WTW155: RFK's Trans "Fraud" Report Counts Birth Control and Hair Removal as Butchering

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:42 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Where There's Woke. I'm Thomas, Dett over there as Lydia. How you doing?

0:00:45 Lydia: Pretty well. I was gonna say excited. I'm still kind of like living in this little bubble, post-election bubble. But today, I, I think we need to talk about some areas where, where we lost. We kind of touched on it last episode. But I want to dive in a little bit about like how there's been like blatant propaganda with regard to trans health care, of course, an area where we struggle with just trans issues in general. This election was pretty rough in that regard. I did see actually, I think we mentioned on the last episode, we expected to see some litigation pop up in response to some of those losses, and I think I saw the ACLU in Washington is preparing their litigation like right now, so we might have some, yeah.

0:01:23 Thomas: Washington? About what? I don't...

0:01:25 Lydia: Yeah, it was basically the, the things about you can have a male team, a female team, and a co-ed team, you have to designate all that stuff, and what might end up happening is like examining genitalia of like athletes.

0:01:32 Thomas: Man. Yeah, of course.

0:01:35 Lydia: Yeah. It's crazy.

0:01:35 Thomas: These people are nuts.

0:01:37 Lydia: There's some pushback there already. Thank goodness we expected it, but glad to see it. Today I kind of want to zero in on trans health care, specifically how it was weaponized at the federal government level and then how it turned into propaganda at the state election level, and some of the players and funding all throughout the way.

0:01:56 Thomas: So you're talking about stuff that, that we kind of lost. I mean, think that's also another sign that we got to be a little careful that the win isn't like public accepting everything Democrats think, which sucks.

0:02:09 Lydia: Yeah, exactly. I think this is an area where, they're any issues involving the transgender population, it sucks. It is contentious when you're looking across the entire country. And it's an area where I think we still have lot of a education to do and getting folks to kind of understand it a little bit better. But we're going to be actively pushing against some of this propaganda that we'll talk about today.

0:02:32 Thomas: Yeah, that's what we do here.

0:02:33 Lydia: Sure is.

0:02:34 Thomas: All right. Well, that's where we're going to get to after the break. So, hey, support the show. If you'd like to support us trying to educate bigots, or help you have the argument to educate bigots and ignorant people about trans rights and stuff, and other things, you can support the show. Show patreon.com/wherethereswoke. We would really appreciate it. It goes a long way, and it's the only reason we can do this. So thanks so much for considering supporting and sharing the show and stuff like that. All right, we'll be right back after this break.

0:02:44 Lydia: Yeah.

0:03:03 Lydia: Okay. So for today, we're actually going to go back in time a little bit, not talk about the election specifically just yet. We'll get to the election, but I want to actually go back to August. We didn't cover this. I'm kind of surprised. I don't know why we didn't. I think there was just like so much, so many other things going on. And we're only so many people.

0:03:18 Thomas: Hmm. Yeah. Oh, it's because we didn't go to the 18 episode a week schedule that we're, yeah, that's why.

0:03:24 Lydia: Oh, that's fair. That's fair. But on August 13th, just this last summer, the Health and Human Services and RFK released a 64-page report called Wolves in White Coats, Doctors and Hospitals Pushed and Profited from the Fraud of quote, gender medicine.

0:03:38 Thomas: For the love of God. Wow. What, what a title. I miss this.

0:03:44 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah. I missed it too. And that's on me, folks. I'm sorry. I think we would have covered this had I seen that title.

0:03:53 Thomas: God, that's incredible.

0:03:54 Lydia: It gets even more incredible. It's as ridiculous as you would think it is.

0:03:57 Thomas: Cause you know what population has so much money is the trans population. I mean, I, okay. I guess their theory will be that the, you know, the insurance, you know, that great health insurance that we all have, You know, that everybody has to, just pays for whatever you want all the time with no fights.

0:04:02 Lydia: Yeah. Insurance payouts. Oh, And you're never arguing and having to call back and forth.

