Another great video for trans information from a medical provider. She talks about a lot of subject trans people face and have to deal with along with offering advice and support. Hugs
I have posted this before and it is a great source of easy to understand science on sex. The old idea is that there are only two sexes, male and female so if it dangles your a boy / male and if it doesn’t your a girl / female. But as always medical science like most other sciences progressed and more data and facts became clear. Sex is not binary instead it is a spectrum. So for those that say you can’t change your sex, actually sex determination by genital inspection is incomplete and our sex is determined by far more than your genitalia. I once posted an article by a biologist that did a full chemical work up on a woman who had given birth to three children. That woman was happily female but her genetic markers and chemical make up had her slightly male. I have read of men with full working penises whose genetic makeup marks them as female. Life is far more diverse and wonderful than we once understood. Hug
We’re taught that chromosomes define biological sex: XX = female, and XY = male. However it’s not quite that straightforward. Hank Green hosts as we explain how science proves that biological sex is a spectrum.
A recent article from Jesse Singal in the New York Times seemed to indicate the organization might be quietly retreating from supporting trans youth care.
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Yesterday, anti-transgender activist and columnist Jesse Singal published a piece claiming there were “cracks in the wall” around gender-affirming care (which you can find fully fact-checked here). To make that case, he relied heavily on a statement from the American Society of Plastic Surgeons that bypassed the organization’s normal scientific review process and was advanced under pressure from leadership aligned with the Trump administration, including a president who is a major Republican donor. Singal also invoked the American Psychological Association, suggesting the organization was retreating from its 2024 position supporting transgender care and rejecting claims that gender identity is “caused” by external factors. But a representative for the APA tells Erin In The Morning that the organization stands firmly by its 2024 guidelines supporting transgender youth care and provided documentation indicating Singal mischaracterized its position.
“No, APA’s position has not changed,” says a representative speaking for the APA, attaching a link to their 2024 policy statement which provided broad support for gender-affirming care. “APA continues to support unobstructed access to evidence-based care for transgender and gender-diverse individuals of all ages.”
The 2024 policy statement is to date one of the most significant supportive stances of any medical organization for gender-affirming care. It states that gender-affirming medical care is medically necessary, opposes bans on gender-affirming care, declares that being transgender is not caused by autism or post-traumatic stress, establishes the organization’s support for combatting disinformation on transgender healthcare, and finds that rejection of a trans youth’s gender identity can increase their risk of suicide and harm their psychological wellbeing. The policy was passed overwhelmingly, 153-9, with each voter representing a large subset of the organization’s 157,000 members. Now, the organization says that it is not accurate to claim that there is any regression on support for transgender youth care from the organization.
The organization also disputes Singal’s portrayal of a 2025 letter written by Katherine McGuire to the Federal Trade Commission. In his piece, Singal claims the APA “cautioned that gender dysphoria diagnoses could be the result of ‘trauma-related presentations’ rather than a trans identity,” and noted that “co-occurring mental health or neurodevelopmental conditions (e.g., depression, anxiety, autism spectrum disorder) … may complicate or be mistaken for gender dysphoria,” framing this as evidence that the organization is retreating from its 2024 policy supporting transgender youth care. That interpretation is incorrect, according to an APA representative, who says the letter does not contradict the organization’s 2024 position and does not represent a regression in its support for evidence-based transgender care.
The FTC letter sent by APA Services was not saying that transgender identity can be caused by autism or depression. Rather, it was describing what any competent psychologist does with any patient: assess the whole person, including whether conditions like depression or anxiety are present. The letter does not say that depression or anxiety or autism cause gender dysphoria; it says that psychologists are careful about not mistaking these conditions for gender dysphoria. Notably, the letter was written in direct response to the Trump administration’s FTC, which had accused gender-affirming care providers of deceiving consumers, and McGuire was explaining that psychologists conduct thorough, individualized assessments—not that the organization’s position on care or “causes” of being transgender had changed. Had McGuire not indicated that psychologists were making these determinations, the FTC would likely then accuse the organization of not investigating its crank theories on gender dysphoria.
You can view the letter here:
American Psychological Assocation Response To Ftc Rfi Gender Affirming Care 9 26 2025 Signature (1)
“The 2024 policy statement and the 2025 FTC letter are consistent. The 2024 statement reflects the organization’s policy position on access to care. The 2025 FTC letter describes what competent psychologists do in individual clinical practice: they do not make generalized claims to families but instead provide individualized, evidence-based assessment. Both documents reflect APA’s consistent commitment to evidence-based psychological care,” says the representative.
