The New Anti-Trans Rules Are So Much Worse Than You Think

Written By Leeja Miller

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Model comment:

My name is [INSERT YOUR NAME], I am [INSERT WHO YOU ARE AND WHY YOU CARE]. I am deeply concerned with the proposed rules as stated in the "Prohibition on Federal Medicaid and Children's Health Insurance Program Funding for Sex-Rejecting Procedures Furnished to Children" (File code CMS-2451-P). [INSERT WHY YOU CARE]. At the end of the day, I care about children and I care that the laws and regulations coming from the government being truly in the best interests of the children they are impacting. That is not the case with this proposed regulation. Specifically, I object to the proposed rule for two reasons: (1) the proposed rules are based on the HHS's white paper called "Treatment for Pediatric Gender Dysphoria" released on November 19th, 2025, which was peer reviewed and found to lack "the standard of methodological rigor that should be considered a prerequisite for policy guidance in clinical care." (Per the American Psychiatric Association's peer review of the report.) Despite these shortcomings, HHS has based their rules entirely on the support of this faulty report, which has been misconstrued to the American people as "peer reviewed" as though that makes it more trustworthy. The peers have done their review, and they find the report lacking. This is no way to go about making rules purportedly based on science or on the best interests of children. (2) The best interests of children are not served by these rules. Major mainstream medical associations – including the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association, the Endocrine Society, the American Psychological Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry--all support gender-affirming (or "gender-rejecting" as the rules call it) care for trans youth. While gender-affirming surgeries do occur in a small fraction of the trans youth who receive medical care, the vast majority of trans youth do not undergo irreversible surgeries. 

Any parent who cares about the wellbeing of their child, and any doctor who puts the best interests of the child first, which is the vast majority of doctors, would never rush into any irreversible gender affirming care, or push hormones or other pharmaceutical interventions onto a child quickly or on a whim. For an administration that claims to care so deeply about protecting children, HHS seems unwilling to allow the people closest to children and who are most concerned about their wellbeing (their parents and doctors) to do what they believe is best for the children, based on the medical expertise and guidance of every major mainstream medical association. This encroachment on the ability to parent is an infringement on parental freedom. And the outcomes are quite literally deadly for the suicidal trans youth who do not receive the support they need and are instead stigmatized and othered by an administration that claims to care about their best interests. 

As such, it is my recommendation that these proposed rules not move forward as they would pose a grave danger to the health and wellness of the trans youth that HHS has purported to want to support and protect. Instead, it should be left to parents and their doctors, based on actually good data and science and the recommendations of major medical associations, to provide the support their individual child needs to be happy and to flourish. Instead, the HHS should focus its energy on providing quality mental and medical healthcare for trans youth, care that has proven effective at lessening their distress and mental health disorders that occur as a result of the very systemic marginalization that HHS is proposing to further with these new rules. For these reasons, I strongly oppose the proposed regulations in "Medicaid Program: Prohibition on Federal Medicaid and Children's Health Insurance Funding for Sex-Rejecting Procedures Furnished to Children" (File code CMS-2451-P). 

Sources:

Transcript:

Hi, it’s Monday, December 22nd, 2025, you’re tuned in to Why, America? I’m Leeja Miller. Last week on Thursday, December 18th, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s brain worm signed a declaration regarding quote "Safety, Effectiveness, and Professional Standards of Care for Sex Rejecting Procedures on Children and Adolescents.” In it, he declares that “sex-rejecting procedures” also known as gender affirming care are not safe or effective for treating gender dysphoria in trans youth.