0:04:12 Thomas: Yeah, you know, that classic American health insurance, I bet they're gonna argue that's paying for all these unnecessary trans, oh,

0:04:14 Lydia: Yeah. Yes. Yeah. So the bottom line is it claims in in this report that there's $120 million of billings and over 5,500 surgical procedures that were conducted on minors between 2019 to 2023. And this is all part of the trans agenda, right? Think actually what I want to start out with was, leading up to this, J.D. Vance, so he starts going on this tour to talk about, this you terrible thing that that this report found that Health and Human Services released. Pin in that because, again, Health and Human Services released this, but who actually put together the report? But J.D. Vance goes on Fox News, and I want to play some clips from this interview. So we'll just start at 155 as Will Cain, who is the host of this show, introduces J.D. Vance and kind of sets up what they're going to be talking about.

0:04:22 Thomas: Oh,

0:05:03 Clip: I spoke with Vice President Vance today about this and the larger issue of fraud. Here's our conversation.

0:05:12 Clip: Mr. Vice President, it's good to see you. Thanks for being with us.

0:05:16 Clip: Thanks for having me, Will. Good to see you. So, Mr. Vice President, what I'm trying to figure out, and you can tell us with the release of Wolves in White Coats, is how much of this movement was driven by mass psychosis or ideology, physiology, and how much now is driven by premeditated financial windfalls? It was a scam.

0:05:39 Clip: Yeah, well, I think unfortunately it's a bit of both. I definitely think that what happened at the level of parents and some of these young kids, and certainly the doctors, was a kind of mass psychosis. This idea that somehow because a 12-year-old felt like they were born in the wrong body, you would engage in long-term, very expensive, but very dangerous and underappreciated medical procedures, I mean, permanently altering these young kids' bodies in a way that was totally irreversible, but I think unfortunately that was being fed into by an insurance industry, by some physicians, and by others who are getting rich from these procedures. If you just look at things like endocrine disruptors, these hormone therapies that we're giving kids, again, a lot of them completely irreversible, causing long-term damage to these kids. We know that some of the pharmaceutical suitable companies were getting rich by encouraging doctors to prescribe these, these therapies off label.

And one of the things that we worked on with Bobby Kennedy, and obviously that was just announced, I know that you're covering it and I appreciate it, is that sometimes the doctors and the insurers were mislabeling these treatments in order to get financial reward, even though they weren't being honest about what they were doing, because of course if they were being honest, if they were going to the insurers and saying, "Well, we're, we're actually butchering these kids," then, and that might have raised some alarm bells in the medical system. Instead, they said that they were treating for endocrine disorders or for certain pubescent disorders.

0:06:14 Thomas: Oh, yeah.

0:07:04 Thomas: Hi,

0:07:04 Clip: Sex

0:07:04 Thomas: What's the billing code for butchering?

0:07:07 Lydia: Yeah, yes. Pin in that. We will be talking billing codes, you guys.

0:07:10 Thomas: Oh, man.

0:07:11 Lydia: We will be talking billing codes. Yeah, yeah. There's some good stuff in there. Yeah, this so is the propaganda machine at work, right? J.D. Vance going on Fox News with all of this rhetoric. First of all, mass psychosis. How much of this is mass psychosis versus how much of this is fraud and scam?

0:07:11 Thomas: Really? Oh, wow. Oh, God.

0:07:26 Thomas: What a great journalistic question.

0:07:27 Lydia: Yeah, yeah. And then J.D. Vance gets to say, you know what? It's both.

0:07:28 Thomas: Yeah. How much are we totally right versus how much are they totally wrong is my journalistic question that I have for the vice president.

0:07:34 Lydia: Right, exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. And these two scary things that I can say, like these two very particular words I can use that's going to raise alarm bells. And we know we know that Americans feel like the government's corrupt. Why don't we say fraud and scam related to these other things? And maybe this will help align, you know, Republicans on our side that the problem is actually the left. And that's where the corruption is. And that's where the scam is. And that's where the fraud is.

And this idea, too, where like that when J.D. Vance says, the that pharmaceutical companies are they're trying to get rich off this work. And it's like, OK, but how many kids are we talking about? How many kids experiencing are this? I mean, they say 5,500, I think, or they say 5,500 surgeries sometimes, and then elsewhere they say minors. So they interchange if they're talking about kids or surgeries, which is terrible because kids if they're having surgery at all, and we'll get into it, they are potentially having more than one, you know, depending what's going on. Again, pin in that for billing codes because all of this

0:08:36 Lydia: Is getting conflated.

0:08:24 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes The Butchering takes more than one go. You know, you ever tried to butcher a kid?

