The following is an edited transcript of an interview between Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief John Bickley and The Heritage Foundation’s Sarah Parshall Perry on a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/podcasts/morning-wire/high-court-weighs-tennessee-s-transgender-law-12-8-24" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Sunday Extra edition of Morning Wire.</a>
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments Wednesday on what’s being called the marquee case of this term. In United States V. Skrmetti, three trans identifying teens, a Memphis physician and the Biden administration challenged a Tennessee state law that aims to protect children by banning puberty blockers and hormone therapy for the purpose of attempting to change a child’s gender.
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JOHN: Joining us to break down this week’s oral arguments in United States V. Skrmetti and the broader implications is Sarah Parshall Perry, senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation. Sarah, thanks for coming on – always good to talk to you.
SARAH: Thank you for having me.
JOHN: So, this week we had the oral arguments for this landmark case. Now, we here at the Daily Wire have followed this case closely, in part because of the role <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/podcasts/morning-wire/high-court-weighs-tennessee-s-transgender-law-12-8-24" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Sunday Extra edition of Morning Wire.</a> in this. His investigation into Vanderbilt helped prompt the law that this center’s on. First, can you walk us through how we got to the Supreme Court hearing?
SARAH: Yes. This actually came from a parental rights challenge. Three parents of transgender minors brought this challenge against SB1, which was a law that was enacted with bipartisan support in the state of Tennessee, saying that not only did it interfere with their rights to achieve this particular very controversial and experimental medical care for their children, but it was also a sex discriminatory law, and that would make it illegal, unconstitutional, under the Equal Protection Clause. Well, both the Federal Trial Court and the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals found for Tennessee, basically determining that the state of Tennessee had satisfied the constitutional bar, and it had every interest in protecting minors from unproven sexism, scientifically sketchy procedures, and that this was well within their police power as the state. Well, by the time it got to the Sixth Circuit, the United States had filed a motion to intervene. It can do so when a state law challenging an equal protection clause violation is at issue. That&#8217;s what they did here. And so by the time it got to the Supreme Court, it only granted review of the United States&#8217;s claim and not the parental rights claim. So what we heard was oral arguments specifically dedicated to whether or not this was sex discrimination under the Equal Protection Clause.
JOHN: So, let&#8217;s unpack that a bit more. What is the argument for this being sex discrimination and the argument against it? 
SARAH: Well, Elizabeth Prelogar, the U.S. Solicitor General for the United States, argues for the Biden administration that because the law makes a distinction on boys who are identified as boys at birth who want to get testosterone, but will not allow girls who are identified as boys who want as male at birth – being transgender, of course – they cannot get access to testosterone, that that&#8217;s a facially discriminatory characteristic. But what the law actually does, and the state legislators were very careful to engage in this type of analysis, is to simply restrict for both males and females any access to the drugs determined by their age alone – which the Supreme Court has never held to be a class requiring elevated scrutiny — and also based on the use to which the drugs would be put. So restricted only based on use and age, nothing more, and treated men and women equally under the law.
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JOHN: And to be clear, what is barred here is to use these controversial procedures, these hormone treatments, these puberty blockers, in order to attempt to change the gender or sex of a minor, correct?
SARAH: That&#8217;s exactly it. In fact, there is no restriction on the use of these puberty blockers for endocrine disorders like precocious puberty, which obviously indicates that those are appropriate medical uses. And of course, the state of Tennessee restricts the use of other drugs for particular purposes as well. It wants to make sure that the dangers of “off-label use” — And that&#8217;s exactly what&#8217;s involved here. This is off-label use of unproven drugs for gender dysphoria. They want to make sure that that use is restricted, and they&#8217;re constitutionally permitted to do that.
JOHN: For those who aren&#8217;t familiar with that term, “off-label” – which is actually crucial in this case – what does that mean in this context?
SARAH: The FDA, the Food and Drug Administration, has never approved puberty blockers for &#8220;gender dysphoria.&#8221; It has never approved those particular drugs for which these minor children and their parents, and the United States, have all argued to get access to. Instead, it&#8217;s only approved them for endocrine disorders. So the state of Tennessee does not want minor children assuming the risk of off-label use and making determinations that could have lifetime consequences.
JOHN: Now, judging from what we heard on Wednesday, where do you think the justices are leaning in this case?
SARAH: I think there&#8217;s a very strong reason to believe that at least five of the justices are going to be skeptical of the United States’ arguments. In fact, Justice Alito himself was fairly excoriating in his refusal to allow Elizabeth Preloger, the Solicitor General, to be creative with her legal analysis and to ignore the science. In fact, he said that she&#8217;s relegated to a footnote in the bombshell Cass Review Report, which came out of England earlier this year, but in fact the science itself is we also know that Justice Kavanaugh said there is &#8220;a red light&#8221; here to prevent us from getting involved in new areas and constitutionalizing new areas of medicine. Justice Barrett said this is a question better left for the legislature, as did the Chief Justice himself, who actually quoted, without citing the case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women&#8217;s Health by saying this issue is better suited for the people and their elected representatives. Strangely silent was Justice Gorsuch, who had nothing to say during two and a half hours, and he may be the swing vote in this.
<div id="attachment_838801" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-838801" class="size-large wp-image-838801" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-2187611773-864x576.jpg" alt="Police stand between demonstrators in support of gender affirming treatment, left, and demonstrators in support of the Tennessee case against gender affirming treatment for minors, right, outside the US Supreme Court in Washington, DC, US, on Wednesday, Dec. 4, 2024. The US Supreme Court is considering the constitutionality of state laws that ban gender-affirming treatments for minors less than five years after the justices outlawed job discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation." width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-2187611773-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-2187611773-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-2187611773-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-2187611773.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />Credit: Photographer: Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images.</div>
JOHN: Justice Gorsuch was notably silent. Do you have any sense of why that might have been the case?
SARAH: You know, it could be one of two things. First of all, I think it&#8217;s wise to remember that Justice Gorsuch was the majority opinion author in Bostock versus Clayton County dating to the year 2020. And in that case, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, relative to employment discrimination, was expanded not only to prohibit sex discrimination, but also to prohibit anti-racism and gender identity discrimination. Now, he was that opinion&#8217;s majority author. He may have been dealing with the fact that there is now a recognition that the Bostock opinion was a Pandora&#8217;s box. The Biden administration has used the Bostock opinion to expand the administrative state, and to force gender identity into concepts like medicine, school lunches, education, and more. That is something I think with which he will have to ultimately reckon because Elizabeth Preloger, the Solicitor General, mentioned the similarity to Bostock, so he very much may have been curling his toes underneath the table.
JOHN: So will this ruling potentially override that – will this set a new precedent in terms of that discrimination clause writ large?
SARAH: Well, as the other justices noted, particularly conservative justices, the analysis for a constitutional claim, a violation, for example, of the Equal Protection Clause and whether it discriminates based on sex, is slightly different than a discriminatory analysis based on sex under civil rights law. The Constitution holds to a higher bar, what&#8217;s called intermediate or heightened scrutiny, and that&#8217;s a higher bar for a state to achieve. But that analysis is different enough where Bostock is different from the current issue. I do think what it will do, however, is pin back the ears a little bit, the reach of the Bostock determination, and ensure that equal protection claims are not brought alongside statutory civil rights discrimination claims.
JOHN: All right so that was the conservative response – what did we hear from the Left-leaning justices?
SARAH: Unsurprisingly, there was a lot of histrionic commentary about trans kids dying and that these are proven scientific interventions, when in fact we know that is not the case. But the most interesting comparison came from Justice Kanji Brown Jackson, who cited Loving v. Virginia as a analogous case law study, and in Loving v. Virginia, that was the case in which the Supreme Court invalidated the interracial marriage ban from that state under the Equal Protection Clause, essentially overriding the judgment of the state legislature. She argued for the United States to be able to do so here, but ignored the fact that, once again, sex is not the defining characteristic at issue.
JOHN: Right – and Brown’s questions in particular gained a lot of negative attention online. Now, it&#8217;s notable that the conservatives seem to suggest that this issue is more appropriate to be dealt with by state legislatures rather than the court. And I think the implication there is that science is constantly being updated and reexamined, the best practices are often changing. Is the idea here that a federal court ruling can be too permanent in a sense for medical practices?
SARAH: Well, I&#8217;ll harken back to the Dobbs decision again, and we know the line of viability, for example, that Roe v. Wade set shifted and changed over the fifty years before Dobbs versus Jackson women&#8217;s health. And in writing the majority opinion, Justice Alito mentioned the fact that they should not be constitutionalizing areas of medical regulation. That was wholly within the state&#8217;s authority. I think they are very likely here to make the exact same determination, especially with so recent a ruling like that on the books.
<div id="attachment_838675" style="width: 816px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-838675" class="size-large wp-image-838675" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-2188237026-806x576.jpg" alt="WASHINGTON, DC - DECEMBER 04: Transgender rights supporters and opponent rally outside of the U.S. Supreme Court as the high court hears arguments in a case on transgender health rights on December 04, 2024 in Washington, DC. The Supreme Court is hearing arguments in US v. Skrmetti, a case about Tennessee's law banning gender-affirming care for minors and if it violates the Constitution’s equal protection guarantee." width="806" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-2188237026-806x576.jpg 806w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-2188237026-300x214.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-2188237026-768x549.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-2188237026.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 806px) 100vw, 806px" />Credit: Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images.</div>
JOHN: When do we expect a decision to be handed down on this case?
SARAH: Well, there are quite a number of high-profile decisions, but I would argue this is the most high-profile, which indicates to me we are not likely to see an outcome here until probably the end of June 2025.
JOHN: Okay, so beyond the Supreme Court and constitutional issues here, looking at the broader legal issues here – one of the things that the Matt Walsh investigation uncovered was an apparent financial incentive for promoting the kind of very controversial, permanent treatments that we&#8217;re seeing with these transgender minor operations procedures. Do you foresee legal trouble for those that have been involved in these kinds of programs?
SARAH: That&#8217;s a good question. We know that this is a three to $5 billion a year industry and some estimates are as high as $10 billion. On average, gender medicine yields a doctor $8,000 per single procedure in sole profit. So we know money had to be spent, quite a bit to do with this and with the incentive of doctors to medicalize these minor children, but there is good news. We&#8217;ve already seen a lawsuit coming out of California brought by Harmeet Dhillon&#8217;s law firm and she&#8217;s done excellent work. They are suing Kaiser Permanente for rushing three minor girls, three young teen girls, through the gender medicine gambit without getting informed consent. I do believe a reckoning is coming.
JOHN: You mention Harmeet Dhillon, we actually caught up with her recently and she gave as an overview of her cases involving transition procedures. Here’s some of what she said:
HARMEET: We literally filed the first, second, and third lawsuits on this issue in the country. I think other lawyers are joining us and so these cases are winding their way through the court system or through arbitration, because Kaiser tries to force people into arbitration, so do other medical providers. And one of the issues why there&#8217;s so few cases is because there&#8217;s statute of limitations that are very short that really keep the window very narrow for these young women — largely women — to file lawsuits. And so it&#8217;s heartbreaking the number of people we simply can&#8217;t help because of these statute of limitations issues. I do think that&#8217;s going to make a difference, but the bigger and faster and more effective long term difference is going to be legislatures banning these procedures on children. Medical boards taking away the licenses of doctors who commit medical malpractice, which I believe most of these doctors are doing. I mean, you literally have cases where people go in, some guidance counselor sends them for one session with some rubber stamper who then goes and gets the girl&#8217;s breasts cut off. It&#8217;s shocking and outrageous, it&#8217;s insane and it needs to stop. And we shouldn&#8217;t rely on the courts and lawyers. We should ask Republican legislatures and Democrat legislatures, frankly, if they care about humans, to stop this practice.
JOHN: Final question: How significant will this ruling ultimately be? Is it fair to say that this ruling will change how the issue of laws about trans procedures in the other states are handled by the courts?
SARAH: Yeah, I think that&#8217;s exactly accurate. In fact, there are other cases relative to the notion of gender identity pending on the Supreme Court&#8217;s docket. But I think the first shot across the bow is the particular notion of gender medicine, because that is at bottom such a controversial notion. I do believe for the 26 other states who are watching keenly what happens with Tennessee&#8217;s ban, when they themselves have almost identical bans within their own states. They are very hopeful that the Supreme Court will come down on the side of states rights and their ability to protect minor children, which is something that the Supreme Court has recognized for more than a hundred years.
JOHN: A consequential decision coming this summer. Sarah, thanks so much for coming on. That was Heritage Foundation senior legal fellow Sarah Parshall Perry and this has been a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/podcasts/morning-wire/high-court-weighs-tennessee-s-transgender-law-12-8-24">Sunday Extra edition of Morning Wire.</a>
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Supreme Court Considers Tennessee’s Ban On Treatments For Transgender Minors