Along with the declaration came a press conference in which all the major HHS officials made pronouncements and paraded around Chloe Cole, a 21-year-old detransitioner who has become the darling of the right wing anti-trans movement, the poster child of the dangers inherent in gender-affirming care. The next day, on December 19th, the centers for Medicare and Medicaid proposed two new rules, based on the HHS declaration, which would not only bar medicaid and CHIPS insurance dollars from being spent on gender affirming procedures but also cut all medicaid funding for any clinic or hospital that performs any gender-affirming care. The VAST majority of hospitals in this country rely on funding from medicare and medicaid. Meaning not only are 24 million Americans about to see their insurance premiums skyrocket next week, leaving many more medical procedures unpaid for, but those same hospitals that will be saddled with unpaid medical debt from newly uninsured Americans could also lose a significant source of federal funding if they don’t turn away all trans youth seeking gender-affirming treatment. This leaves medical facilities with an impossible choice: agree to help trans youth seeking the medical care that is recommended by every major medical association only to lose funding and have to close their doors, or turn away any child who is in crisis and seeking gender affirming care. And the celebratory press conference on Thursday indicated that despite claims that this is in the “interests of the children” this is in fact being spurred on by complete devotion to harmful misinterpretations of science or outright fake science and bigoted transphobic ideology from the top down.

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This headline from Democracy Now is where I originally heard about this story, “HHS Moves to Slash Federal Funds to Hospitals That Provide Gender-Affirming Care to Minors.” Using the Ground News browser extension, I can get helpful background information on this publication in one quick glance. To get the big picture, I can click on Full Coverage, which will show me coverage of the same story from publications across the political spectrum.

My partner on today’s video, Ground News, is an app and website that offers tools to help you critically analyze the news you read, providing context to understand the full picture. You can follow along at ground dot news slash Leeja. For every major news headline, and headlines you may have missed, Ground News provides you with information and context, like who owns the publication and how factual it is, to help you determine for yourself what is trustworthy and how to interpret the news. I feel empowered by Ground News by getting well-rounded insight into each headline, instead of relying on a single outlet that might have underlying biases and motivations that I’m not aware of. Ground News also ensures that I never miss a headline because of my own information bubble with its blindspot feature, by highlighting stories that are covered on one side of the political spectrum and not the other. Ground News is transparent about its methodology, how it assesses each story and publication, including how it uses 3 independent monitoring organizations to assess the bias rating for each publication. I genuinely think the world would be a better place if everyone had this much context about the news they read.

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I have been really interested lately in going straight to the source, taking the regime at its word and analyzing what’s coming straight from the horse’s mouth. As such, I think it’s important to analyze the press conference that was held last week to announce these new rules, because I have found the way the media interprets these events often fails to fully grasp just how evil the verbiage and the ideology behind what’s going on in our government actually is. RFK Jr himself started the press conference off. He mirrored all the announcements and rules coming out of HHS which are all careful to refer to gender-affirming care as “sex rejecting care” or “sex rejecting procedures.” They are hoping it is a powerful rebrand–and it’s something I think these creepy ideologues in MAGA are really good at–taking terms and politicizing them by rebranding them in a negative or positive light. Democrats could take some fucking notes because they are terrible at this. RFK Jr referred to these so-called sex-rejecting procedures as medical malpractice. Saying he wants there to be an end to quote “junk science driven by ideological pursuits, not the wellbeing of children.” Which is fucking WILD coming from someone who believes that a child getting the measles and literally dying is better than potentially risking getting vaccinated and becoming, god forbid, autistic. Vaccines do not cause autism, just so we’re crystal fucking clear. There once was a time when an established consensus amongst experts and major medical associations meant that we believed something was most likely true, but the entire MAHA movement has infected this country with the belief that widely held consensus is less likely to mean something is true and more likely to mean there is a conspiracy or misguided group think or some secret cabal controlling the narrative. Sometimes, most of the time, when the experts have reached a consensus on something, it’s because it’s true, at least based on what we as the human species has discovered so far about science and the human body.

