It’s a fair bet to assume that the MAGAs on the UVA Board of Visitors are planning to direct UVA President Jim Ryan to reverse last week’s reversal from UVA Health on the status of gender-affirming care for trans teens.
The question: will Ryan resist?
Glenn Youngkin appointees make up 13 members of the 17-member BOV, and one of the leaders of the MAGA majority told me over the holidays that they’re operating under the assumption that Abigail Spanberger, who looks to be the prohibitive favorite in the 2025 governor’s race, will replace them all next year.
That operating assumption is motivating a plan of action from the Youngkin BOV majority to move and move quickly, in line with what we’re seeing from the MAGAs in DC, who under the direction of Donald Trump and Elon Musk are moving at light speed to undo as much progress as they can before the 2026 midterms, which Republicans are almost certain to lose, and lose big.
The MAGAs, for some reason known only to them, have decided to make trans teens the hill they want us all to die on.
ICYMI
- Trump signs executive order banning trans athletes from high school, college sports
- Charlottesville: Schools remain committed to immigrants, LGBTQ+ students
- Trump ‘fact sheet’ falsely targets Harrisonburg Schools for ‘gender ideology’
- Shenandoah LGBTQ Center: ‘We know that many are scared and uncertain’
Republicans spent more than $200 million on TV ads in the 2024 election cycle targeting trans people, who make up less than 1 percent of the U.S. population over the age of 13, and made medical treatment of trans teens out to be the end of Western civilization writ large.
A Trump executive order put into effect last month, issued under the Orwellian name “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation,” directs that federally-run insurance programs exclude coverage for gender-affirming care for trans minors, and calls on the Department of Justice to pursue litigation and for Congress to pass legislation to outlaw the care.
The order also targets hospitals and universities that receive federal money and provide the care, which is where the suits on the UVA Board of Visitors come into our story.
ICYMI
- UVA Board of Visitors to discuss Trump EOs on trans healthcare, immigration, DEI
- UVA Health resumes gender-affirming care after court ruling; VCU services still paused
- UVA, VCU bullied by Miyares into ending gender-affirming care for trans teens
Virginia’s MAGA Republican attorney general, Jason Miyares, sent letters to UVA Health and VCU Health directing them to stop offering medical care for minors in the midst of gender transition, in line with the Trump executive order.
The directive from Miyares, is, predictably, grotesque in its phrasing, telling the university health systems to end what Miyares terms the “chemical and surgical mutilation of children,” and goes on to assert that “(h)ospitals and institutions that continue to mutilate children place themselves at significant legal risk and face substantial financial exposure.”
Sorry to be blunt, but Miyares is a clown.
Left out of his letter is the “significant legal risk and face substantial financial exposure” that the hospital systems would face by complying with the directive from the AG’s office.
“We fought previous attempts by the first Trump administration to restrict healthcare, and we won. We stand ready to fight back against this even more pernicious effort to deny medically necessary health care to our youth,” said Omar Gonzalez-Pagan, senior counsel and healthcare strategist for Lambda Legal, a New York City-based civil-rights group that focuses on LGBTQ+ issues.
UVA Health initially decided to suspend all gender-affirming care for patients under 19 years of age pursuant to the executive order and the guidance from Miyares, before reversing course last week, after two court challenges resulted in a temporary restraining order on Trump’s EO banning services for youth under the age of 19.
“UVA Health will continue to monitor legal developments in this case and provide our patients with the best care possible under Virginia and federal law,” the health system said in a statement last week.
VCU Health and the Children’s Hospital of Richmond at VCU decided against reinstating gender-affirming services.
In a statement, VCU said Youngkin’s office reinforced that the prior directive from Miyares prohibiting gender-affirming services in response to the president’s executive order “still stands.”
Cowards.
Miyares is up for re-election in the fall, and the clock is ticking on his term – a Spanberger landslide at the top of the statewide ticket would almost certainly sweep him out of office down at the bottom.
The MAGA majority on the UVA Board of Visitors also seems to think it’s on the way out, which makes what they’re going to try to compel Ryan to do with regard to gender-affirming care for trans teens just plain cruel.
ICYMI
To illustrate how cruel, I’m going to borrow from an article published this week in The New Yorker, in which staff writer Emily Witt tells the story of a 17-year-old trans girl whose family moved to Virginia from Tennessee in 2023 so that she could receive gender-affirming care at VCU.
“If the executive order stands, that means Willow has two more years as a minor. I don’t think she can survive two years without medicine,” the girl’s mother told Witt, emphasizing that, they have nowhere to turn.
“There’s nowhere to go in this country that’s safe,” the mother said. “I think that’s a fallacy that blue-state people have. Having lived in deeply red states my whole life, they tried out all of their worst tricks on our states first. Now they’re taking it everywhere.”
All so a bunch of sickos can make a stupid political point.
Here’s to Ryan resisting, and to the BOV being sued back to the Stone Age.
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Chris Graham