‘$5 Billion Industry’: Breaking Down SCOTUS Oral Arguments On Transgender Case

'$5 Billion Industry': Breaking Down SCOTUS Oral Arguments On Transgender Case

Children

Gender

gender ideology

minors

Morning Wire

SCOTUS

Supreme Court

Tennessee

Transgender

The following is an edited transcript of an interview between Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief John Bickley and Tennessee Attorney General John Skrmetti on a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/podcasts/morning-wire/landmark-battle-skrmetti-defends-law-protecting-minors" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Saturday edition of Morning Wire</a>. 
It’s being called the most significant case of the current Supreme Court term — United States v. Skrmetti. The attorney general sat down with us to discuss his pivotal role in the case and his defense of a state law aimed at protecting minors from transgender medical procedures.
* * *
JOHN: Joining us now is Tennessee’s Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti. Attorney General, thank you so much for coming on. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments Wednesday on what is setting up to be a landmark case on transgender medical procedures on minors. Your name is on this marquee case, it’s you against the federal government: United States v. Skrmetti. So, safe to say, no one is more attuned to <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/tennessees-ban-on-child-sex-changes-heads-to-the-supreme-court-live-blog" target="_blank" rel="noopener">what happened this week</a> than you. First, how do you feel the day went for your case? 
SKRMETTI: I thought it went very well. I can&#8217;t predict outcomes, you don&#8217;t know what the court&#8217;s going to do and the justices have months to deliberate. So without talking “horse race” here, I thought the day went well for us. My solicitor general Matt Rice did a great job making our case. I was very happy with his oral argument. The argument went long, which I think reflects that the justices care a lot about this, recognize there are some complexities here from a legal perspective, and that this could be a very consequential precedent. And so they want to get it right. So I thought they explored many issues very thoroughly, and I thought we put out a great case for Tennessee.
JOHN: Yeah, what were some of the questions from the justices that stuck out to you, that could be key in their decision-making?
SKRMETTI: Again, you don&#8217;t want to prognosticate too much, but I think the sex discrimination questions were very important. There was one lengthy line of questioning, but there were a number of questions about how this case might fit into existing sex discrimination case law. And I think that&#8217;s probably going to be a very significant issue for the outcome of the case. I think I can prognosticate that much. But the question is: Is this a sex discrimination case in a constitutional sense? Our position is, it is not, because you&#8217;re not treating like people differently. The argument is because boys can get testosterone, but girls can&#8217;t, and girls can get estrogen, but boys can&#8217;t, that you&#8217;re discriminating on the basis of sex. But our position is there&#8217;s not some universal distribution of hormones out there. You don&#8217;t just give boys testosterone. Anytime a drug is prescribed, it is for the purpose of treating a particular condition. And the evaluation of whether the drug is appropriate depends on that condition. There&#8217;s not some universal access to any given drug. So, if you&#8217;re giving a boy testosterone, for a testosterone deficiency, that&#8217;s relieving medical problems. That&#8217;s curing harms. If you give a girl testosterone for a psychological condition, gender dysphoria, it will create a host of physiological problems – potential lifelong loss of fertility, potential lifelong loss of sexual function. Depending on which hormone you&#8217;re talking about, you can have lifelong problems with blood clots, with tumors, with puberty blockers, bone density disorders, and all of them cause potential lifelong cognitive impairments. So the use of the drug is very contingent on which condition you&#8217;re addressing with it.
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JOHN: Part of this is encapsulated in the concept of off-label usage of drugs. Can you explain what that means for our audience?
SKRMETTI: Sure. So the FDA, kind of adopting the perspective that I just articulated, only evaluates drugs for certain uses. They don&#8217;t say, &#8220;This drug is good, everybody can get as much of it as they want.&#8221; They say, &#8220;This drug is appropriate for treating this condition.&#8221; So, a lot of times, a drug will be approved to treat certain conditions. The FDA doesn&#8217;t have sufficient research to evaluate whether it&#8217;s appropriate for other conditions, but doctors can still sometimes prescribe it. They can prescribe off-label, which means even though the drug is not approved for that use, the doctors have made an informed medical decision to use it in that context, but they&#8217;re still subject to regulation. The state has, for hundreds of years, been regulating the practice of medicine. Even though doctors have a great deal of latitude, there are legal limits on what they can do. Oftentimes those limits are in place because the potential harms dramatically outweigh the potential benefits. The state has made a judgment that it is simply not appropriate to let doctors do what they would otherwise be inclined to do. Of course, those are fairly limited circumstances. We give a lot of latitude to doctors. We have a lot of respect for their training and for their decision-making, but there&#8217;s still a role for regulation there.
JOHN: When your team researched the evidence, the medical justification for why you think this is a fair law in the first place, what did you find in terms of the efficacy of these gender transition procedures for minors? Is there evidence backing up what pro-trans activists will claim about this?
SKRMETTI: Every systematic review of the evidence has determined that there is little to no benefit to minors. There are individual studies – there was some of this in the court. You can attack any given individual study on either side, there are always arguments to be made, but the systematic reviews of the overall research literature have consistently shown no benefit to minors. That&#8217;s why European countries that pioneered the use of these procedures on kids have since reversed course. It&#8217;s not because they suddenly got very politically conservative. It&#8217;s because they looked at the evidence and they determined that, for kids, the risks far outweigh the benefits, that the unexplained dramatic increase in the number of cases was very concerning, that there simply wasn&#8217;t a medical justification for the broad adoption of these treatments in the juvenile context. So they&#8217;ve greatly restricted the availability of these treatments. And that same review of evidence informed Tennessee&#8217;s decision.
JOHN: Now, I wanted to ask you about the parental rights aspects of this law. The pro-trans activists have tried to argue that Tennessee’s law could violate parent’s rights. What do you make of that argument?
SKRMETTI: So when the case was originally filed, there was both the constitutional argument, involving sex discrimination, and a parental rights argument. We won both in the Court of Appeals in the Sixth Circuit. The United States only petitioned for cert on the 14th Amendment issue, and so when the court granted that petition, the only question before them is the equal protection sex discrimination claim. So, the parental rights issue is still lurking out there. Justice Barrett addressed that briefly. Now, there are other situations where parents aren&#8217;t allowed to do what they&#8217;d otherwise be inclined to do. We give parents a great deal of latitude with their children but that doesn&#8217;t mean that they can do whatever they want, particularly in situations where you&#8217;re talking about severely adverse consequences in the long run. Parents can&#8217;t just go ahead and let their kids engage in conduct like that because the kids can&#8217;t meaningfully consent, and the parents can&#8217;t consign them to a life of dealing with the consequences for many, many different choices. This is an area where the state&#8217;s power is near its apex, protecting kids from serious harm.
<div id="attachment_838675" style="width: 816px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-838675" class="size-large wp-image-838675" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-2188237026-806x576.jpg" alt="WASHINGTON, DC - DECEMBER 04: Transgender rights supporters and opponent rally outside of the U.S. Supreme Court as the high court hears arguments in a case on transgender health rights on December 04, 2024 in Washington, DC. The Supreme Court is hearing arguments in US v. Skrmetti, a case about Tennessee's law banning gender-affirming care for minors and if it violates the Constitution’s equal protection guarantee." width="806" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-2188237026-806x576.jpg 806w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-2188237026-300x214.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-2188237026-768x549.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-2188237026.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 806px) 100vw, 806px" />Credit: Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images.</div>
JOHN: Now, as we’ve documented here at the Daily Wire, Tennessee’s law was inspired by an investigation into Vanderbilt’s gender clinic by <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/this-could-be-the-beginning-of-the-end-for-gender-ideology" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Matt Walsh</a> that got the attention of a lot of people not just in the state but across the country. And now over two dozen states have laws similar to Tennessee’s How will this ruling of impact those state laws?
SKRMETTI: Well, presumably if Tennessee&#8217;s law is constitutionally sound, then the other half of the states in the country that have adopted similar laws will similarly survive constitutional scrutiny, and it will allow those states to exercise their sovereign authority to regulate the medical profession in a way that protects kids. So, this is definitely a case that will have broader consequences than just within the borders of Tennessee.
JOHN: A larger question, about the cultural context of this: We just saw an election where Republicans gained 10 points or more in almost every single state, even in very deep blue areas – even if they didn&#8217;t vote for Trump, they moved in the direction of Republicans. And one of the most cited issues was the transgender agenda. Do you see this year as a turning point on this issue? 
SKRMETTI: So I think it&#8217;s an issue that&#8217;s front of mind for a lot of people because the country has moved, at least in part, very, very far, very, very fast over the past few years. We&#8217;ve just seen radical changes in the rhetoric, in mainstream conversations about gender identity. To tell someone 10 years ago this would be the big case of this term at the Supreme Court, I think, would have baffled most Americans. So it&#8217;s something that people are reacting to. But I do think, even if there is a political element to it with respect to the election, it&#8217;s really important to note that this is not a political issue for a lot of people. This was a bipartisan piece of legislation. It was supported by members of both sides of the aisle when it came through the Tennessee legislature. The people advocating for this include, of course, traditional Christian conservative groups, traditional constitutional conservative groups, but also groups that probably don&#8217;t align with us on a lot of issues. There are medical groups that are fairly non-political. There are LGB groups that are very concerned about what they term “transing the gays.” So this is a coalition that&#8217;s much broader than just one side of the political divide. There are a lot of people who are really worried that we have adopted an approach to gender identity issues that&#8217;s going to leave a lot of kids very hurt.
JOHN: There’s certainly evidence that the national sentiment has shifted on this. Final question. The justices will deliver their decision this summer. In the meantime, how does Tennessee handle this particular law in the intervening months?
SKRMETTI: So, our law is currently in effect, and we will enforce it. That means we&#8217;re going to be protecting Tennessee kids from these lifelong treatments. One important fact is, the science shows, the evidence shows most kids dealing with gender dysphoria will outgrow it. It&#8217;s a hard thing to deal with, it&#8217;s a hard thing for everybody to deal with, but most of these kids who are being steered toward these life-altering treatments would be fine if they were just given time – and we want to make sure they have that time.
JOHN: Well, attorney general, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us.
SKRMETTI: Thank you. Take care.
JOHN: That was Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti and this has been a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/podcasts/morning-wire/landmark-battle-skrmetti-defends-law-protecting-minors" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Saturday edition of Morning Wire</a>.
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AG Skrmetti

‘A Very Consequential Precedent’: AG Skrmetti Unpacks Landmark Supreme Court Case

'A Very Consequential Precedent': AG Skrmetti Unpacks Landmark Supreme Court Case