RFK Jr went on to croak that HHS would also be sending manufacturing warnings to companies that produce breast binders, the type that are often used by trans folks as a form of gender affirming care. Those companies will be warned that false advertisement of breast binders as a form of gender affirming care will face penalties because they will be violating HHS regulations. He was very concerned about breast binders causing difficulty for users ability to breastfeed later in life–motherhood and the ability to procreate was touched on numerous times throughout this press conference in ways that were subtle but deeply troubling. These people are genuinely concerned with the ability of people with uteruses, whether they like it or not, to remain cisgender and not tamper with their god given body so that they may eventually successfully procreate. The number of times god was mentioned throughout the press conference is also deeply unsettling.

RFK Jr also cited to the ADA, the americans with disabilities act, saying he aims to remove gender dysphoria as a disability covered under the ADA. So in the same breath as saying he wants to help and protect youth who have gender dysphoria, he pledges to remove legal protections that have been extended to them. Protection under the ADA would include things like reasonable accommodations and protection from discrimination, which impact not just trans youth but all trans individuals from work to school and everywhere else they may be.

RFK Jr, along with the other speakers at the press conference, repeatedly cited to a recently released HHS study that purportedly backs up all of the science he claims supports this rejection of gender affirming care. It’s a 300-page report, I sifted through it so you don’t have to, though you can and it is in the sources linked in my description. I admittedly did not read the entire 300 pages but, what do you know, I didn’t have to read all of it to find glaring shortcomings and omissions. I’ll get to that in a second.

After RFK Jr, America’s favorite TV Doctor, Dr. Oz, director of the center for medicare and medicaid, took to the podium to criticize gender affirming care as “politicized medical care” that takes a “fast track approach to care.” He says repeatedly that trans youth are being taken advantage of by a system dedicated to profiting off of medical treatment that they “wandered into mistakenly in a whimsical moment.” Which, just for the record based on both stats, doctor testimony, and anecdotal evidence, children are not being fast tracked to gender affirming care like irreversible surgeries or long term use of puberty blockers. No one anywhere in the country, parents or doctors alike, is saying okay Johnny thinks she’s a girl, I have no follow up questions and would like to sign her up for bottom surgery poste haste. NO ONE IS DOING THAT. Every parent who cares about the wellbeing of their child, and every doctor who works with trans youth, is incredibly concerned with the well-being of that child. They understand that gender transition is not something to be done on a whim. They understand that each child is an individual who needs individual support and care, and that any change should be done slowly and incrementally and with the support of usually numerous medical and mental health professionals. NO ONE is willy nilly pushing these kids into intense medical interventions. That is not what’s happening. And just because there are parents and schools who are quick to accept when a child asks they use different pronouns and call them by a different name, these fucking nut jobs are assuming that means those same people would be quick to sign any such kid up for the next available mastectomy and that doctors providing trans-affirming care are just performing top and bottom surgery on children like a conveyor belt. None of what Oz or any of these whackos talked about at this press conference was even remotely based on the lived experiences of the vast majority of trans youth or on the actual medical practices of doctors who provide gender affirming care. But as with everything in this administration, facts and figures and science and data doesn’t fucking matter. It’s just infuriating to watch it in real time.

Dr. Oz, who has made a fortune and gained considerable fame from exploiting his medical degree, expressed a deep concern for predatory medical and pharmaceutical companies who stand to make a fortune off getting these trans kids hooked on hormones. That’s right, I forgot about the billions that a few thousand trans kids spend per year on T. Huuuuge market, giant profit potential. All of the concerns these people purport to have are based on nothing, because the reality is that this entire attack on trans people, and trans youth in particular, is meant to further a bigoted ideology based on eugenics and transphobia that is so far from concerned about the wellbeing of children or trans adults or anything other than furthering their fucked up, hateful ideology. Like I have tried so hard to stand in their shoes and think maybe they genuinely think that they are helping children here, but they can’t. There’s no way. It is so flimsy, so easy to peel away the veneer of what they claim to care about, so easy to discredit every single one of their talking points, I cannot fathom that any of these people genuinely believe it when they say they are just in it to protect the children. CHILDREN ARE DYING, KIM.

