The World Professional Association for Transgender Health, or WPATH, is the leading authority in the field of gender medicine. Its guidance is routinely used by top medical associations in the U.S. and abroad, while its standards of care inform insurance companies’ approach to coverage policies.
But behind closed doors, top WPATH doctors discussed, and at times seemed to challenge, the organization’s own published guidelines for sex-change procedures and acknowledged pushing experimental medical interventions that can have devastating and irreversible complications, according to exclusive footage obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
WPATH published highly influential clinical guidance
called “Standards of Care for the Health of Transgender and Gender Diverse People, Version 8,” or SOC 8, which recommends the use of invasive medical interventions such as puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and sex change surgeries, calling them “safe and effective.”
The Daily Caller News Foundation filed a series of public records requests to the World Professional Association for Transgender Health’s SOC 8 co-authors who are employed at taxpayer-funded institutions, making their emails subject to open records laws.
Buried in more than 100 pages of responsive records from the University of Nevada was a series of emails sent in 2022 among prominent WPATH members and leaders, including WPATH Global Education Institute Co-Chair Gail Knudson.
In one email, Knudson sent a colleague the link to a folder containing nearly 30 hours of recordings from WPATH’s Global Education Institute summit in September 2022 in Montreal, Canada, which included sessions on mental health, puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and sex-change surgery.
These sessions provided WPATH members with in-depth education on the clinical application of topics addressed in the SOC 8 treatment guidelines. However, the footage reveals WPATH-affiliated doctors advocating that children undergo risky sex-change procedures and even pushing for these treatments for patients struggling with severe mental health issues.
Several sessions were dedicated exclusively to treating children and included recommendations for minors to receive puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries.
For instance, WPATH guidance recommends addressing a patient’s mental health issues before giving him or her sex-change medical interventions. However, in one recorded session, a WPATH faculty member and gender doctor claimed that mental health issues don’t necessarily affect a patient’s ability to receive cross-sex hormones.
In another video, a doctor told attendees that children should be informed that cross-sex hormones will likely make them infertile. but admitted that he would prescribe them anyway if a child says he or she wants the treatment, regardless of future consequences.
A surgeon euphemistically referred to a phalloplasty procedure, a surgical series that includes obliterating the vaginal cavity and creating a fake penis with harvested tissue, as an “adventure” for young people. He did this despite later admitting that those same procedures “definitely” will have “complications,” such as permanent issues with bladder function and tissue death.
One physician called the entire field of cross-sex hormones “off-label,” referring to the concept of drugs being used for alternative purposes than what they were approved for. The doctor went on to say that female patients might actually appreciate drug side effects that cause them to lose hair, because they’d look “more like men.”
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration says
that when it approves a drug, health care providers generally may prescribe that drug for an unapproved use, or off-label, when “they judge that it is medically appropriate for their patient.”
In several other videos, doctors argued in favor of transitioning patients who experience psychotic episodes. One admitted that some of his patients with schizophrenia have to be careful how much cross-sex hormones they take or they can’t “keep the voices down.”
The Daily Caller News Foundation consulted medical professionals from respected organizations, such as Do No Harm, who all argued that the comments from WPATH-affiliated doctors show that the transgender medical industry doesn’t have patients’ best interests at heart.
While the average person, nationally and internationally, likely never has heard of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, the modern medical industry is deeply tied to the organization and relies on it to dictate the standards of care for transgender medicine.
WPATH’s guidelines are cited as criteria for obtaining insurance coverage by both private insurance companies
and tax-funded insurance plans
, positioning them as a lynchpin of the sex reassignment industry.
The American Academy of Pediatrics is being sued by Isabelle Ayala, a former patient who was medically transitioned as a child and claims she was rushed through sex-change medical procedures.
There’s been an explosion in the number of young people, including children, being put on hormones and puberty blockers and getting sex-change surgeries, according to a study published in August 2023 by the JAMA Network.
This surge has been fueled, in part, by groups such as Planned Parenthood, which distributes cross-sex hormones to patients as young as 16. Planned Parenthood saw
a roughly 125% jump in the number of transgender services it provided between 2020 and 2022.