0:08:38 Lydia: Yeah. You Yeah. Certain, like, you have to butcher in one spot and another spot in another spot. But the idea, like, that people are getting rich off of this, off of prescribing puberty blockers or, you know, hormone treatments or whatever, off label, what is the cost of that, that anyway?

0:08:43 Thomas: The Number that I can't remember if it was you or he or somebody mentioned was like 200 something million dollars. Even less than I thought, yeah, that's nothing. That's not, no, no insurance company is caring about That's not even anything.

0:09:02 Lydia: $120 million in billings for four-year period.

0:09:12 Thomas: Oh, man, yeah. That's that's nothing in their light line item then that's nothing in their budget, yeah.

0:09:13 Lydia: Yeah. Across the country. They don't care. Yeah. Yeah. So we have J.D. Vance going on this tour here. Simultaneously, we also have RFK issuing a referral to the inspector general saying concerning potential Potential Violations of Federal Law by Hospitals and Clinics. And he did this kind of simultaneous to the report coming out. This is dated August 12th. And then the report became public August 13th. But, you know, they were using the material from Wolves in White Coats, this report here, claim to this. And RFK, or I guess HHS, because RFK is not writing this himself, says that, the report you identifies an objectively defined cohort of claims that exhibit potentially anomalous billing patterns, which justifies further scrutiny by the HHS OIG. And they list a number of different organizations based off of what they have accrued in billing and the dollar amount.

0:10:09 Lydia: And it's pages, you this first one is puberty blockers with endocrine disorder diagnosis on the same claim with no gender diagnosis and no precocious puberty diagnosis. So over the course of 10 years. And then they have another one, claims for puberty blockers with precocious puberty diagnosis on the same claim, ages 13 to 17. I don't exactly know what they're trying to accomplish here. And then they have another cohort C, much smaller, about primary gender dysphoria diagnosis, yada, yada, yada. You know, hormones have been prescribed the same day. Affiliates identified through prescriber affiliation. Planned Parenthood has called out a number of times here as well. They're saying something seems fishy with how.

0:10:46 Thomas: So are you, are these, like, they've identified, like, combinations of things that they think shouldn't have happened, or timings?

0:10:53 Lydia: Yes, yes, exactly, exactly. Exactly. And So they, RFK is asking the inspector general to look into these things. J.D. Vance, when this is all published, J.D. Vance also says we're going to refer this to the Department of Justice also. And we're going to have them look into this because something something's going on here. And if there's fraud going on here, if they're trying to make money off of, you know, quote, butchering these kids, we want to know about it. Because first of all, we don't want them butchering the kids. And second of all, we don't want them making money if that's what they're trying to do. Spoiler alert. The Justice Department did say that they received the referral at that time and that they, quote, take allegations of health care fraud seriously. This is when Politico was reporting on this. They had reached resolutions with major hospital systems over false billing tied to gender affirming care for minors in previous requests.

0:10:54 Thomas: Okay.

0:11:40 Lydia: You know, there's been a lot of push and pull with Kaiser like and Texas Children's Hospital, Cleveland Clinic, and that they would be reviewing Vance's request. I have not seen any update on that. I just checked the Justice Department's website today. So there are no, you know, like press releases about, their you findings of an investigation or indictment.

0:11:57 Thomas: Look, we got a lot of things to cover up. We, we got Epstein documents. We got, I mean, we're busy.

0:12:01 Lydia: Yeah. And they're losing all their people now, too. Everyone's quitting the Justice Department. So, you know, interesting.

0:12:03 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Also, no one's home. Sorry. Leave a message at the beep.

0:12:09 Lydia: Pretty much. Pretty much. Does this report let's dig in a little more to this report, where it came from, what it says and what our health and human services at the federal level is leaning into you know, raise alarm bells with the OIG, with the DOJ going all over right wing media to talk about this, too. So this report was prepared by Do No Harm. Do you remember Do No Harm?

0:12:35 Thomas: Oh, yeah.

0:12:36 Lydia: Yeah. OK. So I say prepared by Do No Harm. It uses their database, the Stop the Harm database. And it we'll get into the methodology for the database as well, too. But just so everybody knows, this report was not conducted by folks at Health and Human Services. This report was put together by, I'll tell you exactly who, various contributors. Aaron Bayer, the president for Center for Christian Virtue. Victoria Coley, Independent Women's Forum. Neeraja Deshpande, Independent Women's Forum.

0:13:08 Thomas: Love independent women. Isn't that, that sounds like a good thing.