The American Psychological Association’s reaffirmation of its support for transgender youth health care is significant. The organization is among several reportedly under FTC investigation as part of a broader effort to pressure medical bodies to retreat from transgender youth care. It is also facing a coordinated pressure campaign from anti-trans activists like Jesse Singal and outlets such as The New York Times, both of which have repeatedly sought to cast doubt on established standards of care. That context makes Singal’s portrayal especially consequential. Readers were left with the impression that the APA was backtracking. According to the organization itself, that is false. What Singal presented as evidence of “cracks in the wall” was yet another attempt to manufacture doubt around the professional consensus supporting transgender youth care.
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I love Erin’s posts and reporting. The attack on trans rights and health was planned and coordinated by religious conservatives who felt they lost the culture war on gay acceptance and same sex marriage so they decided to jump quickly on the trans issue with lots of money. Their first attempt failed because they went after the idea of trans people itself. So then they changed to the old “protect the children” play book with the entire focus on protecting little cis girls but they never mention the trans boys that cis boys need to be protected from. See how patristical it is? It is all about males needing to protect the little womans. They don’t care about trans kids, they don’t care about female sports. It is about not letting trans kids transition with puberty blockers and the correct hormones as then the kids will grow up as they are fitting the societal view of what men and women look like. That scares the straight cis male religious guys because they are terrified they will be attracted to a trans woman. Imagine the horror if trans people moved freely in society not raising any question of their gender because they conformed to how society sees each gender. That sounds like a grand thing to me, but it terrifies these fanatical religious grifters that want to control how everyone lives to please their god. They make up untrue and scary what ifs, what if a man uses the letting trans people use the bathroom of their gender ID to go into a girls … notice they phrase it girls not womans because that make people more protective from the start, and they harm a little girl, your little girl? Well nothing stops a man from doing that now! Predators don’t need permission and won’t wait for it. And that has happened where a straight cis male dragged a little girl into the male bathroom and raped her while his friend watched. There was a famous court case on it. Look it up if you want. Want to know what has not happened, a trans woman going into the female’s bathroom and assaulting a female. Sorry. The right has tried hard to make one happen, but each claim of a trans person in a locker room or bathroom acting inappropriate has been debunked and disproven. This is all a made up scandal and crisis by people who can not accept the society progressing beyond the old traditional binary they grew up with and they think their holy books claim must be as their god insists on it. Weird how it is always how their god insists on what they already believe or promote. Handy that. So many people can not move past the idea that if it dangles you MUST be a boy regardless of how you feel and if it is an inny you must be a girl regardless of anything else idea. They can not seem to grasp personal feelings, needs, or medial science. Hugs
The bill would establish the Affirming Health Care Trust Fund, administered by the State Treasurer, to support clinics and providers outside the reach of federal funding threats.
Vermont Bill Would Create State Trust Fund For Private Trans Youth Care Clinics As Trump Threatens Hospital Funding
The bill would establish the Affirming Health Care Trust Fund, administered by the State Treasurer, to support clinics and providers outside the reach of federal funding threats.
Erin In The Morning is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a subscriber.
Across the United States, gender-affirming care has come under sustained attack in Republican-led states and from the Trump administration. For transgender youth, those attacks have been especially severe, with roughly half of U.S. states now banning such care outright. At the federal level, the administration has waged an intense pressure campaign against hospitals, threatening funding and prompting many systems to drop their care programs altogether. That campaign has now escalated further, with the federal government moving to threaten hospitals’ entire Medicaid and Medicare funding if they continue providing transgender youth care. In response, some states and cities are beginning to fight back by establishing their own funding mechanisms for trans healthcare. The latest example comes from Vermont, where lawmakers have introduced a bill to create a trust fund for gender-affirming care designed to be entirely insulated from federal funding threats.
H.576, introduced by Representatives Daisy Berbeco, Tiffany Bluemle, and Troy Headrick, would establish the Affirming Health Care Trust Fund. Administered by the State Treasurer, the fund would provide direct monetary support to healthcare providers and nonprofits offering gender-affirming care in Vermont. It would cover costs for patients who would otherwise go without treatment, fund the establishment of Vermont-based clinics, and pay for malpractice and liability insurance for clinicians who continue offering care. The bill is part of an increasing movement towards private clinics as a mechanism to survive federal threats.