Then Dr. Martin Makary, the FDA commissioner, spoke about the quote “modern day mccarthyism” that is being experienced by the brave doctors and scientists who are willing to step forward, thwart the mainstream consensus, and proudly stand by their bigoted transphobic deeply flawed “scientific findings.” Like Dr. Makary and others who spoke are clearly REVELING in their newfound ability to openly spout bigoted, transphobic rhetoric and bunk science and do so publicly and with so much power from this administration that the entire medical community can scream about how they’re wrong and they will still have the legitimacy of being backed by an entire government. I’m sure it has been really hard for them to feel so persecuted in their bigoted beliefs. To feel silenced by an entire medical community that is more dedicated to doing good scientific research than they are. Sounds hard. This really is their time to shine.

Admiral Brian Christine, Assistant secretary for health, gets the award for then saying the Naziest thing at the press conference. [insert clip.] “In order for America to be great again, we need strong, healthy boys and girls, who will have the chance to know the joy of coming together as one and starting their own family one day.” (28 minute mark) There is so much to unpack there, I don’t even know where to begin. “Coming together as one” is such a creepy way to describe fucking. Admiral Brian Christine is deeply deeply concerned about underage kids ability to fuck each other one day, but in the not gay way, missionary, the way god intended. And the “strong, healthy boys and girls” to procreate is an idea stripped quite literally straight from Nazi propaganda like sign this guy up as the director of the hitler youth he is GUNNING for the role.

Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, director of the National Institutes of Health, claims that there is only weak scientific evidence to suggest that gender affirming care prevents suicide in trans youth. Or, as he puts it, that you must allow your kid to transition or else they will commit suicide–which is a misrepresentation of the science. Because of course there isn’t clear evidence that it’s a zero sum thing, if you do not “let your kid transition” then they WILL commit suicide. That’s not what the evidence has ever suggested. It has suggested, over and over and over again, that the LIKELIHOOD of suicidality is decreased when a child is given medically and developmentally appropriate gender affirming care. But what's Bhattacharya’s source for this misinformation? That 300 page HHS study, of course.

Dr. Bhattacharya further announced that they will be removing “trans supporting” research and funding from the National Institutes of Health archives, and instead supporting science that will help kids that regret their transition. So now they’re focused on a TINY fraction of a TINY FRACTION of kids. So they want to save the trans kids but they won’t do any research about any of them until after they’ve transitioned, changed their minds, and then detransitioned, something that happens in such a rare number of cases that they will struggle to even find a large enough population to create any large scale studies.

Next came Jim O’Neill, deputy health and human services secretary, and I don’t know what it is about this guy but I could IMMEDIATELY tell he was a real piece of work. And I’m going one by one through these people because I want y’all to look the people in the eyes who are trying to push their bigoted transphobic ideologies down your throats. We should know their names and their faces. So Jim O’Neill. He opens with a banger, saying that “women are women, men are men, men can never become women and women can never become men.” To much applause. He calls this a “fundamental truth.” For a group so concerned with science they don’t seem concerned with backing up this “fundamental truth” with any evidence. He calls gender affirming care “A hatred for nature, as god designed it.” [insert clip] And at this point I had to pause and figure out who the fuck this guy is and WHAT DO YOU KNOW he has DEEP ties to Peter Thiel. And literally zero scientific training or background. He was CEO of the Thiel foundation, managing director of Clarium Capital, Thiel’s hedge fund, co-founded the Thiel fellowship, he was managing director of Mithril Capital, another Thiel affiliated venture capital fund that funds Palantir, among other companies. He is a major supporter of free-market healthcare, advocating that the FDA should lower regulations so people can access medicine at their own risk and prove efficacy of a drug AFTER it’s been legalized. He was a big proponent of ivermectin for curing COVID. He is also deeply invested in anti-aging biotech firms, I assume of the bio-hacking variety where the goal is to live forever instead of, you know, providing basic healthcare for all, which is a favorite among Thiel and his many associates. It does not, however, seem to be going super well for Jim. This is Jim O’Neill in 2017. This is Jim O’Neill’s profile picture on Twitter. This is what Jim O’Neill looks like today. There is zero information out there about how old he is, but he graduated from Yale in 1990, so if he was 22 when he graduated that makes him about 57 years young. Woof, my friend. But even though all the articles I read about him said he was a soft spoken methodical guy who just loves anti-aging science, his words at this press conference were far more alarming than someone who just loves science. He is not, again, a doctor or a person with any science background at all. His degree from Yale was in the humanities.

