Attorney general directs Justice Department employees to enforce policies targeting care for transgender minors

Attorney General Pam Bondi connected Tuesday issued a memo of directives to Justice Department employees to enforce the Trump administration’s policies targeting gender-affirming attraction for minors, according to a transcript of the memo obtained by CNN.

The memo comes aft President Donald Trump issued an enforcement bid successful January titled, “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation.” The enforcement bid targets minors that place arsenic transgender and says that the United States volition not “fund, sponsor, promote, assist, oregon support” minors who are seeking gender-affirming care.

“Pursuant to the President’s directive, I americium issuing the pursuing guidance to each Department of Justice employees to enforce rigorous protections and clasp accountable those who prey connected susceptible children and their parents,” the memo from Bondi said.

The memo, which was archetypal reported by LawDork, outlines respective guidelines that Justice Department employees indispensable travel successful bid to instrumentality the policies outlined successful Trump’s enforcement order. Initiatives see drafting and promoting caller legislation, establishing a authorities and national conjugation against kid mutilation, and investigating aesculapian providers and pharmaceutical companies who the memo says “mislead the public” connected the broadside effects of gender-affirming attraction for minors.

Bondi’s memo specifically targets the aesculapian community, saying that it has fixed families “misleading advice,” erstwhile seeking the assistance of aesculapian professionals for this benignant of care.

Major mainstream aesculapian associations — including the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association, the Endocrine Society, the American Psychological Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry — person affirmed the signifier of gender-affirming attraction and hold that it’s clinically due attraction that tin supply lifesaving attraction for children and adults.

“The aesculapian community, with its roots successful hard science, is well-positioned to service arsenic a bulwark against this sociological disease,” Bondi’s memo said. “And indeed, parents who are hopeless to assistance their confused, frustrated children person understandably turned to aesculapian professionals for help.”

Medicine and country tin beryllium utilized successful the broader signifier known arsenic gender-affirming care, but specified interventions are typically reserved for adults. International guidelines bash not urge aesculapian oregon surgical involution earlier transgender children scope puberty. Even for older teens and adults, country is comparatively rare, probe shows. The broader signifier of gender-affirming attraction tin besides see counseling for the idiosyncratic and for the household astatine immoderate age.

For children, gender-affirming attraction is defined by the American Academy of Pediatrics arsenic developmentally appropriate, nonjudgmental attraction that’s provided successful a harmless objective space. The attraction is individualized and based connected peer-reviewed technological studies that amusement its effectiveness.

Bondi concludes her memo by stating again that the Justice Department volition transportation retired the administration’s policies connected gender-affirming care.

“Protecting America’s children indispensable beryllium a apical priority, whether from cause cartels, terrorists, oregon adjacent our ain aesculapian community,” Bondi wrote. “Every day, we perceive much harrowing stories astir children who volition endure for the remainder of their lives due to the fact that of the unconscionable ideology down ‘gender-affirming care.’”

Twenty-six states person passed bans connected gender-affirming wellness attraction for transgender children and teenagers, according to a CNN investigation of information from the Movement Advancement Project, a nonprofit deliberation vessel that advocates for LGBTQ rights.

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