President Donald Trump made a false claim Friday that American hospitals are performing “reverse surgery” on transgender people at his order, a statement he repeated while campaigning for U.S. Senator Darline Graham at a South Carolina rally ahead of Tuesday’s Republican primary runoff. Graham, who was appointed to the seat following her brother Lindsey Graham’s death in July, faces Rep. Ralph Norman in the runoff before the general election against Democratic nominee Dr. Annie Andrews. Trump’s unsubstantiated assertion about hospital procedures reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of how medical decisions work and has drawn sharp criticism from health policy experts who argue that transgender healthcare should remain between patients and their providers, not politicians.
The rally appearance came just days after Graham’s poor performance in a televised debate where she admitted lacking knowledge about Taiwan, the South China Sea, and national security broadly, then incorrectly claimed South Carolina has 50 million residents when the actual population is about 5.5 million. Rather than address these stumbles on Fox News, Graham pivoted to attacking transgender athletes and gender-affirming care. Trump adopted the same strategy Friday, attacking Andrews as a “far-left political hack” who supports transgender care for everyone, despite Andrews explicitly stating she opposes gender-affirming surgery for anyone under 18 and supports only evidence-based care decided among physicians, parents, and patients.
Trump’s executive orders have not mandated any surgical procedures on transgender patients. His January 2025 order directed federal agencies to withhold funding from institutions providing puberty blockers, hormones, or surgery to people under 19, while the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services finalized a separate rule this month ending federal Medicaid payments for gender-affirming care to minors. Medical experts including Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, former CDC official, emphasize that clinical decisions belong solely to providers and patients, not politicians. Data from a 2024 JAMA study examining nearly 23 million minors found no gender-affirming surgeries among children 12 or younger and extremely low rates among adolescents, contradicting Trump’s imagery of routine childhood operations.
Trump may have confused his administration’s settlements with two major hospital systems for actual surgical mandates. Texas Children’s Hospital and the Cleveland Clinic agreed to establish or fund services for people voluntarily seeking to detransition, but neither agreement requires hospitals to perform surgery on anyone or mandates that patients detransition. As courts continue blocking portions of Trump’s prison care restrictions and medical organizations maintain their support for individualized gender-affirming care, watch for continued legal challenges to these policies and how the August primary results influence the national conversation heading into November.
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