Attorney General

Matt Walsh

The legal team for Dr. Ethan Haim, the doctor who exposed Texas Children’s Hospital in May 2023 — revealing that the facility had lied about ending its transgender medical program and was still performing attempted transition procedures on children as young as 11 — ripped the Biden Department of Justice for seeking a gag order targeting Haim in his legal case with the government.
Haim’s claims were originally published in an <a href="https://www.city-journal.org/article/sex-change-procedures-at-texas-childrens-hospital">explosive story</a> by journalist Christopher Rufo. In June 2023, Haim said he knew he was being targeted by the DOJ when federal agents visited his home; the DOJ  attempted to charge him with four felony counts of violating HIPAA. “The DOJ has based their case, in large part, on the claim that Haim had no reason to access Texas Children’s Hospital records after he finished a surgical rotation at the hospital in January 2021,” The Daily Wire <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/exclusive-new-info-destroys-doj-case-against-trans-surgery-whistleblower-lawyers-say">reported.</a>
“Today, @TheJusticeDept filed a reply supporting its motion for a gag order against our legal team and @EithanHaim,” The Burke Law Group, representing Haim, posted in a <a href="https://x.com/BurkeLawTweets/status/1863803194310054127">thread</a> on X. “They dispute our charges of government misconduct, saying that we mischaracterize the facts. Yet much like previous censorship efforts by this administration, it is the federal government that is purveying misinformation, and it is all on the judicial record.”
“The government’s assertion that the prosecution is trying to ‘uphold the law’ rings hollow because it has not attempted to defend most of HIPAA, completely abandoning the Privacy Rule,” the thread continues. “The idea that the prosecutors are nobly doing so ‘in the face of constant public rhetoric’ demonstrates yet again that they believe they are entitled to prosecute @EithanHaim without public scrutiny of the immense power they wield.”
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“While the prosecution tries to make it sound like its gag order is reasonable, it would completely prevent Dr. Haim or his counsel from criticizing the prosecution, no matter how correct the criticism,” they state. ”The prosecution tries to make its case by painting Dr. Haim’s and the defense’s critical tweets as inaccurate. But as the defense already explained in its own filing, all of the public criticism has been richly deserved.”
“The government attempts to use safety concerns to shut down debate,” the law group declares. “It suggests that the ‘extreme rhetoric’ could harm the career public prosecutors and federal agents who put felons away for a living, even though they have received no threats. Yet the hypocrisy is worse than that. One X post the government complains about is a post by Dr. Haim calling the prosecutors modern day woke aristocrats. But the government omits the context—he was skewering them for the motion for the gag order because the government tried to justify the gag order due to ‘online bullying’ when the prosecution can send armed agents and strip someone of their rights by just an accusation.”
On November 24, Haim had written on X :
<blockquote>
The DOJ&#8217;s justification for a gag order is that they are concerned with &#8220;online bullying.&#8221;  This perfectly encapsulates the defining feature of the modern day woke aristocrat.   They zealously deploy the threat or the outright use of state-sanctioned violence against those who challenge their political ideology yet cast themselves as the victim when regular citizens stand up, take notice, and utilize their first amendment right to criticize their tyrannical behavior. 
These prosecutors have no qualms about sending me to prison for a decade. They have no problem inventing new crimes to do so.   They had no problem sending heavily armed US Marshals to my home at 7AM even though I am a law-abiding citizen with no criminal history.   They had no problem taking away my right to possess firearms knowing the legitimate death threats I would face from radical transgender activists.   And I don&#8217;t bring this up to garner sympathy for myself but rather to demonstrate the magnitude of their hypocrisy.   They have no problem with any of the above, but they have a major problem with anyone noticing it happening.   Their corrupt gambit relies on the silence of their target to legitimize their corruption. In my case, they knocked on the wrong door. I simply refuse to voluntarily comply with my own destruction.
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
The DOJ&#39;s justification for a gag order is that they are concerned with &quot;online bullying.&quot;
This perfectly encapsulates the defining feature of the modern day woke aristocrat. 
They zealously deploy the threat or the outright use of state-sanctioned violence against those who… <a href="https://t.co/vqQZVm7wAo">pic.twitter.com/vqQZVm7wAo</a>
&mdash; Eithan Haim MD (@EithanHaim) <a href="https://twitter.com/EithanHaim/status/1860736560460677615?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 24, 2024</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
&nbsp;
Mary Margaret Olohan contributed to this article.
RELATED: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/exclusive-new-info-destroys-doj-case-against-trans-surgery-whistleblower-lawyers-say">EXCLUSIVE: New Info Destroys DOJ Case Against Trans Surgery Whistleblower, Lawyers Say</a>

Dr. Eithan Haim

Legal Team For Trans Surgery Whistleblower Rips Biden DOJ For Seeking Gag Order

Biden-Harris administration

Courts

Ethan Haim

Politics

Texas Children's Hospital

transgender surgery

A judge on Monday upheld a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/missouri" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Missouri</a> law that bans doctors from performing transgender procedures on children. 
Cole County Circuit Judge R. Craig Carter <a href="https://ago.mo.gov/wp-content/uploads/Noe-v.-Parson-trial-order.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ruled</a> that the state’s Save Adolescents from Experimentation (SAFE) Act does not violate the constitution, siding with GOP Governor Mike Parson, who was sued over the law. The law bans giving minors puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and performing surgeries like mastectomies on girls who identify as boys. 
Carter’s decision, which cited the numerous medical risks and dangers of transgender procedures, comes before the U.S. Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments on a challenge to a similar law in Tennessee on December 4. 
“The Court has left Missouri’s law banning child mutilation in place, a resounding victory for our children. We are the first state in the nation to successfully defend such a law at the trial court level,” said Attorney General Andrew Bailey, who defended the law in a two-week trial. “I’m extremely proud of the thousands of hours my office put in to shine a light on the lack of evidence supporting these irreversible procedures. We will never stop fighting to ensure Missouri is the safest state in the nation for children.”
The suit was brought by the ACLU of Missouri and Lambda Legal on behalf of a parent and her minor child. 
Carter rejected arguments that the treatments were medically backed and that Missouri’s law violated the equal protection clause. He said that there was “an almost total lack of consensus as to the medical ethics of adolescent gender dysphoria treatment.”
He argued that if he followed the logic of the plaintiffs, “any person – including a minor – would be able to do anything from meth, to ecstasy, to abortion as long as a single medical professional was willing to recommend it.”
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Carter pointed to research showing that many minors naturally outgrow gender dysphoria and noted the medical harms of the procedures. 
“The gender dysphoria treatment prohibited by Missouri uses drugs and surgeries to either inhibit normal healthy human growth or surgically remove and replace healthy human organs,” he wrote. “Such an approach to treatment is well outside normal medicine, and medical ethicists are unable to agree on the propriety thereof.”
Missouri is one of 26 states that have banned transgender procedures on minors in recent years.

Four Surgeons discuss each Other Surgical Precision and Healthcare Expertise  before the Operation case

‘Resounding Victory’: Judge Upholds Missouri Law Banning Trans Procedures On Children

Missouri

trans

U.S.