The bill also includes provisions designed to protect patient information from both federal pressure and out-of-state threats, going further than the recent “refuge” or “shield” laws passed in several blue states to protect transgender youth care. It explicitly bars the board and other state actors from disclosing patient-identifiable data, the identities of providers, or the identities of award recipients to the federal government. This is a significant protection given the wave of abusive legislation and attempts to subpoena transgender healthcare records nationwide. While federal preemption may ultimately be litigated, these provisions give clinics a stronger legal footing to resist such demands—particularly as similar subpoenas have been repeatedly quashed in recent court cases.
The bill comes as families scramble to locate alternatives to hospital systems that are abandoning them. With more than 20 hospitals closing their doors to transgender youth care out of fear and preemptive compliance with the Trump administration, many families have been forced to seek alternatives. Just this week, major hospital systems across Colorado, for example, have stopped providing care. Groups like the Trans Youth Emergency Project say they have the capacity to refer displaced patients to private clinics, and in many places those clinics do exist and are absorbing demand. But as hospital-based programs continue to shut down and demand rises, those private providers will need sustained support—and more clinics will need to be created. Bills like this are a targeted way to do exactly that.
If this bill passes, Vermont would be the latest state to protect care in this way—but it would not be the only one. Massachusetts passed a similar measure last year, allocating $1 million toward transgender youth care clinics, though that funding has already come under criticism as insufficient to meet statewide need in the wake of major clinic closures. In New York City, newly elected mayor Zohran Mamdani has pledged $65 million for transgender healthcare. If that funding is realized, it would position New York City as a major hub for private clinics capable of absorbing demand created by hospital closures across the country. This strategy could prove to be a critical backstop for private providers that are already emerging—and that are likely to come under increasing strain in the years ahead.
The bill allows funding from state appropriations, private donations, grants, and—importantly—federal funds under a future administration that is protective of transgender healthcare. It would take effect immediately upon passage, with the board required to convene by August 1, 2026. There are still hurdles ahead: the bill must advance through committee, pass both chambers, and ultimately receive meaningful funding to function as intended. But its introduction alone signals something important. At a moment when hospitals are retreating and families are being forced into crisis planning, Vermont lawmakers are putting forward a concrete framework to protect access to care rather than surrender it. For Vermonters who want to see their state take a clear stand, residents can find and contact their legislators through the Vermont General Assembly website to make clear where they stand on protecting transgender healthcare.
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As the flu and covid are on the rise again vaccines are on the decline due to the tRump admin claiming that the best science we have is wrong based on feelings and in the case of the people like JFK Jr it is greed. People don’t realize he makes his money suing drug manufacturers that produce vaccines. Every time he thinks he has some wacked out idea he sues and nothing they can show him will matter to him, all he wants is money and to stop vaccines for other people, as his families kids are protected. Think on it, he is vaccinated, their family has the money to get the vaccines without medical insurance, all he is doing is making it harder and more costly for your kids to get them because you need the medical insurance to help pay for it. Hugs
Under Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s guidance, the CDC no longer recommends routine vaccination to protect against meningococcal disease.
Jan. 11, 2026, 7:00 AM EST
By Kaitlin Sullivan
Deaths from a rare and dangerous bacterial infection could rise if fewer teens are vaccinated, doctors warn.
After the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended that all adolescents get vaccinated against meningococcal disease in 2005, cases of the potentially deadly illness plummeted in the United States by 90%.
However, cases have sharply risen since 2021, likely due to a combination of mutating bacteria and declining rates of vaccination overall, especially among teens getting a booster dose for bacterial meningitis, doctors suggest.
Dr. Luis Ostrosky, an infectious disease doctor at UT Health in Houston, is concerned that as cases of bacterial meningitis climb in the United States, the CDC’s recent overhaul of the childhood vaccine schedule could lead to more deaths.
Under Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s guidance, the CDC is no longer recommending a meningitis vaccine for all adolescents. The vaccine and booster protect against the most common types of the infection in the U.S., serogroups A, C, Y, W.
“We see quite a few cases of meningitis per year,” Ostrosky said.
Under the new guidance, the vaccines will be recommended for “high-risk groups,” although parents can still ask doctors to vaccinate their children through a process called “shared clinical decision making.”
