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FAIR
View article on FAIR's website ([link removed])
On Trans Care, WaPo Rejects Experts and Invents 'More Neutral' Center Julie Hollar ([link removed])


President Donald Trump, having campaigned heavily on anti-trans fear mongering ([link removed]) , issued an executive order ([link removed]) within days of taking office that banned federal support for gender-affirming care. That same order commanded the secretary of Health and Human Services to produce a report ([link removed]) on "best practices" for the care of trans youth.

When the report ([link removed]) was released in May, exactly zero people were surprised that its conclusions echoed the executive order's anti-trans stance—condemning gender-affirming care and instead recommending "exploratory" therapy—and were grounded in ideology ([link removed]) , not science or medical expertise. The May report was not peer-reviewed and did not even disclose its authors' names. And it was sharply criticized ([link removed]) by every major medical association and several rights groups (e.g., Human Rights Campaign, 5/1/25 ([link removed]) ; Lambda Legal, 5/1/25 ([link removed]) ).


** A continuing sham
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Erin in the Morning: Trump's Anti-Trans Report Authors Revealed: Hate Groups and Billionaire-Funded Anti-Trans Activists

Erin in the Morning (11/20/25 ([link removed]) ) noted that the Health & Human Services report's authors were missing "any actual transgender people, medical professionals with notable experience treating trans people, or any academics who have conducted principal research on patients with gender dysphoria."

Now, as the Trump administration is working on new rules ([link removed]) to further block gender-affirming care for youth, the HHS has re-released the report—summarized by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. as showing that gender-affirming care is "malpractice"—which now discloses its nine authors and claims to have undergone peer review.

As trans-focused news site Erin in the Morning (11/20/25 ([link removed]) ) details, the list of authors excludes "any actual transgender people, medical professionals with notable experience treating trans people, or any academics who have conducted principal research on patients with gender dysphoria."

Instead, the primary qualification for selection of authors seemed to have been skepticism of or flat-out opposition to gender-affirming care. As Erin in the Morning points out, one author previously compared ([link removed]) gender-affirming care for youth to Nazi eugenics. Another is a political scientist currently funded by the right-wing Manhattan Institute ([link removed]) to write anti-trans commentaries; in his dissertation, about why trans people shouldn't be protected from discrimination under Title IX, he wondered ([link removed]) whether "'gender identity' [might] be a misunderstood form of erotic desire."

A third co-founded an anti-trans group listed ([link removed]) by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group. Yet another, in an op-ed for the right-wing Wall Street Journal opinion section (6/23/25 ([link removed]) ), willfully misrepresented the American Psychiatric Association's definition of gender dysphoria as "disordered perception." (The APA explicitly warns ([link removed] information does not constitute medical advice,secondary sex characteristics of the other gender) against such misinterpretation: "The presence of gender variance is not the pathology, but dysphoria is from the distress caused by the body and mind not aligning and/or societal marginalization of gender-variant people.")

Moreover, the "peer review" was not anonymous, as is typically done to avoid bias. Assigned Media (11/19/25 ([link removed]) ) points out that the review consists of one highly critical review from the APA—which says the report's "underlying methodology lacks sufficient transparency and clarity for its findings to be taken at face value"—and that the rest, which were "uniformly effusive in their praise…notably fail to include any experts in gender medicine."

In short, the report was a sham when it was first released, and it continues to be a sham, with even more evidence to demonstrate that, now that the authors' identities are known. Yet at the Washington Post (11/20/25 ([link removed]) ), it's a "dispute" among people with "strong opinions"—and the paper offered the side with far less expertise the most space to express those opinions.


** 'Strong opinions'
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Washington Post: Authors of HHS report blasting youth gender care revealed

The Washington Post suggests that having expertise in caring for trans people makes one a suspect source, saying "many people deeply involved in the issue have strong opinions." Meanwhile, people without relevant experience—what the Post calls "more neutral parties"—"may be reluctant to weigh in."

As the Post's Paige Winfield Cunningham ([link removed]) and David Ovalle reported it, the administration says the final report shows that gender-affirming care for youth is "dangerous"; meanwhile, "LGBTQ+ healthcare providers and activists" say "the disclosures instead show the administration did not undergo a dispassionate review of evidence and had a predetermined conclusion."

What is a reader to make of these opposing viewpoints? The Post offered this analysis:

The dispute over the report underscores the challenge of scrutinizing gender transition care amid an international reckoning over how to best treat the rising number of gender-nonconforming children and whether medical interventions ([link removed]) have been too broadly administered without robust evidence to justify their use.

The intense polarization surrounding transgender healthcare means many people deeply involved in the issue have strong opinions and more neutral parties may be reluctant to weigh in. Transition care providers and leading medical associations fiercely defend the availability of such care and say the fixation on long-term unknowns overlooks the consequences of a child’s distress as their body develops in a way that does not align with their gender identity.

While the motivations of the Trump administration’s review have been scrutinized given that it was commissioned as part of an executive order to ban the care, other efforts to scrutinize the science have raised concerns about the treatments.

This is a quintessential failure of so-called objective journalism. The Post sees "polarization" and declares that, because both sides have "strong opinions," the best way to "scrutinize" the dispute is to find "more neutral" sources. This presents a "challenge," because the Post's reporters have a hard time finding such sources; they say that's because it's so polarizing.

