White House flip-flop on transgender surgery for kids prompts GOP probe, NIH hid director's activism

After a lawsuit revealed the federal government's highest-ranking transgender official had successfully pressured the World Professional Association on Transgender Health to remove age limits for so-called gender-affirming care from its forthcoming standards in 2022, the Biden administration for the first time claimed it opposed surgery for gender-confused minors.

Activist outrage ensured the clarity didn't last long, prompting the Congressional Anti-Woke Caucus on Tuesday to demand the Department of Health and Human Services specify exactly what procedures it considers "safe and effective" for children who identify as the opposite sex or otherwise want to change their bodies to align with their gender identity.

Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris is on the record for taxpayer-funded gender affirming care, at least for people old enough to be behind bars. 

She bragged in a National Center for Transgender Equality interview in 2019 that she "made sure" as California's attorney general that the state's prison system started granting surgeries for transgender inmates. Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom followed by signing a law now being challenged by female inmates that grants prison placement by self-declared gender identity.

The National Institutes of Health also faces scrutiny for hiring Catherine Gordon as clinical director of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development without noting she's a crusader for puberty blockers and had several pre-hire conversations with Assistant Secretary of Health Rachel Levine, who pressured WPATH to remove its proposed age restrictions.

The United States' seeming free-for-all on puberty blockers is increasingly out of step with more liberal Europe. The U.K. High Court upheld an emergency ban on them by the previous Conservative government, which the new Labour government supports, Euronews reported this week.

Justice Beverley Lang said the National Health Service-commissioned review, which found "very substantial risks and very narrow benefits associated with the use of puberty blockers," was "powerful scientific evidence" for the ban.

The Los Angeles Times is under fire as well for a perceived hit piece on detransitioner Chloe Cole, who desisted from her gender confusion at age 16 after starting puberty blockers and testosterone and undergoing a double mastectomy in the prior four years.

Reporter Mackenzie Mays not only engaged in victim-blaming but mischaracterized a Swedish study on the frequency of gender transition regret, which didn't include minors and used a "highly restrictive definition" of regret, Manhattan Institute fellow and gender-medicine scholar Leor Sapir wrote in a lengthy X thread last week.

"The Los Angeles Times’ reporting on this topic speaks for itself, and we encourage people to read the story for themselves," Vice President of Communications Hillary Manning wrote in an email. Mays did not respond to Just the News requests for her response to the allegations.

Over the weekend, I flew down to CA to surprise @ChoooCole for her 20th birthday.

Chloe is one of my best friends. I met her a month after I had narrowly survived Hamas’s brutal attacks on October 7 and left my entire life and my trans identity behind in Israel.

Upon returning… pic.twitter.com/varYbrIOr0

— Maia Poet🦎 (@thepeacepoet99) July 31, 2024

The White House's hasty response to Levine's behind-the-scenes influence on WPATH's Standards of Care 8 prompted "intense pressure" from the Human Rights Campaign and other pro-transgender activists, HRC said July 9 in sharing the White House's pivot.

Domestic Policy Council Director Neera Tanden told HRC President Kelley Robinson, in an email obtained but not posted by The Advocate, that it has always opposed "categorical bans on gender-affirming care" and will keep fighting them in court, even while saying surgeries are "typically reserved for adults, and we believe they should be." 

Gender publication The 19th reported the White House revised its views within the same afternoon, first saying it supports "gender-affirming care for minors like mental health care," then replacing the last four words with a new clause, "which represents a continuum of care." 

"Above all, families should have the freedom to make the medical decisions that they and their doctors determine are best for them," with no legal restrictions, HRC said Tanden told Robinson. The group did not answer requests from Just the News to see the Tanden email.

"We are concerned that the Biden-Harris administration’s often contradictory statements, most notably its continued endorsement of 'continuum of care,' amounts to continuing to support the surgical mutilation of minors," the Anti-Woke Caucus told HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra on Tuesday.

The four GOP signatories noted Levine's office still has a webpage on “Gender-Affirming Care and Young People" that mentions "surgical" services as an option, though a comparison chart says surgery is "[t]ypically used in adulthood or case-by-case in adolescence."

"To our knowledge, Admiral Levine has not publicly disavowed support for performing irreversible transgender surgeries on children," said Reps. Jim Banks, of Indiana; Claudia Tenney of New York; Josh Brecheen, of Oklahoma; and Jeff Duncan, of South Carolina.

They asked why HHS supports gender transitions for minors, whether that includes "medical and surgical services," what prompted its short-lived statement opposing minor surgery and how the administration defines "continuum of care," listing 37 procedures and hormone treatments including castration, "genital tucking," facial reconstruction surgery and laser hair removal.

"Should the government play any role in regulating gender transition treatments?" they asked, seeking specifics, and whether the administration's position had changed, which HRC denied.

The Biden/Harris White House needs to tell the American people if they still support performing mastectomies, castration, hysterectomies and other life-altering surgeries on children. https://t.co/5ENEkImWrM

— Jim Banks (@RepJimBanks) July 30, 2024

As pediatrician-in-chief at Texas Children's Hospital, Dr. Catherine Gordon published an NIH-funded "perspective" in the journal Pediatrics in 2022 that calls puberty blockers "an invaluable intervention" that "buy[s] time" for gender-confused youth to settle on their "gender assignment."

Gordon wrote she witnessed the "life-changing, and for some, life-saving treatment" that gender affirming therapy provided children and adolescents during her fellowship with Norman Spack, "who founded the first pediatric transgender program in the United States in 2007."

She also implied Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton were putting children at increased risk of suicide by investigating "reported instances of sex-change procedures" and gender affirming treatment as child abuse.

"These health care decisions should be left to physicians, patients, and their families," Gordon wrote.

She resigned six months into her job and started talking to Levine that summer, according to emails obtained by America First Legal under a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. 

Gordon connected Levine with another children's hospital "advocate for transgender youth," who invited Levine to be the keynote speaker a conference on "barriers to health care and health research for trans children." Gordon thanked Levine after an Aug. 10, 2022, Zoom call for "your incredible support," and "your friend, Rachel" asked Gordon to "keep me up to date."

/10 On July 13, 2022, Kelly Cure (HHS staff) emailed Assistant Secretary Levine that Verghese requested Assistant Secretary Levine to be the keynote speaker at a September conference at Houston Medical Center in Texas on “barriers to health care and health research for trans… pic.twitter.com/vYL5JQA84l

— America First Legal (@America1stLegal) July 22, 2024

When NIH hired Gordon a year later, however, it hid her advocacy for gender affirming care and history in the field from both Gordon's "biosketch" and NIH's in-house publication Catalyst. The Heritage Foundation's Daily Signal reported on the connection last week.

The report cited research that undermines Gordon's claims about the medical necessity of gender affirming care, including an April study by University of Texas Medical Branch researchers in the peer-reviewed journal Cureus – also limited to adults – that found gender affirming surgery is "significantly associated with elevated suicide attempt risks."

NICHD, where Gordon is clinical director, did not answer Just the News queries for her view of what limits if any are appropriate for minors and why her views and record on gender affirming care are missing from her page and hiring announcement.