Teenagers and college-age adults, who often spend a lot of time in groups or communal living spaces such as dorms, and people with HIV are considered at highest risk for the infection, caused by a group of bacteria called Neisseria meningitidis.
Vaccination is important not because the disease is common — around 3,000 people are diagnosed with bacterial meningitis in the U.S. each year — but because the infection is both extremely serious and fast-moving.
Bacterial meningitis can progress quickly, causing the brain to swell and limbs to develop gangrene and sepsis, and can kill within 24 hours.
Symptoms such as headache, stiff neck, vomiting and fever come on suddenly, and may be mistaken for other minor illnesses. It can be treated with antibiotics, but even with rapid diagnosis, about 15% of patients die.
Fast-acting and life-threatening
Why some people are susceptible isn’t well understood. The infection develops when usually harmless bacteria travel through the respiratory tract and infiltrate the membranes surrounding the brain and spinal cord, causing severe inflammation. These bacteria, which commonly live in the back of the throat, can spread from person to person through close contact.
It can lead to a life-threatening infection in someone whose immune system is compromised — sometimes by a simple cold or flu virus — or who doesn’t have immunity to those bacteria. Viruses and fungi can also cause meningitis, but bacterial meningitis is the most serious.
Among patients who survive, as many as 20% have lifelong disability or complications, including amputated limbs, hearing impairment and neurological problems.
“You can die from a brain hernia, or from sepsis,” Messacar said. “And if you survive a brain hernia, you will most likely have severe complications.”
In 2024, the CDC issued an alert about a rise in cases of a type of invasive meningococcal disease. More than 500 cases were reported, the highest since 2013. Most of the infections were due to a specific strain of the Y serogroup of bacteria, which is included in the previously recommended vaccine. The cases were more common in adults ages 30 to 60, in Black people and in people with HIV.
“It’s even more important now that we get meningococcal vaccines out to people given that we are seeing a spike in this Y strain,” Messacar said.
The Food and Drug Administration has approved three types of meningitis vaccines. In 2005, the CDC began recommending that 11- and 12-year-olds get vaccinated against the most common meningococcal serotypes, A, C, Y and W. Because of waning immunity, the CDC in 2011 added a booster recommendation for 16-year-olds to protect them through young adulthood. A vaccine for meningitis B and a combined shot are available for children or babies who are considered at high risk.
In a statement Monday, Kennedy said that the CDC’s new childhood vaccine schedule was “aligning the U.S. childhood vaccine schedule with international consensus.”
Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious disease doctor at the UCSF School of Medicine in San Francisco, said the new approach to meningitis vaccination in the U.S., which is based on Denmark’s, is flawed.
“You can’t just look at another country’s vaccine approach and photocopy it. You really have to look at what is happening in your own country,” Chin-Hong said. Given the safety of meningitis vaccines, “it makes sense to vaccinate.”
Alicia Stillman, who serves on a World Health Organization task force for eliminating meningitis, worries that by moving the vaccine into shared decision making, the CDC is creating hurdles for parents who want to protect their children.
Stillman’s daughter, Emily, died from meningitis B in 2013. Emily had been vaccinated against meningitis A, C, W and Y, but the FDA didn’t approve a vaccine for meningitis B until 2014.
Emily Stillman, pictured with her mother, Alicia, was 19 when she died from meningitis B. Courtesy Alicia Stillman
Because many types of bacteria can cause bacterial meningitis, different vaccines are needed. The meningitis B vaccine hasn’t been recommended for all children but is available for people at high risk through the shared decision making process.
“I have watched medical professionals not bring [meningitis B vaccination] up,” said Stillman, who is the co-executive director of the American Society for Meningitis Prevention. “I have watched parents who are maybe a little less educated and not know how to ask about it, or they go to a public clinic instead of a private clinic where they have less time with a provider.”
She believes that could happen more broadly with the changed guidance.
What the research says
A CDC statement said the changes to the recommendation reflect the need for more data on certain vaccines, “including placebo-controlled randomized trials and long-term observational studies to better characterize vaccine benefits, risks, and outcomes.”
While there haven’t been placebo-controlled trials for meningitis vaccines — which would test how well a vaccine works either by deliberately infecting people with bacteria or by seeing how well they fare if they are infected in the real world — there have been many randomized clinical trials and other studies that use decades of data collected from both vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals in the real world.
Chin-Hong said placebo-controlled trials aren’t realistic or ethical for every drug, especially for life-threatening and rare diseases.