So he’s really really interested in novel forms of medical intervention, in fast tracking approval so consumers can act as guinea pigs, but he really really takes issue with these rigorously tested and studied gender affirming care interventions that are supported by every major, credible medical institution. Also, I’m quite certain Jim O’Neill is a gay man. Partially because I mean just look at him. But also there was a man holding the bible at his swearing in ceremony–that is typically reserved for partners or family of the person being sworn in. I could not figure out who this man is, could be nobody, but my point is I’m pretty sure Jim O’Neill is gay and for a lot of these people, every bigoted accusation is an admission. Sometimes. And it is wild to watch a person who is presumably a member of the LGBTQ community being so ready to throw the T in LGBTQ under the bus, assuming that all the other letters won’t eventually be targeted as well. The self-loathing is fucking palpable. But we know there’s transphobia in the queer community. When you listen to this man speak you can tell he’s a fucking zealot. He is zealously passionate about his ideology to the point that he has dedicated his whole life to it. He is a zealot with zero scientific background. And he’s the SECOND IN COMMAND at the department of health and human services.

Next, 21 year old Chloe Cole spoke, she’s one of the “detransitioners” they love to parade around as proof of their hateful ideology. She is one of the rare number of kids who got a double mastectomy at 16 years old, and one of the even rarer number of kids who later regretted the surgery. She, too, was very concerned with procreation. “That mastectomy ensured I would never be able to nourish whatever children I might one day have.” According to her, every child deserves to be loved for “the beautiful way that they were created in their mother’s womb.” But of course not if that way includes gender dysphoria that they would like to receive gender affirming care for. Then, hate. Not god’s plan!!! “It’s not too late to accept the beautiful way that god has created you.” She said.

After everyone was finished speaking, the group took questions from the media. You can tell the woman taking questions had a pretty tight hold on WHO would be allowed to ask questions, and even the mainstream media that did get a moment to ask questions after this batshit fucking crazy press conference, like from CNN and ABC, lobbed them the most softball bullshit questions you can think of. While answering those softball questions, Dr Oz compared gender affirming care to lobotomies and says he hopes they become a prehistoric relic.

Okay, so like I said, this entire press conference, the declaration from RFK Jr’s brain worm, and the proposed rules from the centers from medicare and medicaid are ALL predicated on this extensive, 300 page report that HHS commissioned and was released to the public in November. It is linked in the sources in the description. It is called Treatment for Pediatric Gender Dysphoria. Review of Evidence and Best Practices. And, again, I didn’t have to dig too deep to find major flaws in this report. The first paragraph of chapter 1 lays out how fucking insignificant this is for the average American. The fact that SO much time, effort, and government resources is put towards restricting and persecuting what amounts to a TINY fraction of the US population is actually fucking shocking for a party that claims to want a smaller government. The report says that 3.3% of adolescents identify as trans and another 2.2% question whether they might be. That’s just over 5% of high schoolers, for those of you keeping track at home. And that .1% of 17 year olds received hormone therapy between 2018 and 2022. And they got this information from, what do you know, a Biden-era CDC study that goes on to say that 1 in 4 trans high school students experienced violence at school, 1 in 4 miss school for safety concerns, and 72% of trans students felt regularly sad or hopeless, concluding quote “When schools implement LGBTQ+ supportive policies and practices, all students experience better mental health.” The report goes on to say quote “Having supportive families and peers, feeling connected to family and school, having affirmed name and pronouns used consistently by others, and having a sense of pride of identity are protective factors for transgender students that buffer the effects of minority stressors and promote better mental health.” Strange it’s almost like they cherry picked from the data to support their bias, wild.

