Hundreds of people showed up to protest outside Children’s National Hospital in Washington, D.C., on Sunday, joining thousands mobilizing across the country against Trump’s rash of executive orders targeting immigrants and transgender people. On Wednesday, Trump issued an order attempting to ban gender-affirming care for people under 19. In response, Children’s began notifying some of its young trans patients that it had “paused” their care.
The impact was immediate; what was framed as a “pause” meant young trans patients would lose access to medication. Getting such care is already difficult enough. For these patients and their families, the hospital bowing to Trump mere days into his presidency is a terrible sign of what may come. “Hey cowards!!!! Do your job!!” read one sign outside Children’s Hospital. On Monday, the White House took a victory lap in a press release, listing the states where some hospitals and clinics had ceased at least some care: Denver Health in Colorado stopped surgeries; NYU-Langone in New York canceled appointments; two hospital systems in Virginia suspended care, along with Children’s in Washington, D.C. “President Trump will always protect American children. Promises made, promises kept,” the press release read.
But the order is only that—a promise, not a law. “President Trump’s Executive Order has not made it illegal to prescribe puberty-blockers or hormones to transgender people under the age of nineteen,” Chase Strangio, co-director of the ACLU’s LGBT & HIV Project, said via email Monday. “What the executive order is attempting to do is coerce institutions and providers to stop providing the treatment they believe is medically necessary for their patients by threatening all federal funding to an institution that treats transgender patients under nineteen with gender affirming medical care.”
In December, Strangio argued the Supreme Court case concerning gender-affirming care United States v. Skrmetti. In that case, the ACLU has argued that such bans are a form of sex discrimination and, as such, violate the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Trump’s executive order faces these issues, as well—among others concerning the separation of powers. “Not only does the Executive Order violate the constitutional rights of individual trans people, their parents and their providers,” Strangio said, “it exceeds the President’s authority and it attempts to direct federal agencies to act contrary to law.”
The crux of Trump’s order is a statement meant to sound lawful and binding—“it is the policy of the United States that it will not fund, sponsor, promote, assist, or support the so-called ‘transition’ of a child from one sex to another, and it will rigorously enforce all laws that prohibit or limit these destructive and life-altering procedures.” Surely the courts will be charged with making sense of this statement as binding policy, but the message itself endangers many young people for whom gender-affirming care serves as a crucial lifeline. Not only must they navigate alternative providers, if any are accessible (half of U.S. states ban gender-affirming care for minors), but they must do so while living through the scapegoating lent credence by this order from the president.
“We are seeing already the devastating impact that the hateful rhetoric and cruel and targeted executive orders spewing forth from the White House are having on an already vulnerable population,” Omar Gonzalez-Pagan, senior counsel and health care strategist at Lambda Legal, said in a statement Monday. “But these orders are unlawful. They violate our constitution and conflict with properly enacted laws.”
Trump’s order only works so long as hospitals and hospital staff are willing to help him implement an unlawful ban on gender-affirming care. “Premature actions from some hospitals to stop providing critical care for transgender youth cannot and must not be the response,” Gonzalez-Pagan said. “State attorneys general and other state officers should bear in mind the binding laws that prohibit this kind of discrimination. We will soon be challenging this latest travesty in court. In the interim, states should be doing all they can to protect transgender youth, their parents, and their doctors, not enable their attackers.”
Not all providers are complying with the administration’s demands. “I’m willing to go to jail to continue to provide your care,” The New York Times reported one Brooklyn pediatrician saying to his patients, including one 14-year-old panicked by the executive order. With only some hospitals announcing their compliance, confusion and chaos have followed, including within hospital systems. Some inside Children’s National on Sunday didn’t understand why people were protesting, one person present told me, because they were unaware of the change in policy. Anti-trans protesters had targeted the hospital in the summer of 2022, after a harassment campaign fueled by the X account Libs of TikTok, spreading the same disinformation about gender-affirming care that helped pave the way for Trump’s executive orders.
In an email sent to hospital staff early Monday morning, which I acquired a copy of, Children’s National laid out the new policy. “Our decisions are—and always will be—rooted in the care and safety of our patients, families, and staff,” stated the email, which was signed by “The Children’s National Leadership Team,” no staffers’ names provided. The email claimed that Trump’s order “prohibits the prescription of puberty blockers and hormone therapy to transgender youth under 19.” While it’s true the order says that, that does not actually change the legal status of prescribing these treatments.
When I asked Children’s National on Monday about their decision to stop offering puberty blockers and hormones to those under 19, they responded, “For clarity, Children’s National Hospital already did not perform gender-affirming surgeries on minors.” They also sent a link to a statement posted on their website and dated January 30, 2025, which began, “Children’s National is committed to providing compassionate and comprehensive care in accordance with the law. As a result, we are currently pausing all puberty blockers and hormone therapy prescriptions for transgender youth patients, per the guidelines in the Executive Order issued by the White House this week.”
In fact, cutting off care in response to Trump’s order could itself violate anti-discrimination laws. This legal argument has been used to block gender-affirming care bans in the past: Because the same medications and surgeries denied to trans kids remain available to cis kids, a ban on trans kids’ care is sex discrimination. New York Attorney General Letitia James on Monday advised hospitals in the state that should they follow the executive order, they would be violating state law. “Electing to refuse services to a class of individuals based on their protected status, such as withholding the availability of services from transgender individuals based on their gender identity or their diagnosis of gender dysphoria, while offering such services to cisgender individuals, is discrimination under New York law,” James wrote.
Hospitals may say they are being cautious or merely pausing care; but while they wait, they feed into a pernicious anti-trans political movement that is harming their patients right now. By complying with Trump’s order, those who once provided care to trans youth are now contributing to the sense that there is something wrong about gender-affirming care—something wrong both with those who get it and those who give it.