“A well-designed observational study, especially using decades of experience, can be just as informative as a randomized controlled trial,” Chin-Hong said.
A 2020 CDC report analyzed 20 clinical trials on meningococcal disease vaccines, including data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) and the Vaccine Safety Datalink (VS). The most common reported side effects were “mild to moderate,” and included swelling, fever and headache.
In 2005, Katie Thompson, now 39, was infected with an antibiotic-resistant strain of bacterial meningitis when she was a college freshman, the same month the FDA approved the first MenACWY vaccine.
“I don’t know how to describe it besides it’s pure hell,” she said.
After five weeks in the hospital and nearly dying, she went home, but not without lifelong complications. Thompson, who lives outside of Charleston, South Carolina, still struggles with migraines and vestibular disorders that cause vertigo and nausea. The infection was hard on her organs and she uses a bladder stimulator that helps regulate both her bladder and nerves in the base of her spine.
“It’s just not a disease that you want to take a risk on,” she said. “It’s not one that you want to gamble with your child’s life.”
Two vaccines that remain universally recommended by the CDC — the Haemophilus influenzae type b, or Hib, vaccine and the pneumococcal vaccine — protect against some causes of bacterial meningitis. However, these vaccines don’t protect against meningitis A, C, W, Y or B.
Kaitlin Sullivan
Kaitlin Sullivan is a contributor for NBCNews.com who has worked with NBC News Investigations. She reports on health, science and the environment and is a graduate of the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at City University of New York.
Dr Mehmet Oz, administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
Mehmet Oz, better-known as Dr Oz, has raged about “$150k penis surgery” for trans youth, but he failed to cite any facts.
Dr Oz, who leads Medicaid and Medicare, announced on Thursday (18 December), alongside health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr, measures that will ban gender-affirming care for trans youth.
The ban, part of Dr Oz’s bid to end “taxpayer funding of sex rejecting procedures for children in Medicaid and CHIP [children’s health insurance program], full stop”, takes the form of two new proposed rules from Medicaid and Medicare.
The first prevents doctors and hospitals from receiving federal Medicaid reimbursement for gender-affirming care provided to trans youth under the age of 18, while the second blocks all Medicaid and Medicare funding for any services at hospitals that provide pediatric gender-affirming care.
Medicaid, which is the health care program that covers low-income Americans, alongside older and disabled citizens, is taken at most hospitals, meaning the proposals could have a wide-ranging effect, as per New Hampshire Public Radio.
During announcing the proposals, Kennedy referred to gender-affirming care as “malpractice”, while Dr Oz went completely off topic.
The 65-year-old began ranting about the prices of bottom surgery, which is very rarely performed on individuals under 18.
“A vaginoplasty – a procedure a child does not need – costs $60,000,” he claimed, adding: “Shockingly, a phalloplasty, the creation of a penis, costs, on average, in America, $150,000 per child.
“I do believe, with doing some work, that these prices have continued to increase due to increased manufactured demand,” he continued. “A scrotalplasty, where you add testicles? That’s extra.”
Dr Oz didn’t clarify where he pulled his quoted figures from, but according to the Gender Confirmation Center, the price of a vaginoplasty is between $23,000 and $24,500, while phalloplasty ranges between $35,000 and $50,000.
According to 2025 data from the Williams Institute, about one per cent of people aged 13 and older identify as trans in the US, and despite the proposals attacking gender-affirming care for trans youth, multiple studies show that surgeries are rarely performed on minors.
A 2024 study by researchers at Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health found that no gender-affirming surgeries were performed on trans or gender diverse youth (TGD) aged 12 and younger in 2019, the most recent year for which data is available.
For teens ages 15 to 17 and adults ages 18 and older, the rate of undergoing gender-affirming surgery was 2.1 per 100,000 and 5.3 per 100,000, respectively. The majority of surgeries were chest surgeries.
Co-author Elizabeth Boskey, instructor in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, said: “We found that gender-affirming surgeries are rarely performed for transgender minors, suggesting that US surgeons are appropriately following international guidelines around assessment and care.”
Lead author Dannie Dai, research data analyst in the Department of Health Policy and Management, added: “Our findings suggest that legislation blocking gender-affirming care among TGD youth is not about protecting children, but is rooted in bias and stigma against TGD identities and seeks to address a perceived problem that does not actually exist.”
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