A three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals partially upheld an earlier ruling by a U.S. District judge which found that the Trump administration’s executive order excluding the trans-identified from the military violates their constitutional rights. Crucially, though, the ruling would narrowly apply only to military members named in the lawsuit but not to new recruits. The judges also put their decision on hold to allow the administration to seek further review. In a dissenting opinion, Judge Justin Walker argued that “We have neither the expertise nor the authority to decide whether the military can exclude the plaintiffs from its ranks. The Constitution assigns that authority to Congress and the Commander in Chief.”
On Wednesday, the Senate HELP Committee held a hearing on how Congress can protect children from the harms of gender transition procedures. “Americans and their health care providers deserve to know that medical guidelines, especially for children, reflect the best scientific evidence and are not influenced by extreme ideology,” said committee chairman, Senator Bill Cassidy. Witness Dr. Kurt Miceli, a psychiatrist and the medical director of the watchdog organization, Do No Harm, spoke at length about how gender medicine has been promoted by activist physicians despite a weak evidence base and changing international norms. “Do No Harm has identified nearly 14,000 minors who received gender transition procedures from 2019 to 2023, including over 5,700 surgeries, yet nearly two dozen systematic reviews find no credible evidence supporting these interventions, not for overall mental health improvement, and not for preventing suicide,” Miceli noted. Detransitioner Chloe Cole also spoke about the challenges inherent in ensuring that a minor patient can understand the nature of these medical interventions given their developmental capacities. “No child can consent to being sterilized,” she stressed.
In the European Journal of Developmental Psychology, two researchers challenge a recent assertion by clinicians from the Netherland’s Center of Expertise on Gender Dysphoria (CEGD)—the birthplace of youth gender medicine—that decades of research lend further credence to the affirming care model developed in the 1990s. As the authors explain: “it is concerning that, in 2026, leading clinicians and researchers at CEGD express more confidence in the Dutch approach, when the appropriate response to the many systematic reviews published over the past 6 years would be less confidence in its effectiveness and, consequently, greater clinical caution.” McDeavitt and Cohn go on to argue that the basis for the Dutch researcher's assertion is a “narrative review” of their own work, which is inconsistent with the principles of evidence-based medicine. Moreover, the work in question—the “Dutch studies”—suffer from small sample sizes and methodological limitations, and have never been replicated despite attempts in the UK. Systematic reviews aside, the authors also note how the clinical landscape has transformed since the 1990s, with “poorly understood epidemiological shifts” and growing concerns about the physical and psychological impact on trans-identified youth.
As National Review reports, a new paper in Nature Human Behavior challenges the findings of a controversial paper authored by researchers from the LGBTQ+ activist organization, the Trevor Project, which claimed that states with anti-trans policies saw a 72% increase in suicide attempts. Central to that analysis was a reliance on “control” states for comparison purposes. As the paper points out, however, the original paper’s findings were heavily influenced by respondents from Idaho. “The published analysis used all untreated states as controls, but there are geographic, cultural and political differences between most control states and the treatment states.”
Trans activist Erin Reed notes that despite campaign pledges from the Mamdani administration to allocate $65 million towards affirming care for youth, that promise has not materialized, and the New York state budget has also failed to earmark any funds towards “affirming care.” As Reed notes, there is still time for the city budget to address these perceived areas of need. However, Mamdani has been reluctant to respond to activist requests for comment regarding funding priorities. “Though New York sells itself as a sanctuary state—and its laws do protect transgender people to a degree unmatched in most of the country—it is, for now, likely to be seen as falling short for its transgender residents. With the state budget finished, the dedicated care fund advocates wanted would now have to come through separate legislation, which the legislature could still take up before it adjourns” Reed explains.
The Mamdani administration has launched a “Trans Rights are Human Rights” awareness campaign seemingly in light of explicit funding for trans issues. The citywide public awareness campaign is a partnership between the Mayor’s LGBTQ+ Affairs Office, the New York City Commission on Human Rights, and the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. The campaign aims to “highlight protections for transgender and gender non-conforming (TGNC) New Yorkers” under New York City Human Rights Law. Notably, the campaign’s emphasis is on non-discrimination in housing, employment, and public spaces, but it does not explicitly address non-discrimination in medicine, which is often how proponents of gender medicine frame policies which prohibit minors from accessing medical transition procedures.
After the Department of Justice subpoenaed NYU Langone seeking information and medical records regarding pediatric medical transition procedures rendered between 2020-2026, a group of trans-identified New Yorkers have filed a class action lawsuit to block Langone from sharing their medical information. The suit argues that compliance with the subpoena violates patients’ constitutional rights to privacy, protections against unreasonable searches and seizures, and physician-patient confidentiality under New York law. NYU Langone has until June 10th to turn over the requested information, and it remains unclear if it will comply with the request.
Last Tuesday, the Canadian Pediatric Society elected a leading provider of gender-transition procedures as its president for the 2026-2027 term. As Ben Ryan chronicles, the new president, Dr. Natasha Johnson, has attracted considerable attention for “leverag[ing] research about outcomes among youth attending gender clinics to assert that parents’ concerns about consenting to such treatment for their children should take a back seat to the youths’ preferences.” More specifically, during a 2022 WPATH conference, Johnson asserted that WPATH’s SOC-8 guidelines unjustly “prioritize the perspectives and worries of parents over the lived experiences of youth, and introduces additional barriers to accessing gender affirming care.” At her own clinic, Johnson maintained that her and her colleagues did not subject youth to “a battery of psychological testing to verify their gender identity.”
Joseph Figliolia
Policy Analyst
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