The following is an edited transcript of a recent interview between Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief John Bickley and Harmeet Dhillon, managing partner at The Dhillon Law Group.
Post-election polling shows that the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/how-kamalas-focus-on-gender-ideology-cost-her-the-election" target="_blank" rel="noopener">transgender issue</a> was a top three issue that drove voters to Trump and away from Harris. The data comes as more states are shutting down transgender procedures for minors and lawsuits are beginning to mount against healthcare professionals who’ve pushed the trans agenda.
* * *
JOHN: Joining us to discuss is Harmeet Dhillon, whose legal firm the Dhillon Law Group has been leading the fight against potentially permanent procedures performed on children. Harmeet, thanks for coming on.
HARMEET: Thanks for having me.
JOHN: First, many have said that the trans agenda – including boys in girls sport and trans surgeries for prisoners and illegal immigrants – was a &#8220;sleeper issue&#8221; this year. We&#8217;ve done some <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/harris-pledged-to-use-taxpayer-money-to-fund-sex-change-surgeries-for-illegal-aliens-in-detention-report" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reporting</a> at Daily Wire about this. Do you see data that it did in fact impact this election?
HARMEET: Well, I would say the data that I saw was from the Trump campaign and its allies, and they certainly focused hard on that issue. And I&#8217;m sure that was in response to data. We&#8217;ve done some work, a lot of work actually. We&#8217;ve been a national leader on the issue of suing doctors who mutilate girls and also representing parents whose civil rights are violated by not having access to the information they need to parent their children properly on this issue and many other issues. So we&#8217;ve done a lot of litigation on it. It did pick up in the national pulse. Our client, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/to-the-la-times-get-a-life-i-have-lives-to-save" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Chloe Cole</a>, has been prominently featured by some messaging on these issues. She&#8217;s a girl who detransitioned, now a young woman, and is suing Kaiser Permanente here in California over that. She&#8217;s been a landmark voice on these issues, testifying around the country. I know it has motivated legislatures to change the law and that I think is definitely a talking point in those states. A lot of red states, purple states — it&#8217;s a huge issue. It&#8217;s not a huge issue here in California, even on the opposite side. I don&#8217;t see a lot of activists going to bat for this issue. And so I think we are really within a striking distance of President Trump being able to severely cut back on the prevalence of this issue through cutting back federal funding or other ways to do it. For once, America needs to catch up with Europe and the rest of the world where these procedures are simply not being done, for the most part, on children because they don&#8217;t work.
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<div id="attachment_774281" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-774281" class="wp-image-774281 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/08/Chloe_Cole_53808758359-copy-864x576.jpeg" alt="Chloe Cole speaking with attendees at the 2024 Chapter Leadership Summit at Huntington Place in Detroit, Michigan. 13 June 2024. Gage Skidmore from Surprise, AZ, United States of America. Wikimedia Commons." width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/08/Chloe_Cole_53808758359-copy-864x576.jpeg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/08/Chloe_Cole_53808758359-copy-300x200.jpeg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/08/Chloe_Cole_53808758359-copy-768x512.jpeg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/08/Chloe_Cole_53808758359-copy-1536x1024.jpeg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/08/Chloe_Cole_53808758359-copy-2048x1366.jpeg 2048w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/08/Chloe_Cole_53808758359-copy-1800x1200.jpeg 1800w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/08/Chloe_Cole_53808758359-copy-1200x800.jpeg 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />Chloe Cole speaking with attendees at the 2024 Chapter Leadership Summit at Huntington Place in Detroit, Michigan. 13 June 2024. Gage Skidmore from Surprise, AZ, United States of America. Wikimedia Commons.</div>
JOHN: Right, there’s been dramatic movement away from these sorts of procedures in several European countries. Are you seeing progress on this issue in the courts, legally?
HARMEET: No, it&#8217;s too early in the courts. We literally filed the first, second, and third lawsuits on this issue in the country. I think other lawyers are joining us and so these cases are winding their way through the court system or through arbitration because Kaiser tries to force people into arbitration – so do other medical providers. And one of the issues, why there are so few cases, is because there&#8217;s a statute of limitations that are very short and really keep the window very narrow for these young women, largely women, to file lawsuits. And so it&#8217;s heartbreaking, the number of people we simply can&#8217;t help, because of these statute of limitations issues. I do think that&#8217;s going to make a difference. But the bigger and faster and more effective long-term difference is going to be legislatures banning these procedures on children. Medical boards taking away the licenses of doctors who commit medical malpractice, which I believe most of these doctors are doing. I mean, literally you have cases where people go in, some guidance counselor sends them for one session with some rubber stamper who then goes and gets the girl&#8217;s breasts cut off. It&#8217;s shocking and outrageous. You have to go through more hassle to get liposuction, I believe, than to get your breasts cut off as a young girl. So, it&#8217;s insane and it needs to stop. We shouldn&#8217;t rely on the courts and lawyers. We should ask Republican legislatures — and Democrat legislatures, frankly, if they care about humans — to stop this practice.
JOHN: Well, we&#8217;ve seen decisive action here in <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/tennessee-asks-scotus-to-uphold-ban-on-trans-surgeries-for-minors-amid-doj-challenge" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Tennessee </a>to shut down these potentially permanent procedures for children – that’s been really heartening for those working to end it. We’ll see what other states follow suit. Harmeet Dhillon, thank you so much for joining us.
* * *
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/videos/what-is-a-woman" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: Matt Walsh&#8217;s groundbreaking documentary &#8220;What Is A Woman?&#8221;</a></h3>

1Harmeet_Dhillon_(53067415294) copy

‘It’s Shocking And Outrageous’: Harmeet Dhillon On Why Trans Issues Were Top Of Mind For Voters

'It's Shocking And Outrageous': Harmeet Dhillon On Why Trans Issues Were Top Of Mind For Voters

2024 Election

California

Doctors

Harmeet Dhillon

Health Care

The weaponization of the U.S. Department of Justice against purported enemies of the Biden-Harris administration is nothing new. The Department’s persecution of pro-life advocates, praying grandmothers, and fathers of young children under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (while routinely ignoring arson and vandalism at crisis pregnancy centers chargeable under the same law) is hard to deny.
But the Department’s meritless criminal prosecution of Dr. Eithan Haim, a whistleblowing physician who exposed covert gender medicine procedures inflicted on minors at Texas Children’s Hospital — performed in violation of state law — is an outrageous abuse of its law enforcement authority.
The principal wrongdoer in Dr. Haim’s case — leading the charge in his criminal prosecution for alleged violation of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (“HIPAA”) — is Assistant United States Attorney Tina Ansari, a Democratic donor who targeted Haim in part during a time when her law license had been suspended by the Texas Bar for failure to pay her bar dues.
