.” The hospital already did not perform gender-affirming surgery on minors, a spokesperson said Thursday.

Trump’s order, signed Tuesday, is part of a push to reverse Biden administration policies meant to protect transgender people and their care. It ordered agencies to take steps to makes sure that hospitals receiving federal research and education grants “end the chemical and surgical mutilation of children.”

Other hospitals told The Associated Press that their current practices would continue. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago said hospital officials are reviewing the order and “assessing any potential impact to the clinical services we offer to our patient families.”

“Our team will continue to advocate for access to medically necessary care, grounded in science and compassion for the patient-families we are so privileged to serve,” the statement said.

The language in Trump’s executive order — using words such as “maiming,” “sterilizing” and “mutilation” — contradicts what is typical for gender-affirming care in the United States. It also labels guidance from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health as “junk science.”

WPATH said in a statement that restrictions and bans on “access to necessary medical care for transgender youth are harmful to patients and their families.”

Gender-affirming medical care for transgender youth isn’t common. A new study shows that fewer than 1 in 1,000 U.S. adolescents with commercial insurance received puberty blockers or hormones during a recent five-year period, and the bulk of gender-affirming surgeries are not performed on youth.

The Denver hospital said Trump’s order would affect the mental health of its transgender patients, and that they would continue to receive primary and behavioral health care.

“Denver Health is committed to and deeply concerned for the health and safety of our gender diverse patients under the age of 19,” the hospital’s statement said.

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