It Is About The Children

That has always been the rallying of the Republicans, way back with Anita Bryant and the "Save Our Children" campaign. And Harvey Milk standing up to their tyranny and now once  again we are fighting against the bigotry.

Children ‘low-hanging fruit’ in fight to end trans care, official at pro-Trump thinktank says

America First Policy Institute, which boasts close ties to president, discussed transgender policy ‘reform’ at DC event

The Guardian

Phoebe Petrovic

Fri 17 Apr 2026

Children are the “low-hanging fruit” in a longer effort to end gender-affirming care for all Americans, an official at a Trump administration-aligned thinktank recently said.

Bans on medical transition comprise just one part of the larger, unprecedented assault on transgender rights mounted by a coordinated campaign of mostly conservative activists and policymakers in the US in recent years. So far, these restrictions have primarily affected minors. But leaders in the emboldened movement have begun to more openly admit their desire to attempt to end gender-affirming care for adults, too.

But a judge the other day said that it was all based on junk medical research...

Federal Court Strikes Down Kennedy Declaration on Transgender Healthcare

JD Supra

April 20, 2026

On April 18, 2026, the United States District Court for the District of Oregon issued a sweeping opinion vacating the “Kennedy Declaration,” a directive issued by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. in December 2025 without notice-and-comment rulemaking. The Kennedy Declaration purported to establish that transgender healthcare for minors falls below professionally recognized standards of health care and threatened providers with exclusion from Medicare and Medicaid. Opinion and Order, State of Oregon, et al. v. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., et al., No. 6:25-cv-02409-MTK (D. Oregon Apr. 18, 2026) (ECF 93).

The court granted summary judgment for the 22 Plaintiff States, vacated the Kennedy Declaration in its entirety, declared that HHS lacks authority to unilaterally establish standards of care superseding state-recognized standards, and permanently enjoined HHS and its Office of Inspector General (OIG) from implementing the Kennedy Declaration or any materially similar policy against any provider in the Plaintiff States.

This ruling delivers immediate, concrete protection to healthcare providers in Oregon, Washington, New York, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawai’i, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Wisconsin. The court’s opinion—notable for its extraordinarily pointed criticism of the administration’s conduct as causing “very real harm to very real people”—found the Kennedy Declaration unlawful on multiple grounds.

This is a big win... but you know darn well it will be appealed.

The court’s opinion is notable for its pointed criticism of this administration. The court was particularly scathing in addressing the administration’s claim that finding the Kennedy Declaration unlawful would infringe Secretary Kennedy’s First Amendment rights, stating that it would not allow defendants to “bully or gaslight this Court into ignoring the many procedural and legal flaws of the Kennedy Declaration by invoking one of the most sacred principles of our constitutional democracy—the freedom of speech—when that principle comes nowhere close to being implicated.” The court found that the actual principles offended were “the rule of law and state sovereignty.”

This is a very far reaching ruling... hopefully it will stand with appeals.