Actually, it's hard to find "more neutral" sources who can scrutinize the issue because the overwhelming majority of expert and patient sources are on the side of gender-affirming care. Their "strong opinions" shouldn't diminish the weight of their argument, it should increase it—because they have actual experience and expertise regarding such care.

The other people “deeply involved in the issue” may have equally strong opinions, but most have very little relevant connection to the issue, besides an apparent opposition to trans people's rights.

While the Post acknowledges that the HHS review's "motivations" are suspect, it suggests that in this debate, the more neutral "center"—every well-trained corporate journalist's homing signal—is to be found in those "other efforts to scrutinize the science" it cites that "have raised concerns about the treatments."

Here it briefly references the Cass Review from the UK, which, like the HHS report, sought ([link removed]) nonexperts to judge gender-affirming care (and which likewise disparaged such care as being insufficiently evidence-based, while touting therapy, which has far less research ([link removed]) backing it as a treatment for gender dysphoria). The Post doesn't dwell on this, but leaves the reader with the impression that the skeptical center is the most reasonable place to be in this debate.


** 'Very much a lefty'
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FAIR: Pamela Paul's Gender Agenda

FAIR.org (12/16/22 ([link removed]) ): "By pretending to be a rights-loving liberal" while "aiming to restrict people’s gender freedom," Pamela Paul (like the New York Times) "normalizes the backlash against trans people and their rights."

The Washington Post skews the perspective even further from the actual experts by offering quotes to nine supporters of the HHS report, including two HHS spokespeople, three authors and four supportive peer reviewers. None are trans. It only quotes two critics, one of whom is trans ([link removed]) (though the Post does not note this, perhaps in part because doing so would highlight the fact that none of the nine people quoted who support the report have skin in the game, so to speak). No trans youth or their families—the people most impacted by the restriction of gender-affirming care—are quoted.

In its description of quoted reviewer Lane Strathearn, the Post notes that the "professor of pediatrics" was contacted "out of the blue" to be a reviewer, and that he "used to vote Republican before Trump’s entry into politics but has since voted for Democrats." Describing reviewer Karleen Gribble—a "professor" who says "one of her areas of focus" is "the potential harms of breast removal surgery," the Post writes: "She describes herself as 'very much a lefty' and said she doesn’t follow American politics."

These characterizations of the reviewers' supposed ideologies appear to be an effort by the Post to present them as occupying that trustworthy, "more neutral" center. Strathearn's quote is: "I see it as just an impossible political situation in the US, where things are so polarized that people can’t sit down and have a reasonable conversation.” Gribble's is: "Getting people who disagree with my viewpoint to actually engage in the discussion is just about impossible."

As I pointed out in a piece (FAIR.org, 12/16/22 ([link removed]) ) dissecting the insidiously anti-trans columns of then–New York Times "liberal" columnist Pamela Paul, the MAGA GOP is pushing laws and policies that threaten trans people's rights, health and lives. But it's anti-trans liberals—that is, people like Paul, Strathearn and Gribble, framed as liberals by corporate media—who make such policies politically possible. Claiming to fight for things like free speech, feminism and "reasonable conversation" while advancing transphobic pseudoscience, they help blunt opposition to laws targeting a vulnerable minority.

In fact, Gribble, a professor ([link removed]) at the Western Sydney School of Nursing and Midwifery, has become a vocal critic ([link removed]) of trans-inclusive terminology in recent years. She encouraged the HHS report to emphasize "the risks of using terminology suggesting that people can change their sex.”

Strathearn's biography ([link removed]) and publication history ([link removed]) do not appear to include anything substantively related to gender dysphoria; in his review, he describes gender dysphoria as falling under his umbrella of expertise, which is "the care of children with intellectual, developmental and behavioral conditions." Again: All relevant professional associations (American Academy of Pediatrics ([link removed]) , American Medical Association ([link removed]) , American Psychiatric Association ([link removed]) ) do not regard gender dysphoria as any of these conditions. Despite his apparent lack of expertise, he attempted to publish a summary
about the evidence for gender-affirming care in youth, which, he notes in his review, was rejected by both journals he submitted to. His review called ([link removed]) the HHS report "valuable and much needed."


** 'Couldn't assess'
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On top of offering minimal space for critics to push back, the Post misconstrues and downplays the criticism of the American Psychiatric Association's contribution to the HHS report's "peer review," saying: "The American Psychiatric Association concluded it couldn’t assess the report’s rigor because it was not clear how the studies it reviewed were selected or judged."

The APA did not say it "couldn't assess the report's rigor"; it stated quite clearly that "the report’s claims fall short of the standard of methodological rigor that should be considered a prerequisite for policy guidance in clinical care." It also offered six serious methodological flaws, going well beyond the one—lack of transparency in study selection—that the Post describes.

Pretending that the APA didn't thoroughly examine and reject the HHS report, though, helps the Washington Post's project of taking the focus away from experts—who overwhelmingly support gender-affirming care—and giving the spotlight to less-informed dilettantes whose criticisms of gender dysphoria treatment the paper finds more appealing.
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ACTION ALERT: You can send a message to the Washington Post at [email protected] (mailto:[email protected]) (or via Bluesky: @washingtonpost.com ([link removed]) ).

Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective. Feel free to leave a copy of your message in the comments thread on FAIR.org ([link removed]) .


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