Twenty-three states, however, have enacted
legislation preventing doctors from performing sex-change surgeries on minors amid backlash from concerned parents and doctors who don’t subscribe to the WPATH-endorsed “gender-affirming care” model. Gender-affirming care is another euphemism used by medical professionals to describe the idea that doctors should affirm a patient’s wish to live as the opposite biological sex through social transitioning, hormone therapy, and even surgery.
The SOC 8 was released just days ahead of the 2022 symposium and contained several significant changes to how doctors and medical institutions implemented transgender medical treatment. For instance, WPATH removed minimum age requirements that established when a child can or should receive transgender medical services such as puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and sex-reassignment surgeries.
The World Professional Association for Transgender Health’s previous guidelines recommended that hormone therapy be given once a patient was over the age of 16, but the updated version removed this barrier and suggests hormone therapy begin at the first signs of sexual maturity.
The videos obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation give the first glimpse at how doctors and mental health professionals discussed implementing the new guidelines. To highlight the most significant portions of the content obtained in the records requests, the foundation has decided to publish a series of articles collectively called “The WPATH Tapes.”
Following this release, the Daily Caller News Foundation intends to publish all of the videos in their entirety to provide the public with necessary information about WPATH’s approach to medical care and shine a light on an influential organization that has largely remained anonymous until now.
The House approved a trio of bills on Wednesday aimed at supporting law enforcement during National Police Week — legislation largely opposed by Democrats as leaders on the left decried GOP attempts to downplay the events of Jan. 6, 2021.
Consideration of the three bills — which face slim odds of moving in the Democratic-controlled Senate — is part of Republicans’ efforts to spotlight crime, which has emerged as a central issue to voters ahead of the November elections and a key vulnerability for President Biden as he seeks another term in the White House.
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and GOP leadership held a press conference Wednesday morning alongside two law enforcement officials, underscoring the importance of standing with men and women in blue while also accusing Democrats — especially the Biden administration — of adopting a “pro-crime, anti-law enforcement agenda.”
“This National Police Week, House Republicans will counteract the Democrats’ pro-crime anti-police agenda by bringing seven bills to the floor that support our nation’s law enforcement and give them the resources they need to keep our communities safe,” said House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.).
Democrats were quick to reject the notion that they are soft on crime.
Asked about Police Week bills up for consideration this week, Rep. Pete Aguilar (Calif.), the chair of the Democratic caucus, said members on his side of the aisle “want to try to work with our colleagues to get things done” on police reform, but the tendency of some Republicans to defend the Jan. 6 Capitol rioters has challenged that cooperation.
“It’s a little more difficult when they want to try to whitewash what happened [on Jan. 6], when they will stand with some law enforcement but they won’t stand with others,” Aguilar told reporters in the Capitol.
Underscoring that dynamic, Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), who sat on the select committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack, penned a letter to Johnson last week asking about the delay in installing a plaque at the Capitol honoring law enforcement officers who defended the building on Jan. 6.
Congress approved the enactment of the plaque in March 2022 — under the leadership of then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) — as part of the fiscal year 2022 government funding bill. The provision required the Architect of the Capitol to place the plaque on the west side of the Capitol by March 2023, a deadline that was not met.
“I urge the House to take immediate action to address this oversight and ensure that the plaque is promptly installed in accordance with the law,” she wrote.
Aguilar called the delay “disappointing.”
“That doesn’t stop us … from every day trying to work with our colleagues in order to get things done. But … it does shape our perspective here, clearly,” he added.
Rep. Ted Lieu (Calif.), vice chair of the Democratic Caucus, blasted GOP leaders for passing a series of bills that have virtually no chance of becoming law, arguing that Republicans are more concerned with dividing Democrats than helping law enforcers.
“What we’re seeing from the Republican conference are a series of messaging bills on a variety of topics, none of which are going to pass the U.S. Senate,” Lieu.
Two of the bills were widely opposed by Democrats, with a majority of the caucus voting “no.” The first, titled the Detain and Deport Illegal Aliens Who Assault Cops Act, which calls for the detention of undocumented immigrants who assault law enforcement officers, passed in a 265-148 vote.
The second, named the DC Crimes Act, would lower D.C.’s youth offender status to those younger than 18 years old and prevent the city council from changing its sentencing laws. It was approved in a 225-181 vote.
The third in the group, however, received overwhelmingly bipartisan support — 356-55 — with 149 Democrats voting “yes,” including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffres (D-N.Y.) and his leadership team. The legislation, dubbed the Improving Law Enforcement Officer Safety and Wellness Through Data Act, would require the attorney general to submit a report on violent attacks against law enforcement officers.
