NEW YORK -“The idea that NYU would withdraw this life-affirming care because of bullies is unimaginable,” an indignant protester told People’s World as a crowd of nearly 1500 people gathered in the cold on the night of February 3, 2025. Masses of trans and queer people and their allies came together to rally against NYU Langone Health’s decision to cancel appointments for its trans patients under the age of nineteen just days after the second Trump administration issued yet another anti-trans Executive Order on January 28, 2025 entitled “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation.”
A few hundred miles away, just days before, protesters gathered outside UVa Medical Center in Charlottesville, Virginia and Children’s National Hospital in Washington, D.C., emphasizing the life-or-death stakes of these hospitals’ decisions to halt gender affirming care to trans youth.
Protesters in D.C. rallied on the sidewalk outside Children’s National, amid chants of “Protect trans youth” and “Doctors, doctors, grow a spine; trans kids’ lives are on the line.” Speakers talked about the cowardice of the hospital’s board to pre-emptively comply with an unlawful Executive Order. Others likened the developing political conditions and the hospital’s compliance to the beginnings of genocide.
One of a series of orders
This Executive Order was one of a series of ongoing orders from Trump, taking aim at limiting the freedoms of trans people and eradicating so-called “gender ideology,” which the new administration has made clear is one of its top priorities. In it he laid out a number of directives and course reversals from the Biden era with regard to the civil liberties of trans people.
The order begins by attempting to legally redefine children as “an individual or individuals under 19 [sic] years of age.” It goes on to label the treatment of gender dysphoria in children and adults in this age group as “chemical and surgical mutilation” and deems guidance from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), the world’s leading body on trans research, care, and advocacy, as “junk science” whose input the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will now ignore.
The directive to hospitals and care providers from this Executive Order is clear: cease all care for trans patients under the age of nineteen or lose federal funding. In response to this illegal threat, several hospitals and clinics began to acquiesce.
On January 28, Denver Health announced they would comply. On January 30, People’s World correspondents received reports that NYU Langone was cancelling appointments for trans youth but were unable to receive comment from the organization. Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York and VCU Hospital in Richmond also complied with the Trump administration’s unlawful order. On February 3, President Trump published a “fact sheet” listing additional hospitals in Illinois and Pennsylvania cooperating with his administration’s goals on trans youth care.
In the wake of these attacks, trans people and their allies took action. Caelyn, a trans man, told People’s World his motivations for protesting NYU’s decision: “I had not heard of trans people during my childhood…[At age fourteen], I remember wishing I had breast cancer so I could get rid of my breasts, because I did not know there were other options…I don’t want more trans children to suffer the way I did. I don’t want children thinking they’re crazy, and part of that is not legislating away the ability for children to identify as trans…I think trans people are a very easy target. It’s the way of fascists to start with the easiest targets first. They’re coming for trans people…immigrants, black and brown people because those are easy targets and those are communities that other people aren’t necessarily going to stand up for.”
Some attendees at the rally outside NYU Langone took aim at the Democrats’ perceived ineffectiveness in meeting the political moment. Naomi, a Park Slope resident said: “It’s been shocking how little we’ve heard from Democrats as we have a coup in process…I think that’s horrific and scary…The Democrats are acting like this is normal times. It is not. When we’re having a coup right before our very eyes and they’re playing by Robert’s Rules of Order, it’s not working.”
State attorneys general in fourteen states, including New York and Colorado, have issued a statement that they “will continue to enforce state laws that provide access to gender-affirming care, in states where such enforcement authority exists, and we will challenge any unlawful effort by the Trump Administration to restrict access to it in our jurisdictions.” This statement comes amid reports of more hospitals continuing to cave to pressure from the federal government.
Trans people continue to lead the fight against these fascistic attempts to trample on bodily autonomy and access to life-saving healthcare. Protests outside DC Attorney General Brian Schwalb’s office have begun to pressure him to join in signing the statement by other state attorneys general.
Protests in New York continue to place pressure on health systems that defy state law to deny care to trans people. Reports have come in from hospitals in Washington and Michigan that protests from trans activists have successfully pressured hospitals to reverse course.
It is clear that trans people will not back down without a fight.
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