As legal scholar Ed Whelan has correctly <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/bench-memos/dojs-false-pretenses-prosecution-of-whistleblower-dr-eithan-haim/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">pointed</a> out, the only reason Haim was targeted was because “he ran afoul of the transgender ideology that dominates” the current presidential administration.
But now, in <a href="https://eppc.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/179145791960.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">pleadings</a> filed by Dr. Haim’s lawyers and in separate complaints filed by a former DOJ lawyer with both the State Bar of Texas and the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility, Ansari is accused of having “knowingly sponsored false information” to the federal grand jury that indicted Haim and of having “knowingly misled a tribunal and presented deliberately misleading information to a grand jury.”
In other words, she wasn’t just practicing law on a suspended license. She is charged with lying to the grand jury to get Haim indicted — itself a violation of federal law.
As journalist Christopher Rufo <a href="https://www.city-journal.org/article/sex-change-procedures-at-texas-childrens-hospital" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a>, Dr. Haim knew the hospital “secretly continued to perform transgender medical interventions, including the use of implantable puberty blockers, on minor children” after it assured the public it was no longer engaging in such medically dangerous and risky actions. Haim did not disclose the name of any patients, or any personally identifiable medical information protected by federal law under HIPAA (<a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/1320d-6" target="_blank" rel="noopener">42 U.S.C. §§1320d-6</a>).
The Justice Department didn’t care. It charged Haim with criminally violating HIPAA anyway, arguing that he had disclosed “individually identifiable health information,” something explicitly prohibited by HIPAA.
The punishment for such a conviction? Up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
The original grand jury indictment claimed he had obtained HIPAA-protected patient medical information through “false pretenses.” Haim had, allegedly, accessed the medical records after he completed his surgical rotation at Texas Children’s Hospital in January 2021 and had no more patients there. But, according to the ethics complaints and a motion for grand jury material filed by Haim’s lawyers, Haim did still have patients at the hospital, and Ansari and other government prosecutors knew it. That would have made his access of patient records entirely legal under HIPAA.
The hospital provided records to the government showing that Haim continued to treat patients at the hospital after his residency was over, during the time when the grand jury indictment claims he wasn’t treating any patients and had no legal right to access patient records. All of this is also apparent in a “<a href="https://eppc.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/DOC.76.Superseding-Indictment.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Superseding Indictment</a>” Ansari filed on Oct. 10 that, as the defense points out, deletes all references to Haim accessing patient records when he was supposedly no longer treating patients at the hospital. Yet the new indictment still claims he obtained those records under “false pretenses.”
As a result, Haim’s lawyers asked the court to provide them with access to all of the materials the grand jury considered when it issued the original indictment.
Why? Because the documents would likely show that the hospital told Ansari that Haim was continuing to treat patients at the hospital when she was making presentations to the grand jury claiming the opposite.
Grand jury materials are secret under <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/frcrmp/rule_6" target="_blank" rel="noopener">applicable</a> federal rules of criminal procedure. But the grand jury materials should be released in this case, says Haim’s lawyers, under the exceptions provided in the rules, to determine if the government “knowingly” sponsored “false information before the grand jury” and if that false information was “capable” of “influencing the grand jury’s decision.”
The lawyers are right when they tell the court that if “the government has made material misleading statements to the grand jury, the defense should be permitted to review the relevant grand jury material.”
Haim has also filed a “Show Cause” motion asking the court to issue an order against Ansari for “engaging in the practice of law with a suspended law license.” The motion says she was administratively suspended on Sept. 1 for not paying her bar dues. She responded that she remedied this problem as of Sept. 19.
But as Haim’s attorneys point out, Ansari was signing and filing pleadings in the case during her suspension, which violates the Texas Code of Professional Conduct, the court’s own rules, and the internal rules of the Justice Department that direct DOJ lawyers to immediately cease their representation of the government during such a lapse.
Not surprisingly, Ansari is a big donor to Democrat candidates, having contributed a total of $11,350, which is quite a bit of money for a career civil service employee. Mind you, there is nothing illegal about those donations, but as the complaint filed against her with the Office of Professional Responsibility at DOJ states, it raises serious questions on whether “her specific ideological or political view as it related to the highly controversial issues in this prosecution” biased her judgment and prompted her to mislead a federal grand jury.
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The pursuit of Dr. Haim is simply outrageous. As one of Haim’s principal lawyers, Marcella Burke, told us, “DOJ has charged Dr. Haim with a non-existent crime. At a charitable minimum, this is a reckless prosecution and at its extreme, it is malicious prosecution.”
The fact that the indictment hasn’t been dropped indicates what’s really going on here. Because Haim didn’t release any personal medical information about any patient, something HIPAA prevents, the new indictment now charges him with allegedly acting to “cause malicious harm” to the hospital and its physicians.
And what is the “malicious harm” Haim caused? Apparently, the Justice Department believes that he inflicted “malicious harm” by letting the public know that a children’s hospital was lying when it claimed it was no longer inflicting transgender medical abuse on its minor patients and that the hospital was violating Texas law.
That is a prosecution based on politics and ideology, not the law and the interests of justice or, for that matter, of the public at large. While the prosecution continues against Dr. Haim, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has <a href="https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/news/releases/paxton-announces-second-investigation-texas-hospital-potentially-unlawfully-performing-gender" target="_blank" rel="noopener">launched</a> an investigation into Texas Children’s Hospital for performing gender “affirming” medicine in violation of state law.
The Lonestar State has outlawed hormone replacement therapy for minors and other forms of “gender-affirming care,” if that type of mistreatment can be called “care.” AG Paxton has <a href="https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/news/releases/attorney-general-ken-paxton-sues-doctor-illegally-providing-harmful-gender-transition-treatments" target="_blank" rel="noopener">warned</a> that “doctors who continue to provide these harmful ‘gender transition’ drugs and treatments will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.”
If his claim is true, Dr. Haim should be praised for exposing wrongdoing at Texas Children’s Hospital. Instead, he faces a federal criminal indictment. Sadly, the U.S. Justice Department’s view of law enforcement now appears to be driven by politics, not justice.
* * *
Hans von Spakovsky and Sarah Parshall Perry are senior legal fellows in The Heritage Foundation’s Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Biden-Harris DOJ Prosecutor Targets Trans Whistleblower Doctor Again

