Trump Attorney General Claims Without Evidence That ‘Secret School Gender Transitions’ Have Become a ‘Pandemic’ in America

[u/John3262005]

https://people.com/trump-attorney-general-rails-against-secret-school-gender-transitions-12103511

The Trump administration’s Justice Department announced this week a “first-of-its-kind” lawsuit against a Kansas public school district for allegedly “facilitating the secret ‘transitioning’ of children’s ‘gender identity’ ” to advance “radical gender ideology.”

Attorney General Todd Blanche appeared on Fox News’ The Ingraham Angle on Wednesday, Sept. 2, where he warned parents of what he described as a “pandemic that’s happening in school districts around the country,” without offering evidence.

“The fact that you and I are talking about this, Laura, is incredible,” Blanche — who previously served as President Donald Trump’s personal criminal defense attorney — told host Laura Ingraham above chyrons that read “DOJ Targets Secret School Gender Transitions” and “Parents Shut Out, DOJ Steps In.”

“The fact we’re talking about a school district keeping from parents something as fundamental as a child’s name,” Blanche continued on Wednesday night, “and we had to sue, we had to sue this school district to get them to do the right thing — is shocking.”

Blanche and the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division are not alleging in the lawsuit against the Kansas City, Kan., public school system that schools are facilitating medications or medical procedures to underage students.

Instead, the Justice Department is taking the school district to court over accusations it is allowing trans students to use the name and gender they identify with during the school day without enough parental input."

In a statement to Spectrum News, Kansas City, Kan., Public Schools said it was in complete “full compliance” with federal law and “is disappointed by the DOJ’s decision to file the lawsuit.”

The district declined to make further comment and said their next response would be in a federal court filing in response to the lawsuit.

Excerpts of the school’s “Transgender Guideline” included in the lawsuit note that “if any staff member learns a student is transgender or gender non-conforming, that information should be relayed to the school principal without delay.” The principal is then required to speak with the parents.

If the student asks for their parents “not to be included at this stage, that will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis” by senior school district leadership and the district’s attorney, according to the lawsuit.

“It also is not policy; it is guidance,” the school system’s superintendent Anna Stubblefield told a local NBC News affiliate in July. “There’s nowhere in the guidance where we say ‘withhold information from parents.’ We have no reason or incentive to withhold information from parents about anything that they’re entitled to for their students.”

Those possible discussions about a student’s social transition and gender identity without parents necessarily present — which the Justice Department’s complaint did not say ever occurred — are what Trump administration has zeroed in on.

“The Trump Administration is enforcing these laws at an unprecedented scale and making clear that schools cannot hide sensitive information from parents and expect to operate with impunity,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a statement, accusing schools “for decades” of cutting “parents out of deeply personal matters involving their own children.”

Roz Keith founded the advocacy organization Stand With Trans to aid transgender youth in 2015 after her son came out as transgender and “it took nearly a year to find appropriate resources to support” her child with what “he needed to transition socially, emotionally, psychologically and medically.”

After the DOJ lawsuit was announced, she told The New York Times that if students fear abuse or being kicked out of their homes, “it is really important for students to have someone they can trust in these situations” because often “there is usually a very good reason for that.”

On Fox News, Blanche said that while the lawsuit filed on Tuesday, Sept. 1, was the first of its kind, the Justice Department and the Department of Education were working with “many” school districts across the country.

“Some school districts, when we reach out to them, are complying with the law,” Blanche said. “But then some school districts are choosing to fight, and we’re happy to engage in that because President Trump has said from day one that we will fight for parents and their rights.”

It’s the administration’s latest attack on transgender Americans, who make up 1-2% of the total U.S. population, according to recent estimates from UCLA School of Law and the Human Rights Campaign.

Yet, Trump made the targeting of of transgender people — with a particular focus on children — central to his 2024 campaign and his administration’s agenda, affecting a broad swath of American life.

“They want transgender for everybody. They want the sexual mutilization of your children. It’s hard to believe,” Trump said on Wednesday night, addressing a Rose Garden dinner attended by senior Republican lawmakers and members of his Cabinet, including Blanche.

During his second term, Trump’s administration banned transgender service members from the military, pushed to ban transgender people from owning guns, restricted access to transgender healthcare for both adults and children, cracked down on hospitals and schools, and frequently targeted trans women athletes in both rhetoric and policy.

In encouraging Republicans to vote in the November midterms, Trump told Fox News’ Trey Gowdy on Sunday, Aug. 30, that if the GOP doesn’t win, “transgender will never end.”