The Trump Administration Is About To Release It's Own Anti-Trans, Junk-Science "Cass Review"

The review is expected by insiders to establish new standards of care to justify state bans, with no expert participation in its crafting.

RFJ JR - Gage Skidmore - Creative Commons

News is emerging that the Department of Health and Human Services is preparing to release a review of transgender care intentionally slanted to oppose it. The review is expected to follow the same playbook as Governor DeSantis’ Florida Board of Medicine review and the Cass Review in England—both of which excluded gender-affirming care experts and were engineered to justify crackdowns on care. According to anti-trans organizations, the report is expected by April 28, and could be used to undermine not just youth care, but adult care as well.

The foundation for the new review was laid out in Trump’s executive order issued on January 28, which instructed the Department of Health and Human Services to “publish a review of the existing literature on best practices for promoting the health of children who assert gender dysphoria, rapid-onset gender dysphoria, or other identity-based confusion” within 90 days. The language of the order already set the tone for what many expect to be a deeply biased and predetermined report. Notably, “rapid-onset gender dysphoria” is a disputed and scientifically unsupported term frequently used by anti-trans advocates to cast doubt on the legitimacy of trans youth identities. The inclusion of this terminology in the mandate signals that the forthcoming report may be more about ideology than medicine.

Adding to concerns, then-acting NIH director Matthew Memoli recently sent out an internal email directing the National Institutes of Health to fund research focused on the “chemical and surgical mutilation of children and adults”—a phrase rooted in anti-trans rhetoric. The email, obtained by Nature, outlined the two main areas of focus for the review: “regret and detransition following social transition,” and outcomes in youth who have undergone what the administration terms “chemical and surgical mutilation.” Given this highly charged language and the apparent lack of participation from experts in gender-affirming care, the review is expected to follow the model used by the DeSantis administration in Florida and the Cass Review in the UK—both of which have faced strong backlash for misrepresenting evidence in order to justify restrictions on care. If released as expected by April 28, this review could become a cornerstone document used to justify sweeping restrictions on gender-affirming care for both youth and adults across the country.

This has been tried and weaponized successfully before. In Florida, a similar review was created to justify bans on trans care in the state—a process criticized as politically motivated by the Human Rights Campaign. Patrick Hunter, a member of the anti-trans Catholic Medical Association, played a significant role in the development of the Florida Review and Standards of Care under Republican Governor Ron DeSantis. Patrick Hunter was chosen specifically by the governor, who has exhibited fierce opposition towards LGBTQ+ and especially transgender people, and then immediately got to work on targeting transgender care. The Florida review was purportedly designed and manipulated with the intention of having "care effectively banned" from the outset, as revealed by court documents. The Florida Review was slammed by Yale Researchers as “not a serious scientific analysis, but rather, a document crafted to serve a political agenda.”

More recently, the Cass Review in the United Kingdom took a similar approach, handpicking members of SPLC-designated hate groups to serve on its advisory board. The lead reviewer and members of the team also met with appointees from Governor DeSantis’s Board of Medicine, with at least one advisor working closely with the Florida team. Though the Cass Review has been rejected by dozens of international medical societies, updated standards of care in countries like Germany and France, and researchers at Yale University, it has still been used to justify sweeping crackdowns on transgender healthcare in the United Kingdom.

Now, SPLC-designated hate group Genspect is reporting that the Trump administration’s HHS review will be released on April 28. “When the HHS review is published, it will catalyze a transformation in American healthcare,” Genspect boasts, predicting legal attacks, insurance denials, and the collapse of gender clinics. Their vision isn’t subtle: they want to replace evidence-based care with ideological warfare—recasting transgender healthcare as fringe pseudoscience while ignoring the overwhelming global consensus on its safety and efficacy.

This report will mark another escalation in the dismantling of science within the Department of Health and Human Services under Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a man whose war on vaccines and water fluoridation has already reopened the door to once-eradicated diseases. When the report drops, it won’t be a scientific review—it will be a political weapon. Researchers, physicians, and advocates must be ready not only to debunk the coming wave of disinformation, but to meet it with unrelenting truth. The future of transgender healthcare in the United States may depend on it.