But the white paper is peer reviewed!!! They said it at the press conference, it’s displayed prominently on the HHS page with the report. That must mean it’s reliable and trustworthy, RIGHT???? You could take HHS on its word that it’s peer reviewed and think well golly it must be solid science then, right?? Or you can go to the peer reviews themselves, which they published, and see that the American Psychiatric Association reviewed the white paper and concluded quote “while the HHS Report purports to be a thorough, evidence-based assessment of gender-affirming care for transgender youth, its underlying methodology lacks sufficient transparency and clarity for its findings to be taken at face value. Key elements including literature selection on criteria, analytical frameworks, and justification for excluding other studies, and key findings in studies on which the Report relies, are either underexplained or absent. As a result, the Report’s claims fall short of the standard of methodological rigor that should be considered a prerequisite for policy guidance in clinical care.” OH okay so the peers reviewed it and the reviews are in: it’s fucking bad. It’s bad science. No other major medical association reviewed the paper, just a bunch of random individuals, some of whom happen to hold medical degrees. I can’t speak to the medical field but as a trained lawyer with a law degree I can confirm you can find a lawyer out there to confirm anything you want, especially if you pay them. And even the random hacks they were able to find to “peer review” their report pointed out things like a concerning lack of transparency on the conflicts of interests the authors might have or on the methodology used in the report. The entire basis of the Trump regime, of MAGA, of MAHA, of all of this, is that they are betting they just need one degree of separation from the truth to convince the American people of something. I mean sometimes they outright lie and contradict themselves and trust that their base won’t bat and eye, and they’re usually right, but especially when it comes to things they are claiming are “science-based” or things they claim to be “the law” they know that all they have to do is fund the right report and find the right scientist or lawyer to say the thing they want, and then just harp on that report and that purported “expert” over and over and over again. And if you repeat something loud enough for long enough you can then point to it as “established fact” without even having to cite to the underlying bunk report you funded. That’s what the entire thing is built upon, and we’re seeing it in real time with this presser and this phony white paper, and it undermines everything this country stands for. It undermines our reputation in the legal and scientific communities. It undermines that “soft power” we’ve built over DECADES of at least ATTEMPTING to produce sound science and academic papers to build up trust so that everywhere around the world people depend on the United States to be thought leaders in these areas, to be trustworthy sources of truth. And of course that’s not always the case and you shouldn’t just blindly trust something without confirming its sourcing and biases, but we have now reached a place where ANYTHING coming out of the government claiming to be truth must be questioned and sifted through with a fine tooth comb, something they KNOW that the American people generally do not have the time for. So they write a paper, slap “peer reviewed” on it and say it’s all there, all the science is there, clear as day, and now these few brave scientists are willing to put their necks out and stand up for what the science actually says, to break away from the group think and stand up for the REAL truth. Which is messaging they know will speak directly to their base of supporters who have likely faced push back from friends and family about the whackjob “science” they believe or positions they hold on vaccines or essential oils or whatever. They’ll see themselves in these scientists bravely coming forward to be bigots in the limelight and they will think I’ve known it all along. I KNEW I was right. And it will confirm their biases and they will accept it as fact and then do the regime’s work of spreading the good word–did you hear, they’re attaching fake penises to little girls and cutting off their boobs and endangering kids, just think of the children!! Meanwhile it’s literally a tiny fraction of a percent of kids who identify as trans or wonder whether they are trans, and a smaller fraction still who actually move forward with any form of gender-affirming care. And those who do actually receive the care do so under the advice and guidance of their parents and their doctors, doctors for whom gender affirming care represents such a tiny fraction of the business their clinic or hospital conducts that to claim they are motivated by greed and profit is actually fucking assinine. Doctors, the vast majority of whom care about their patients, understand at least the basics of how to treat children given that that is what they specialize in, doctors who follow the standard procedures outlined by every major medical association, which include things like mental health care long before any medical intervention and almost never include any form of surgical intervention in children under 18.