“Our law enforcement officers keep us safe. They put their lives on a line to do it and we are forever indebted,” Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said on Wednesday. “And these gestures and these pieces of legislation that we passed this week is the very least that we can do to support them.”
SPRINGFIELD — Teachers and school employees represented by the Chicago Teachers Union swarmed the Illinois Capitol building on Wednesday to rally for full funding of the state’s largest public school system amid the depletion of federal COVID-19 relief money that has the district facing a fiscal cliff.
The union is pushing for more than $1.1 billion in state funding it says is owed to Chicago Public Schools following a 2017 overhaul of the state’s formula for funding public schools.
After a couple of hundred union members clad in red flooded the Capitol, several attended a news conference and described a shortage of English as a second language teachers and paraprofessionals who work with students with disabilities, the need for school employees who specialize in helping children who’ve experienced trauma, and a lack of resources for homeless students.
Pavlyn Jankov, CTU’s research director, noted that the city’s public schools got some federal funding through COVID relief and that brought in counselors, after-school programs and helped maintain lower class sizes. But with that money running out, he said he’s worried those gains could be lost.
“It’s important that we keep up the progress we’ve made. We can’t afford to go back. And we want to be on a path towards full funding,” Jankov said. “And right now what we’re seeing from the state legislature in the budgets that have been passed so far, we’re just not on that path. We can’t wait another 10 years or more for our schools to be fully invested.”
CPS leaders have said the influx of federal relief money demonstrated what’s possible when schools are fully funded, citing growth in student achievement on standardized tests.
Since federal funds began dwindling last year, district and union leaders have highlighted the yet-to-be-fulfilled promise of a 2017 state reform, known as Evidence-Based Funding or EBF, which pledged to provide all public schools enough state funding by 2027 to implement proven best practices, such as class sizes associated with the best academic outcomes by grade level.
CPS currently receives around 80% of the total funding that the state’s formula determines is needed, resulting in an approximately $1.1 billion gap, according to Illinois State Board of Education data. The 2017 reform mandated lawmakers to increase funding for public schools across the state by a minimum $350 million per year, which has occurred with the exception of 2021. But, by contributing no more than the minimum, the state won’t achieve adequate funding for all schools for another decade, according to the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability, a nonpartisan, nonprofit think tank.
Lawmakers have a week and a half before a scheduled May 24 adjournment to come to terms on Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s $52.7 billion budget proposal for the fiscal year beginning July 1.
State Rep. Will Davis, a Democrat from south suburban Homewood who was one of the sponsors of the 2017 school funding overhaul, has repeatedly called for that spending to be increased to $550 million statewide. He acknowledged the funding demands from CPS and CTU are probably unrealistic.
“Based on what we know about revenue and (the) possibility of a budget coming together, a specific $1 billion ask is highly unlikely,” Davis, who chairs the House Appropriations Committee that oversees K-12 funding, said on Tuesday after a private meeting with other House Democrats. “Asking the mayor, presumably CTU, to support that additional $200 million would go a long way toward moving the conversation forward for CPS, as well as all schools throughout the state.”
Earlier Wednesday, Senate Republicans called a news conference to criticize CTU and its budget request. Sen. Donald DeWitte of St. Charles said for many years that CPS has received a “disproportionate share” of public education funding “through special carve-outs and unique grants.”
“Knowing how the scales have been tipped in the Chicago Public Schools system’s favor with regards to funding over the years, for the mayor, and now his minions in the Chicago Teachers Union that come down here, (to) try to bully lawmakers into more money they claim they are being shortchanged is absolutely outrageous,” DeWitte said.
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, a former teacher and CTU organizer, visited Springfield a week ago to talk about the city’s budget priorities but did not discuss school funding in his meeting with Pritzker and barely touched on the subject during a talk with a group of progressive lawmakers.
In Chicago on Wednesday, Board of Education Vice President Elizabeth Todd-Breland opened a meeting expressing support for CTU’s lobbying efforts in Springfield. “We support adequate funding for all districts in the state of Illinois, not just for CPS,” Todd-Breland said.
But she said the need for more money is “acute” for CPS, which serves an outsized number of students with the greatest needs, with disproportionate numbers of English learners, low-income, homeless and Black students in the district.
