Hi y’all.
The last 24 hours in this country have been a microcosm of how the right wants to further restrict—and in some cases punish—young transgender people in this country, in addition to their families and their medical providers.
On Wednesday, the House passed Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s anti-trans bill, the “Protect Children’s Innocence Act.” If enacted, the law would allow health care providers to face felony charges and up to 10 years in prison if they treat trans youth. It also provides an avenue to punish anyone who consents to or transports a minor to the care. This includes parents.
And then, today, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his team announced several plans to further restrict gender-affirming care to people under 18 across the country. If finalized, in total, these actions could effectively make it impossible for transgender minors to receive most affirming health care at hospitals.
The most chilling of the new regulatory actions would include cutting off federal Medicaid and Medicare funding from hospitals that provide this care to young people and prohibiting federal Medicaid dollars from being used to fund it. Virtually every hospital in the country takes this type of federal funding and relies on it to function.
While MTG’s bill is expected to stall in the Senate, and the Department of Health and Human Services’ proposed regulations are not legally binding and are set to be challenged in court, these back-to-back attacks risk injecting more confusion and fear into an already challenging, and sometimes nightmarish, reality for young people trying to access care.
“I think parents, families of trans young people, and those young people themselves are terrified because they are being literally attacked by their own government,” Kellan Baker, a senior adviser for health policy at the Movement Advancement Project, told me. “That is not a position we should want any young person or any family to be in.”
My colleague Julia Métraux and I wrote about the last 24 hours and the administration’s continued offensive on transgender Americans and the people who love them. What you won’t see in our reporting today is the behind-the-scenes collaboration that takes place in getting these sensitive stories covered. Several colleagues sent us sources to contact, statements providing context, and notes on how to make sure we present these unprecedented moves with nuance and tact.
—Katie Herchenroeder
