In a video shared on his Truth Social platform, Donald Trump declared his intention to ban gender-affirming care for minors if he were to be re-elected as president in 2024.
Trump, who used the opportunity to criticise what he termed “left-wing gender insanity” and emphasised the importance of “mothers and fathers,” us one of his most significant attacks on transgender rights to date, referring to gender-affirming care for minors as “an act of child abuse.”
Trump also took the opportunity to outline his plan to prevent what he called “the chemical, physical, and emotional mutilation of our youth.”
“I will sign a new executive order instructing every federal agency to cease all programs that promote the concept of sex and gender transition at any age,” Trump stated.
He went on to express his intent to request Congress to permanently stop using federal taxpayer dollars to support or pay for these procedures. Additionally, he proposed passing a federal law to prohibit what he referred to as “child-sexual mutilation” in all 50 states, which he believed would move rapidly.
Furthermore, Trump announced that any hospital or healthcare provider involved in the chemical or physical alteration of minor youth would no longer meet federal health and safety standards for Medicaid and Medicare. They would be immediately terminated from the program. He also pledged his support for establishing a private right of action for victims to sue doctors who had performed these procedures on minor children.
Trump’s address also touched on his plans to investigate “big pharma and the big hospital networks” to determine if they had “deliberately covered up horrific long-term side effects of sex transitions in order to get rich.”
He warned that teachers or school officials who conveyed to a child that they are “trapped in the wrong body” would face severe consequences, including the potential loss of federal funding. Instead, teachers would be mandated to “promote positive education about the nuclear family, the roles of mothers and fathers.” They would be prohibited from “erasing the things that make men and women different and unique.”
The former president vowed to pass a bill recognising only two genders—male and female—and to prohibit transgender women from participating in women’s sports, asserting that the concept of gender transition had been “invented” by “the radical left” in recent years and had no historical precedent.