Federal Government

Hospitals

Ken Paxton

Opinion

Texas

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese of Australia announced on Monday that his government will introduce legislation that would “enforce a minimum age for social media and other digital platforms.” He followed up on Tuesday by informing the <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-09-10/anthony-albanese-on-social-media-age-limit-proposal/104330904" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Australian Broadcasting Corporation</a> that he is considering making the platforms unavailable to children under the age of 14-16.
“Parents tell me they’re worried about what age their kids should be on social media,” he wrote on X. “We’ll introduce legislation in this term of Parliament to enforce a minimum age for social media and other digital platforms. It&#8217;s about supporting parents and keeping kids safe.”
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Parents tell me they’re worried about what age their kids should be on social media. 
We’ll introduce legislation in this term of Parliament to enforce a minimum age for social media and other digital platforms.
It&#39;s about supporting parents and keeping kids safe.
&mdash; Anthony Albanese (@AlboMP) <a href="https://twitter.com/AlboMP/status/1833093958240719057?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 9, 2024</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
“We’re looking at the range between 14 and 16,” he stated on Tuesday. “That’s one of the reasons we’re having a trial. And what we’re looking at is how you deliver it. This is a global issue that governments around the globe are trying to deal with. And so we can look at the experience, look at the response, as well, of social media companies. Social media has a social responsibility in order to have that social license that they require to operate in a decent society.”
<a href="https://www.amiracist.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.amiracist.com/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1723831707612000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0pyrv88A5nsmWM2F2Wr9As">Tickets for “Am I Racist?” are on sale NOW! Buy here for a theater near you.</a>
“They’re not above everyone else; they can’t just say, ‘We’re a big multi-national company, we can do whatever we like’ regardless of the harm that’s being caused,” he stated. “So we’ll look at this age-verification trial; we know that it’s not simple, and it’s not easy, otherwise governments would have responded before. But we’ll look at the experience; we’ll look at the report and work that Justice French has done, but we will also have that legislation before Parliament by the end of the year because we know that this is what parents are talking about after school, in the parents and citizens’ groups, at the sideline of sport on the weekend. They’re talking about the impact that this has. And we know, for example, that the banning &#8211; which many state governments have done &#8211; of phones from school has made a positive difference. And so we know that if we get our youngest Australians off these devices then it can make a positive difference for them.”
“Millions of underage children have been able to set up accounts for these services <a style="font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit;" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/25/technology/instagram-meta-children-privacy.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">by providing a false date of birth</a>,” The New York Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/10/world/australia/social-media-age-restrictions.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a>.
In March, Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law <a href="https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2024/3/BillText/er/PDF" target="_blank" rel="noopener">legislation</a> that banned children under the age of 14 from holding accounts on social media platforms such as services like TikTok and Instagram, enacting a strict social media bill that is likely to upend the lives of many young people. The legislation stated, “A social media platform shall prohibit a minor who is younger than 14 years of age from entering into a contract with a social media platform to become an account holder.”

New Zealand’s Prime Minister Christopher Luxon Visits Australia

Australia Considers Banning Children Under 16 From Social Media

Australia

Social Media

Technology

World

The American Society of Plastic Surgeons, which represents 92% of all board-certified American plastic surgeons, has broken with the general consensus among medical associations, indicating it disagrees with “gender-affirming care” for minors.
In July, ASPS <a href="https://www.city-journal.org/article/a-consensus-no-longer" target="_blank" rel="noopener">informed</a> Leor Sapir of the Manhattan Institute that it “has not endorsed any organization’s practice recommendations for the treatment of adolescents with gender dysphoria,” adding that there is “considerable uncertainty as to the long-term efficacy for the use of chest and genital surgical interventions” and that “the existing evidence base is viewed as low quality/low certainty.”
ASPS follows Doctors Protecting Children, a group part of a nonprofit that issued a <a href="https://doctorsprotectingchildren.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">declaration</a> on July 6 that stated in no uncertain terms how it felt about “gender-affirming care,” saying:
<blockquote>
Given the recent research and the revelations of the harmful approach advocated by WPATH and its followers in the United States, we, the undersigned, call upon the medical professional organizations of the United States, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the  Endocrine Society, the Pediatric Endocrine Society, American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association, and the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry to follow the science and their European professional colleagues and immediately stop the promotion of social affirmation, puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgeries for children and adolescents who experience distress over their biological sex.  Instead, these organizations should recommend comprehensive evaluations and therapies aimed at identifying and addressing underlying psychological co-morbidities and neurodiversity that often predispose to and accompany gender dysphoria. We also encourage the physicians who are members of these professional organizations to contact their leadership and urge them to adhere to the evidence-based research now available.
</blockquote>
“As the U.K.’s Cass Review pointed out, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) and the U.S. Endocrine Society were especially important in forging this consensus, and they did so by citing each other’s statements, rather than conducting a scientific appraisal of the evidence,” Sapir noted, adding, “The U.S. is one of the few Western countries where minors can receive gender surgeries, according to <a href="https://aristotlefoundation.org/study/comparing-teenagers-children-and-gender-transition-policy-in-canada-the-united-states-and-europe">a new report</a>.”
<a href="http://www.amiracist.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.amiracist.com/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1722714742764000&amp;usg=AOvVaw1XzmEsRwzti1RFNuISwYgd">WATCH THE TRAILER FOR ‘AM I RACIST?’ — A MATT WALSH COMEDY ON DEI</a>
Beverly Hills plastic surgeon Sheila Nazarian told Sapir, “We are physicians with responsibility for the health and well-being of our patients. We can get input from other clinicians, but ultimately the responsibility for determining medical readiness lies with us. That means that we have to examine all the data and studies available to us. Furthermore, you can’t help people by ignoring the reasons they want to go under the knife.”

