Rep. Dan Crenshaw and Chloe Cole: The Big Beautiful Bill Protects Children and Taxpayers From Radical Gender Ideology

Rep. Dan Crenshaw and Chloe Cole: The Big Beautiful Bill Protects Children and Taxpayers From Radical Gender Ideology

The “Big Beautiful Bill” will accomplish a lot, including reigniting America’s economy and keeping your tax rates low. But perhaps one of the most important things it does may be getting overlooked. It bans the use of taxpayer funds in Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), and Affordable Care Act for transgender procedures.

Put simply: it protects vulnerable kids and American taxpayers.

For years, we have both led the charge to keep kids safe from radical gender ideology, one of us from Congress and one of us from the trenches of the public square. Rep. Crenshaw authored the Crenshaw Amendment specifically for the “Big Beautiful Bill,” which prohibits taxpayer funding for puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and sex-change surgeries. And Ms. Cole is herself a victim of radical gender ideology, having tried to transition genders starting at age 12—only to regret it by age 16.

No one knows this fact better than Chloe Cole. Children should never be subjected to this medical assault on their developing body and mind. Encouraged by radicalized medical “professionals,” these transgender procedures are invasive and irreversible, leading to a lifetime of complications and additional health problems. Children, lacking the mental and physical maturity to make life-altering decisions, simply cannot understand the consequences of these procedures—not in the short term and especially not in the long term. True “consent,” as we would normally understand the term, cannot exist under these circumstances.

This is common sense. First of all, most Americans agree with these simple statements. But the scientific consensus also backs our position. Various systematic reviews of the evidence came to the same scientific conclusions: low quality evidence of any benefits, with immense risks.

And yet, the medical establishment, like so many other parts of society, has been overtaken by activists masquerading as “experts.” They’re putting ideology ahead of ethics, and children across America are paying the price for the leftist activists’ arrogance.

No taxpayer should be forced to cover the cost of these procedures. Doing so makes Americans complicit in the destruction of children’s minds and bodies. When people pay taxes, they assume they’re funding things like national security and the safety net. They don’t think they’re paying for a misguided doctor to cut off the genitalia of a confused child. The only thing taxpayers should cover in that situation is real mental health care.

To his credit, President Trump has already taken strong steps to protect children and taxpayers from radical gender ideology. He has issued an executive order that prohibits the use of taxpayer funding for sex changes. He has also directed his administration to investigate those who put children at risk. Most recently, the Trump administration released its own sweeping review of the evidence surrounding pediatric transgender procedures. The short version: There’s no real evidence of benefits to children—but there’s reams of evidence showing that kids are being irreparably harmed.

These are steps in the right direction, but the “Big Beautiful Bill” is the most important step of all. Until the Crenshaw Amendment and further restrictions are  written into federal law, a future president can simply undo the protections that President Trump has put in place. Congress must do its part to make this permanent.

This isn’t some fringe issue, by the way. The medical nonprofit Do No Harm has found that 14,000 kids between 2019 and 2023 alone have already been subjected to dangerous transgender procedures, many of them using taxpayer funds. With a federal law in place, taxpayers and parents can rest easier.

Know this: we are winning, but the fight isn’t over. The Crenshaw Amendment is a giant leap forward, and this is our chance to pass it and do what is right for our children.

Dan Crenshaw represents Texas’s 2nd congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives. Chloe Cole is the patient advocate at Do No Harm.

A Major Victory in the Fight Against Radical Transgender Ideology

A Major Victory in the Fight Against Radical Transgender Ideology

CLICK HERE TO READ ABOUT THE MAJOR VICTORY IN THE FIGHT AGAINST RADICAL TRANSGENDER IDEOLOGY ON THE DAILY WIRE
One of the most important policies included in the Big Beautiful Bill is one that has been a top priority for me for years now – defunding taxpayer supported gender transition procedures and treatments on minors. This represents the most significant victory against radical transgender ideology that Congress has ever achieved. 

My policy is simple – Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act, and the Children’s Health Insurance Program will no longer cover life-altering and dangerous transgender medical procedures on kids once this bill becomes law. It will save countless kids from irreversible self-harm, and will send a signal to the American people that their government will no longer be willing participants in this pseudoscience.  

Gender transition procedures are the lobotomy of our generation. So-called ‘gender-affirming care’ isn’t healthcare—it’s fringe science with no proven benefit and massive risks. I’m proud to have spearheaded the policy to ban funding of these procedures for the last few years and urge my colleagues in the Senate to act swiftly to pass this into law.
A major victory in the fight against radical transgender ideology

CLICK HERE TO WATCH

Protecting Military Readiness From Radical Transgender Ideology

Protecting Military Readiness From Radical Transgender Ideology

Protecting Military Readiness From Radical Transgender Ideology

CLICK HERE OR ON THE IMAGE ABOVE TO WATCH

In another case of common sense vs. crazy, President Trump issued another executive order related to combating the mission creep of transgender ideology – this one related to its impact on our military. 

I have stated for years that military readiness cannot and should not be undermined by those who choose to undergo gender reassignment surgery. CNN tried to hit me with a “gotcha!” clip in an interview this week, attempting to show that I changed my position on this issue by selectively editing an interview from 2021. You can watch the full interview above to see what I’m talking about. 

Here are the facts on Trump’s executive order and this issue on transgenders in the military broadly: undergoing a gender transition fundamentally impacts a person’s ability to meet military readiness standards. These procedures often require extended recovery times, ongoing medical treatments, and create significant physical and mental challenges.

I am happy to be the face of common sense in this debate. I know what our warfighters need in an increasingly dangerous world to be a lethal fighting force. That does not include forcing a radical, DEI-focused ideology into our military.

