What “Gender-Affirming Care” Legal Arguments Leave Out

The winds are shifting in the gender debate. Just days into his second term, President Trump signed an executive order ending federal support for pediatric sex-trait modification. The move coincides with the Supreme Court’s deliberations in U.S. v. Skrmetti, a high-stakes case challenging Tennessee’s 2023 law banning cross-sex hormones and puberty blockers for gender-dysphoric minors. That case has made clear that scientific evidence for the benefits of so-called gender-affirming care is weak.

But as evolutionary biologist and Manhattan Institute fellow Colin Wright argues, framing the gender debate solely on the question of evidence isn’t enough. The more fundamental issue with “gender-affirming care” is the pseudoscientific framework on which the practice rests. Terms like “gender identity,” “brain sex,” and “sex assigned at birth” have no place in science or medicine, he maintains. Read his essay here.

The Trump administration is reportedly directing the Internal Revenue Service to revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. But is such a move legal?

“Depending on how exactly the administration frames its case in seeking to strip Harvard’s status, it may well be on firm legal footing. But that doesn’t make it a wise policy,” Manhattan Institute Director of Legal Policy James R. Copland explains. Read why this is such a complicated issue.

Earlier this month, Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro’s home was set on fire. Cody Balmer, the man accused of the arson, said he was motivated by what Shapiro, who is Jewish, “wants to do to the Palestinian people.”

As Jesse Arm and Charles Fain Lehman note, Balmer’s attack “was an explicit response to Shapiro’s Zionism—and, one suspects, to his Judaism more generally. And it occurred against the backdrop of a broader campaign of civil intimidation targeting Jews and pro-Israel Americans.” Shapiro should use this moment to call for aggressive prosecution of anti-Semitic (and other) civil terrorists. But will he?

New Yorkers overwhelmingly support deporting illegal immigrants convicted of crimes. Yet of the state’s 62 counties, only three have formal cooperation agreements with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The 287(g) program allows ICE to deputize local law-enforcement officers to perform immigration functions. “To protect the public, every New York county should be participating in the program, at least to some degree,” Paul Dreyer and Kerry Soropoulos write. Read more about how the program works here.

“When the Democratic Party lost the working class, the Democrats asked, ‘What is wrong with them?’ instead of asking ‘What is wrong with us?’ They can never win these voters back until they correctly answer the second question, but so far they haven’t even asked it.”

Photo credits: Kevin Dietsch / Staff / Getty Images News via Getty Images