The Trump Admin’s ‘Final Rule’ Is a Cruel Attack on Trans-Affirming Care for Minors

Months after Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz forebodingly called gender-affirming care a “prehistoric relic” to “fall in the deepest abyss of dark periods of American history like prefrontal lobotomies represent today,” the Trump administration is barreling forward with its agenda to screw over trans minors. 

Specifically, the Department of Health and Human Services on Tuesday issued a final rule blocking Medicaid and CHIP (the Children’s Health Insurance Program) from covering gender-affirming care for minors, which includes puberty blockers, hormone therapy, and top/bottom surgery—the latter being rare among youth patients. It follows up with a proposal made by Oz in December—during which he said the administration would pull federal funding from hospitals if they treat minors. (That rule will reportedly be finalized by December.)

“This administration has consistently put ideology before science,” Ma’ayan Anafi, senior counsel for health equity and justice at the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC) told Jezebel in a statement. “Now, it is jeopardizing vital health care—proven to be safe, effective, and even life-saving for many transgender people—all to further its campaign of prejudice and lies, stigmatize trans youth, and vilify the families and providers who support them.”

This newest rule is a targeted hit on trans kids from low-income families that rely on Medicaid and CHIP—of which there are more than 35 million children and youth enrolled—and will come into effect in October. Anyone already prescribed to hormone medications will be given a six-month “tapering period.” 

JUST IN: The Trump Admin just finalized a rule blocking Medicaid and CHIP from using federal funds to cover gender-affirming care.

Our trans youth deserve better — they deserve to live with dignity and respect.

Gender-affirming care remains legal and protected in MA. We’ll see them in court.

— AG Andrea Joy Campbell (@massago.bsky.social) August 11, 2026 at 11:34 PM

 

It’s likely that the rule’s next stop will be before a judge, and Anafi also told the Guardian that “a lot of courts have recognized that these actions are based on prejudice and they’re not based on evidence—they’re actually contrary to the evidence.” A familiar story, I fear. 

The NWLC says that ahead of the finalized rule—which was first proposed in February—the administration received almost 35,000 comments on it, with the vast majority in opposition. The administration, however, remains obsessed as ever with erasing the trans community—and is using the guise of “protection” to defend the policy. Taking to Truth Social, Trump said, “We are not going to pay for our innocent children to undergo these barbaric surgeries and practices, which result in unthinkable and irreversible harm to their young bodies”. Here’s your regular reminder that there are nearly 2.8 million people who identify as trans in the U.S., and about a quarter of them are between the ages of 13 and 17.

But as we’ve emphasized as well as Anafi—this administration cares more for ideology than science. As they put it: “Once again, Donald Trump is trying to score political points by endangering the health and wellbeing of trans youth.”