Breast Cancer Surgery

Major Medical Org Breaks With Consensus, Rejects ‘Gender-Affirming Care’ For Minors

gender-affirming care

Health

Plastic Surgery

Social Issues

Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris has <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/harris-expected-to-tap-minnesota-governor-tim-walz-as-running-mate" target="_blank" rel="noopener">chosen</a> Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate, a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/ben-shapiro-celebrates-after-harris-reportedly-makes-vp-pick-massive-gift-to-the-republicans" target="_blank" rel="noopener">leftist</a> who, last year, signed an executive order protecting life-altering gender procedures on minors in his state.
In March of 2023, Walz signed the order in response to numerous Republican states taking action to ban or curb gender procedures on minors. At the time, Walz said, “Protecting and supporting access to gender affirming health care is essential to being a welcoming and supportive state.” The governor signed his executive order while <a href="https://x.com/JohnCroman/status/1633518799310790662" target="_blank" rel="noopener">holding the hand</a> of a 12-year-old boy who claims to be a girl.
Along with 12-year-old Hildie Edwards, Walz was joined by Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan, who was wearing a shirt with a knife on it that read, &#8220;Protect Trans Kids.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
MN Governor <a href="https://twitter.com/GovTimWalz?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@GovTimWalz</a> signs a &#8220;gender-affirming&#8221; executive order to support transgender procedures.
By his side at the photo op… 
A 12yo transgender child, a young boy, a little girl holding a stuffed animal, and his Lt Governor wearing a shirt with a knife on it 👇 <a href="https://t.co/NuurOVMZ47">pic.twitter.com/NuurOVMZ47</a>
— Clarity (@covid_clarity) <a href="https://twitter.com/covid_clarity/status/1636182376660254724?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 16, 2023</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Under Walz&#8217;s order, people seeking gender procedures for themselves or their children will not face prosecution, according to the <a href="https://minnesotareformer.com/briefs/walz-signs-executive-order-reaffirming-right-to-gender-affirming-care-in-minnesota/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Minnesota Reformer</a>. The order also directed state agencies to refuse approval for health insurance plans that do not cover gender procedures.
Walz has been celebrated by leftists for pushing policies deemed pro-LGBT.
“Governor Walz didn’t just rubber-stamp pro-LGBTQ legislation, he held celebrations and celebratory signings for things like the trans refuge bill that some governors might sign quietly,” <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/lgbtq/4808291-minnesota-governor-tim-walz-lgbtq-rights/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> Kat Rohn, executive director of the LGBT advocacy group, OutFront Minnesota. “That’s a really important quality for LGBTQ folks to see, that this is not something that is just necessary, but it’s something to celebrate and something that can be a winning issue.”
<a href="http://www.amiracist.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.amiracist.com/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1722714742764000&amp;usg=AOvVaw1XzmEsRwzti1RFNuISwYgd">WATCH THE TRAILER FOR ‘AM I RACIST?’ — A MATT WALSH COMEDY ON DEI</a>
“Tim Walz has definitely showcased what is possible. He’d be a great asset to the ticket,” Sean Meloy, vice president of political programs at the LGBT Victory Fund, added.

Tim Walz

Walz Signed Exec Order Protecting Trans Procedures On Minors While Holding Hand Of Gender-Confused 12-Year-Old

Minnesota

I’m a survivor of a medical gender transition that began when I was only 12-years-old. I travel the country sharing my story in hopes of saving other children from the horrors of the “gender-affirming care” I received. I advocate before <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-experiment-is-never-ending-chloe-cole-laments-dangers-of-trans-surgery-while-testifying-in-support-of-detrans-bill-of-rights" target="_blank" rel="noopener">state</a> and <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/barbaric-pseudoscience-chloe-cole-calls-for-lawmakers-to-protect-children-from-transgender-procedures" target="_blank" rel="noopener">federal</a> governments to pass laws that will prevent kids from accessing these mutilating surgeries and drugs.
According to a recent <a href="https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-07-25/chloe-coles-rise-from-a-transgender-teen-from-manteca-to-national-republican-darling" target="_blank" rel="noopener">hit piece</a> from the Los Angeles Times, this simply makes me a “right-wing icon.” The rhetoric used in their so-called journalism is not only wrong but flat out dangerous.
Let me be clear: I am not a pawn for a particular politician or party. I never wanted to be famous, especially not as a result of the most traumatic years of my life. I am sharing that trauma — which I’m still working through to this day — and partnering with those who want to pass laws that protect kids from being coerced into dangerous and unnecessary procedures.
I know this coercion firsthand. At 12-years-old, I was struggling with several mental health problems. I spent hours and hours on social media listening to transgender activists who convinced me that I must have been born in the wrong body. If only I was a boy, my problems would all go away.
I went to doctors who took advantage of my youth and naivety. Rather than treat my numerous comorbidities with mental health counseling, they handed me — at age 12 — a prescription pad for permanent pharmaceutical and surgical intervention. No one warned me about the lifelong ramifications of this decision. No one told me about the ever-growing mountain of evidence undermining the pro-transition propaganda I was being bombarded with.
It&#8217;s the same evidence that the LA Times irresponsibly dismissed. Several European countries — including those who pioneered these treatments — have stepped back from recommending that kids undergo these drugs and surgeries. Just this week, a High Court judge <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/high-court-judge-uk-upholds-government-ban-puberty-112363278" target="_blank" rel="noopener">upheld</a> the British government’s emergency ban on puberty blockers because the treatment has “very substantial risks and very narrow benefits,” and the area of gender medicine is based in “remarkably weak evidence.”
A recent leak of files from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), confirmed that the “standards” for transgender care that doctors like mine use to treat kids aren’t grounded in medical or scientific research. Multiple WPATH doctors admitted that there are huge uncertainties in this field of medicine. They also discussed how they actively suppress scientific studies that disprove their claims about gender-affirming care.
And when it comes to treating kids, one WPATH doctor compared explaining potential side effects for fertility with a 14-year-old to “talking to a blank wall.”
Such casually horrific admissions confirm that there is no such thing as informed consent when it comes to “gender-affirming care” for kids.
This is the “evidence” that my doctors ignored and manipulated when they told my parents there were only two options: a dead daughter or a living son.
This was a disgusting lie. And it’s a lie that changed the course of my life forever.
It&#8217;s not my fault that Democrats are too afraid of radical transgender activists to support commonsense protections for kids. They’re willing to ban kids from smoking, from alcohol, and in some states even from tanning beds. But they draw the line at drugs and surgeries that kids cannot fully understand, that doctors regularly coerce kids into signing up for, and that turn kids into lifelong patients.
When young adults who support token Leftist causes take a stand and advocate for their beliefs, they’re held up as courageous activist icons.
When I speak out against kids getting double mastectomies and taking experimental drugs, I’m torn down, and my reputation is shredded.
I urge those who would leap to conclusions about me to truly listen to my story. Think about the teenage girls you know and ask yourself if you would want this for them.
My story is important. All detransitioners’ stories are important.
* * *
Chloe Cole is a poised and articulate 20-year-old young woman who passionately advocates against the practice of transitioning minors. Driven by a noble mission to safeguard children from potentially harmful ideologies and medical interventions, Chloe draws from her personal experiences to shed light on the distressing consequences of gender-affirming care for adolescents. Having embarked on her own transition journey at the tender age of 12, only to subsequently detransition at 16, Chloe speaks with firsthand authority on the deeply traumatic effects experienced by minors undergoing such treatments. Represented by the Center for American Liberty, Chloe is suing the &#8220;medical professionals&#8221; who mutilated her. Follow her: @ChooCole
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the Daily Wire.
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7PA_kshZh0" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH THE TRAILER FOR &#8216;AM I RACIST?&#8217; — MATT WALSH&#8217;S EXPOSÉ ON DEI</a>