“CPS isn’t getting its fair share of state funding,” Todd-Breland said.
Next school year, CPS faces a projected deficit of at least $391 million — a figure that doesn’t account for new costs that may be associated with a CTU contract, nor the tentative agreement with Service Employees International Union Local 73 that the district recently announced.
The teacher’s union contract expires in June. In unveiling CTU’s contract demands last month — which include 9% pay increases and providing every school with a social worker and nurse and fine arts and sports programs — CTU President Stacy Davis Gates said the union would not cower in the face of funding challenges.
Approached by a Tribune reporter at the Capitol on Wednesday, Davis Gates declined to comment at the request of her communications team. But in April, she made clear what she wanted from lawmakers.
“We’re going to demand from you to actually fund the funding formula in Springfield,” she said.
The first of the 2020 presidential debates was so marred by personal attacks and accusations that mute buttons were added for the second Trump-Biden debate.
President Biden announced earlier that he would not participate in the traditional televised showdowns organized by the bipartisan Commission on Presidential Debates.
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I’ve been using my Oura Ring
for almost two years now, and it’s one of my favorite health and wellness purchases to date. I can’t really get on board with a bulky smartwatch, so the sleek and metallic-gold Oura Ring
fits the bill when it comes to reliably tracking and evaluating my sleep, temperature, activity, pulse, and more without looking obnoxious on my wrist. Plus, according to some experts, opting for a smart ring worn tightly on the finger may yield more accurate health results (especially in the cardiovascular department) compared to other health wearables
like smartwatches, because of its placement closer to the skin and arteries.
“The [Oura] ring’s
form factor was chosen because the finger provides a stronger heart rate signal than any other place on the body. The ring takes bio-measurements directly from the arteries in the finger whereas smartwatches (or wrist wearables) sit on the top of the wrist, farther away from the arteries that are on the bottom of the wrist,” Karina Kogan, Chief Marketing Officer at Oura, previously told The Daily Beast.
Valentina Gomez’s online trolling campaign, rife with homophobia and attacks against transgender people, has prompted condemnation and scrutiny online.
The North Carolina state Senate voted along party lines Wednesday to ban anyone from wearing masks in public, even for health reasons.
Republican supporters of the ban said it would help law enforcement crackdown on protesters who wear masks. They say demonstrators are abusing COVID-19 pandemic-era practices to hide their identities following a wave of pro-Palestine protests nationwide and at North Carolina universities.
The bill goes even further and repeals an exception that’s been state law since the early stages of the pandemic that allows people to wear masks in public for health and safety reasons.
Thirty senators voted in favor of House Bill 237
, 15 opposed it and five were absent.
Democrats raised concerns about the bill, particularly for those who are immunocompromised or those who may want to continue to wear masks during cancer treatments, WRAL News reported.
State Sen. Sydney Batch (D-Wake) is a cancer survivor and shared with her fellow senators how her family wore masks to protect her and her weakened immune system during treatment.
She and other Democrats proposed ways to amend the bill so police could still crack down on protesters but continue to have legal protections for health concerns, but they were shot down, the outlet reported.
GOP Sen. Buck Newton brushed off the concerns, saying no one saw “Granny getting arrested in the Walmart pre-COVID” and thinks law enforcement will use “good common sense” when applying the law, The Associated Press reported.
The AP noted that the state’s general statutes on masking date back to the 1950s in an attempt to curb Ku Klux Klan membership, the state passed a public masking ban.
Under the bill
, if a person is arrested for protesting while masked, it would elevate the classification of a person’s crime, either a misdemeanor or felony, to one class higher.
It now heads to Gov. Roy Cooper’s desk. Cooper, a Democrat, could veto the bill, but the North Carolina Republican Party has a supermajority and can override the expected veto.
You know how well Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign is going by the look on Donald Trump, Jr’s face.
In an advertisement posted on Twitter
, Junior looks like he is about to cry. Either that, or Junior was not quite sober when the advertisement was recorded. I will leave it to you to decide which is the case.
In the advertisement, Junior begs for money for his father’s presidential campaign. First he asks for five dollars. Then he asks for one dollar. Hey, someone might take up that second offer.
Here are a couple of screenshots of that advertisement.
Perhaps Junior is rehearsing for a future public appearance.