And those who weren’t asked to peer review the fake white paper had a lot to say about last week’s announcement. Per CNN ““Allowing the government to determine which patient groups deserve care sets a dangerous precedent, and children and families will bear the consequences,” said Dr. Susan Kressly, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

“Patients, their families, and their physicians – not politicians or government officials – should be the ones to make decisions together about what care is best for them. The government’s actions today make that task harder, if not impossible, for families of gender-diverse and transgender youth.” The article goes on to say quote “Major mainstream medical associations – including the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association, the Endocrine Society, the American Psychological Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry – have supported such care and agree that it’s the gold standard of clinically appropriate care that can provide lifesaving treatment for children and adults. Professional medical organizations do not recommend surgery for children as a part of care, and research shows that it’s rare among transgender or gender-diverse teens.”

The day before the press conference, on Wednesday last week, the House of Representatives passed a bill, introduced by Marjorie Taylor Greene, that would criminalize doctors for administering gender affirming care, including surgery but also puberty blockers and other care, with 10 year prison sentences for doctors convicted under the law. That bill passed in the house on Wednesday, though experts are saying it would not have enough support to pass the Senate and become law. And these are just the latest in this regime’s attempts to root out and persecute a tiny minority of already marginalized people, including, as CNN reported, quote “eliminating mention of trans people on federal websites, halting data collection on health issues, removing trans people from the military and suing states that allow trans athletes to play on high school sports teams.” The walls are increasingly closing in on our trans community, and while some families have chosen to move to blue states to escape the worst of the laws coming down in red states, this is the federal government which is increasingly showing willingness to reach into blue states to enact its hateful ideologies.

Okay, so what do we do. Other than helping to fund mutual aid requests in your area and in your network to support the trans people you know and love, the thing about these proposed regulations that would defund hospitals and gender-affirming care is that they are just proposed rules at this point. They have not been enacted yet. All proposed regulations have to go through a notice and comment period. So you can comment directly on these proposed rules. I personally submitted a comment on the rule that would cut Medicaid and CHIPS funding for gender affirming care. The other one is the one that has to do with cutting funding to entire hospitals for their gender affirming care practices. Comment on both or whichever one is most applicable to you. In the sources, linked in the description, I have included a detailed guide for how to submit a public comment. As of this recording there are only 185 comments on the one I submitted a comment for, and there are almost 700,000 of you who subscribe to this channel so make your voice heard. I even included a model comment based on the one I submitted, again linked in the sources below, so you can copy and paste and edit based on your circumstances. Anyone in the public is allowed to make their comment, and I highly encourage you to push back on these measures. If you are a trans person trying to get the fuck out of here, there are a growing number of guides and resources to help, I found one at TransLash called the Trans relocation guide: finding trans asylum and safe havens, I have linked that in the sources as well. Take care of yourselves, support the trans youth and adults in your life, as I say at the end of pretty much every episode these days, we have to turn toward our communities in order to make it through this regime. That is where our power and agency lies. Merry Christmas to those who celebrate, I will be back on Monday the 29th for the final week of 2025.

If you’d like to support my work this holiday season, consider joining here on YouTube by clicking the big join button below, or supporting me over on Patreon, patreon dot com slash Leeja miller, where you get access to all these episodes completely ad free. Thank you to my multi-platinum patrons Christopher Cowan, Amber Arwood, Evan Friedley, Marc, Sarah Shelby, Art, David, L’etranger (Lukus), Thomas Johnson, Anthony Jiles, and Tay. Your generosity makes this channel what it is, so thank you!

And if you liked this episode, you’ll like the one from last week about the bombshell Vanity Fair profile of White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles.

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