Chloe_Cole_(53808758359) copy

To The LA Times: Get A Life, I Have Lives To Save

To The LA Times: Get a Life, I Have Lives to Save

Gender Transition

Los Angeles Times

Readers Pass

The Nebraska Supreme Court upheld a ban on both transgender medical procedures for minors and abortion on Friday.
The <a href="https://nebraskalegislature.gov/FloorDocs/108/PDF/Slip/LB574.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">law</a> bans abortions after 12 weeks, as well as transgender surgeries and puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for individuals younger than 18.
Planned Parenthood of the Heartland, which works in Nebraska, Iowa, and Illinois, filed the lawsuit against the law, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
The abortion provider argued that the law violated the state constitution because it dealt with more than one issue. The state countered that both transgender medical interventions and abortion fall under healthcare.
“Ultimately, ‘if a bill has but one general object, no matter how broad that object may be, and contains no matter not germane thereto, and the title fairly expresses the subject of the bill, it does not violate’” the state constitution, Chief Justice Mike Heavican wrote for the court.
Pro-life advocates immediately hailed the court&#8217;s decision.
“This decision is a victory for Nebraska’s unborn children and their mothers who will continue to be protected from second- and third-trimester abortions,&#8221; said SBA Pro-Life America&#8217;s western regional director Adam Schwend, noting that Nebraska saw a &#8220;massive drop&#8221; in late-term abortions last year thanks to the law.
Last year, abortions in Nebraska <a href="https://nebraskapublicmedia.org/en/news/news-articles/nebraska-abortions-decreased-in-2023-following-12-week-ban-passage/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">decreased</a> nearly 9% from 2022, even with women from Iowa coming in for abortions after Iowa passed a six-week ban.
&#8220;We must continue to guard this protection that prevents abortions of babies who can feel pain and stand firm against the abortion industry’s attempts to roll back the progress we have made in the greatest human rights struggle of our time,&#8221; Schwend said.
Meanwhile, critics have raised the alarm over transgender surgeries and hormone treatments for gender dysphoric children over the last several years. In Europe, several countries have pumped the brakes on these procedures.
Transgender surgeries are not reversible, and both puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones come with serious health risks. Puberty blockers can <a href="https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/gender-dysphoria/in-depth/pubertal-blockers/art-20459075">affect</a> bone growth and density and cause sexual dysfunction, voice damage, and infertility, among other issues. Cross-sex hormones can <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/transgender-young-people-in-u-s-have-nearly-doubled-recently-report-shows" target="_blank" rel="noopener">cause</a> infertility, deadly blood clots, heart attacks, increased cancer risks of the breasts and ovaries, liver dysfunction, worsening psychological illness, and other serious conditions.
Nebraska joins a number of other states with Republican-controlled legislatures that have banned abortion or transgender medical interventions for minors, or both.
At least 25 states have <a href="https://www.hrc.org/resources/attacks-on-gender-affirming-care-by-state-map" target="_blank" rel="noopener">passed</a> restrictions on transgender surgeries and hormone treatments for minors, but the bans are blocked in court in Florida, Ohio, and Montana. Several other states have lawsuits proceeding as well, although the bans remain in effect for now.
At least 24 states have <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/us/abortion-laws-roe-v-wade.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">passed</a> bans on abortion, although the bans are tied up in court in Montana, Wyoming, and Iowa.

Make the appointment!

Nebraska Supreme Court Upholds Bans On Abortion, Transgender Surgeries For Minors

Abortion

Nebraska

Newly uncovered communications reveal that the Biden administration and Rachel Levine of Health and Human Services had an even greater role in removing age restrictions from guidance on the performance of sex change operations than previously known, with the Biden official personally meeting with the organization in charge of drafting the document, leading to concerns about political interference.
A <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-officials-pushed-drop-age-limit-trans-surgeries-minors-report">recent report</a> found that the staff of Levine, a man who identifies as a woman, was in <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trans-identifying-biden-official-allegedly-behind-push-to-ditch-age-guidelines-for-transgender-procedures-docs-show">contact with members</a> of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), urging them to remove age restrictions from guidance on sex change operations. These <a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.almd.77755/gov.uscourts.almd.77755.591.24.pdf">new documents</a> show that Levine was more involved than previously understood and personally met with WPATH leadership as he lobbied the organization.
“I just got off a very productive call with Rachel Levine,” Joshua Safer, the Executive Director of the Mount Sinai Center for Transgender Medicine and Surgery in New York, wrote in an August 12, 2021, email to WPATH staffers, including its Marci Bowers, who is currently the group&#8217;s president. “The failure of WPATH to be ready with SOC 8 is proving a barrier to optimal policy progress and she was eager to learn when SOC 8 might be published.”
“My view is that this should be taken as a charge from the United States government to do what is required to complete the project immediately,” Safer went on to say.
An August 19, 2021, email in which both the sender and recipient were redacted said, “I really want to push this agenda forward VERY STRONGLY. At the end of the day the SOC8 will significantly improve the lives of millions of trans people and their families globally. I am meeting with Rachel Levine and her team next week, as the US Department of Health is very keen to bring the trans health agenda forward. I want to make absolutely sure that the commitments we make on behalf of WPATH are real and achievable.”
On July 2, reacting to “Some feedback from a member of Adm Levine’s staff,” WPATH’s Walter Bouman found it “disturbing” to encounter political interference in what he viewed as a medical process. “Just read the email trail, which I found disturbing for a number of reasons…. It is not appropriate to take any feedback from a nonmedical professional seriously… if Washington does not want to launch the SOC8 we’ll do it in Brussels at the European Union.”
But six weeks later, Bouman seemed to make peace with it. On August 21, he wrote, “What was agreed in the past, may be obsolete in the present. We will discuss this in the Board and get back to you; and i will check what Rachel Levine’s point of view is on these issues.” Meanwhile, one WPATH Executive Committee Agenda includes the note, “Dr. Rachel Levine Meeting Update.”
“The collusion between WPATH and the administration through Rachel Levine is turning into one of the most disturbing medical scandals of this generation,” Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, the Chairman of <a href="https://donoharmmedicine.org/">Do No Harm</a>, told The Daily Wire. “These documents reveal WPATH knowingly put political considerations over the health and safety of children, destroying what little credibility they once had. This behavior violates the oath we all take as doctors. Both WPATH and Levine must be held accountable.”
Other emails show Levine’s staff pressuring WPATH to remove the guidelines, with one WPATH member asking for the minimum ages to be removed, lest they contribute to &#8220;devastating legislation for trans care.&#8221;
&#8220;She wonders if the specific ages can be taken out,&#8221; the email reads. Levine’s requests were met with some pushback from WPATH. “I am a little surprised that we would be asked to do this after all the care and endless discussions by experts to reach this consensus on ages for surgeries. Is Sarah a clinician or surgeon?” one member of WPATH wrote, referencing Levine’s then-chief of staff.
Despite some pushback, Levine and his staff successfully lobbied to remove age restrictions in the new guidelines, with WPATH directly crediting their removal to Levine’s efforts. On August 5, 2022, an email from WPATH, apparently to Levine’s office, said, “It was a pleasure to meet with you and your staff on Tuesday 26 July to discuss the SOC8. We appreciate your constructive comments and are fully aware how certain aspects of the SOC8 will affect the lives of many TGD people and their families in the US. More specifically we heard your comments regarding the minimal age criteria… Consequently, we have made changes to the SOC8 in this respect… They are now not a recommendation from the SOC-8 anymore, but they have been written only as suggested minimal ages.”
An email suggested that Levine&#8217;s actions to influence WPATH were designed to prevent negative media coverage.
“It doesn’t give them the headline. Less direct focus on age. I mean, we have a very high up politician telling us that having the ages specified front and center would politically lead to more attacks and legislative efforts,” a WPATH committee co-lead wrote.
But the change was just window dressing as they planned to move the ages to an “appendix” where they would be less “obvious.”
“We’re still recommending medical interventions for minors,” one comment said.

Rachel Levine

Biden Admin’s Rachel Levine Met With WPATH As He Pushed For Removal Of Trans Surgery Age Restrictions