Protecting Our Children From Dangerous, Irreversible Gender Transition Procedures

Protecting Our Children From Dangerous, Irreversible Gender Transition Procedures

Protecting Our Children From Dangerous, Irreversible Gender Transition Procedures

CLICK HERE TO READ PRESIDENT TRUMP’S EXECUTIVE ORDER

President Trump signed an executive order this week that states unequivocally what has been clear to the vast majority of Americans for a while: taxpayer dollars, and the U.S. government as whole, should not support irreversible and dangerous gender transition procedures on children. 

It is hard to overstate the importance of this executive action from President Trump. The Biden Administration was not only funding, but actively encouraging, these procedures on children. Now, we have an administration that is “following the science,” as the left likes to say, and halting any support for what amounts to the mutilation of children. 

Even with this executive order, Congress still has an important role to play. 

I’ve been pushing legislation in Congress to block taxpayer funding for hospitals that transition minors. I’m pleased to see this first step that seeks to block federal programs from covering these procedures for minors and prevent grant funding for institutions that promote this. We still need to pass legislation to defund this permanently, and I’m ready to work with President Trump to get that done in our budget reconciliation package.

My position, and President Trump’s position, is squarely in line with the American public. 70 percent of Americans oppose using puberty blockers on minors according to polling, and that doesn’t even include harmful procedures like double mastectomies on children. 

The left will continue to label efforts like President Trump’s executive order and my legislation in Congress as “bigoted, anti-trans” policy. But, in reality, our position is a commonsense view shared by the American people: we should not treat our children like lab rats in an ideological experiment that has irreversible consequences.

Unmasking the Pseudoscience: The Truth About ‘Gender-Affirming Care’

Unmasking the Pseudoscience: The Truth About ‘Gender-Affirming Care’

In 2007, there was only one pediatric gender clinic in the United States. Now there are close to 100. It’s impossible to overstate just how quickly the Left has radicalized on the issue of so-called “gender affirming care.” None of the people pushing this harmful pseudoscientific nonsense believed it 10 or 15 years ago.

According to data collected by Komodo Health and analyzed by Reuters, a total of 121,882 new diagnoses of gender dysphoria were added for patients ages six to 17 between 2017 and 2021. The rate of diagnosis increased by 20 percent each year between 2017 and 2020, and then shot up 70 percent between 2020 and 2021—the year kids were home due to COVID-19 lockdowns, when they spent much more time on their phones and social media.

These are real numbers that tell a real story. As the head of Boston Children’s Gender Clinic confirms for us, they are handing out puberty blockers “like candy.”

The Left accuses Republicans of creating this new fight in the culture wars out of whole cloth. In reality, we’re simply responding to a rapid onset of transgender ideology being pushed on our children in their schools, libraries, and even doctors’ offices. This is an entirely new phenomenon, pushed by people who know better in pursuit of so-called “compassion” for children suffering from sometimes temporary ideations about their gender.

Let’s be frank: It is not compassionate to perform a double mastectomy on a teenage girl who is insecure about her body. It is not compassionate to pump a 13 year-old boy full of puberty blockers, seriously affecting his ability to reproduce in the future. Our children cannot consent to life-altering procedures, and informed consent depends on evidence-based medicine.

We need to be able to trust that physicians are providing care that is backed by solid science, and so-called gender affirming care runs counter to evidence-based medicine.

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), the Endocrine Society, and the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) have all released policy statements in support of gender-affirming care. Other organizations, including the American Medical Association, have made public statements in support of “affirming” medicine without citing evidence. But not one of these organizations has done systematic reviews of the evidence, a method of review supposed to prevent the cherry-picking of studies and biased analysis. Their statements of support appear to be grounded in a fear of provoking rabid gender ideologues rather than in sound science.

On the other hand, SwedenFinland, the U.K., and Florida have all done systematic reviews, and all reached the same conclusion: There is no evidence that the benefits of this approach for treating gender-related distress in youth outweigh the risks. Recently, Denmark also imposed restrictions, and Norway is poised to follow suit. Even progressive European countries recognize that high-risk and irreversible interventions must meet a high threshold of evidence. Remember, these procedures on children are permanent. There is no turning back once you start to change a child’s gender. And yet, as our peer-countries have admitted, there is zero high quality evidence for the benefits of this pseudoscience.

Roughly 70 percent of U.S. teens who go to gender clinics have comorbid psychiatric diagnoses that precede the onset of gender dysphoria. That raises a troubling question: Are we misdiagnosing gender dysphoria because of the affirm first, ask questions later approach we have adopted in the United States? Is this affirmative model biased toward one diagnosis—gender dysphoria—and biased toward “gender affirming care” as a treatment?

Medical experts around the world think so. That’s why 21 leading experts on pediatric gender medicine from nine countries recently wrote a letter to the Wall Street Journal sounding the alarm about the American affirmative model for youth gender dysphoria.

As legislators, we must stop rewarding medical institutions pushing this pseudoscience. That’s why I introduced legislation to block graduate medical education funding from any children’s hospital that provides gender transition procedures to minors.

This bill is commonsense: When 70 percent of Americans oppose using puberty blockers on minors, we should not force them to fund this sort of treatment with their tax dollars.

Children’s hospitals that are training providers in evidence-based medicine will still receive funding under my legislation.

The fact there is even an argument over whether we should permanently mutilate children is evidence of just how far off the rails our political discourse has become. We are marching our children down a path from which they cannot return. Science and common sense tell us these procedures are permanent, dangerous, and wrong.

We must refuse to participate in this madness for the sake of our kids.

This oped by Congressman Dan Crenshaw was originally published in Newsweek on August 31, 2023.