0:13:09 Lydia: Oh no, it's very conservative, incredibly Incredibly conservative. Jordan Jantz, IW Features at Independent Women's Forum. Andrea Mew, IW Features at Independent Women's Forum. Mae Mailman, Director, Independent Women's Law Center. Aaron Carity, M.D., Ethics and Public Policy Center. Rachel Morrison, Fellow, Ethics and Public Policy Center. That's also a right-wing think tank. And then two doctors, Quentin Van Meter and Ethan Haim. Do you remember Ethan Haim?

0:13:12 Thomas: Oh, I was actually on the lookout for have like, we covered these people? Is it going to be that lady who wrote that one book that we've covered? But no, I don't recognize any of these names.

0:13:44 Lydia: No, these are more like people like within the organizations. They're not necessarily like the talking heads.

0:13:49 Thomas: Uh, the policy wonks.

0:13:51 Lydia: Yeah. So Ethan Haim is is a name that comes up a lot when when you talk about transgender health care across the United States. He is the one that anonymously exposed, quote, Texas Children's Hospital and their transgender program, which led to the state legislation in Texas banning pediatric Gender affirming care. Uh, and

0:14:09 Thomas: Hospitals. Medicine. Sorry, it's just like they've gotten rid of a lot of stuff. So.

0:14:13 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah. It also, um, his, his efforts, I guess, as a whistleblower in that respect, whatever, in Texas led to a, the nation's first detransitioner clinic in May 2026.

0:14:26 Thomas: Oh boy, I bet that's as busy as the uh some of the schools we've covered, some of the uh the universities we've covered. Boy. As soon as the detransitioners and the the students who want to study at the bullshit what's-her-name school of fucking nothing, you know, as soon as they're, They're just, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. We're minutes away, mere minutes away from the floodgates opening on customers for the detransition place and for that university, I'm sure.

0:14:32 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah.

0:14:42 Lydia: Of Boston. Yeah.

0:14:52 Lydia: Yeah. So Health and Human Services involvement in this is literally, they wanted a report done and they reached out to the people that would write kind of the report that they wanted, That's who these contributors are. And then these contributors did not conduct any sort of like independent research. They did not pull data themselves. They used literally a database compiled by Do No Harm, which is not actor in all of this stuff. Just a quick refresh for folks on Do No Harm.

0:15:03 Thomas: Yeah,

0:15:24 Lydia: It was founded in 2022 by Stanley Goldfarb, who's a retired kidney specialist. They weren't focused on gender affirming care to begin with. They were focused on DEI in medicine. They thought that it was woke health care for medical schools to be concerned about, the makeup of their their incoming medical classes, they thought that that was actually racist. They also felt that it doesn't matter if your doctor looks like you and that any like consideration of that is also racist, there's evidence showing that it actually does matter, especially for for black folk and stuff like it's incredibly important. Important.

0:15:24 Thomas: Do harm, if you're hot, then your doctor is also hot. And that's, I mean, who doesn't want that?

0:16:03 Lydia: There you go. Priorities. Know, Stanley Goldfarb, he wrote a book Take Two Aspirin and Call Me by My Pronouns. Why Turning Doctors into Social Justice Warriors is Destroying American Medicine.

0:16:06 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. What? Sorry.

0:16:15 Lydia: Listen. Well, because Tylenol gives you autism. Right. So you've got to take.

0:16:15 Thomas: What? What's the what's the aspirin part of that? Like, I want to know what like is that part of.

0:16:25 Thomas: Oh, do you think that's what it is?

0:16:25 Lydia: No, no, I don't. I'm just making a joke.

0:16:26 Thomas: Yeah. Like I actually I'm like I genuinely I'm like, what is that?

0:16:29 Lydia: I guess it's a dismissive thing that doctors will sometimes say, like, just take some aspirin. I think maybe

0:16:34 Thomas: Oh, OK. I guess I don't like I don't know if this is some insane part of their conspiracies or a bad attempt at humor or being clever or what? But it's just it could be so many things with these nutjobs, you know,

0:16:37 Lydia: Haven't read the book. Yeah, know. I know. So then they moved into gender affirming care and became a huge leader in this space. They actually draft model legislation for state legislatures all over the country to ban gender affirming care for minors. By May 2023, it's estimated they were responsible for 130 bills in 40 different U.S. states, that their language within those bills was attributable to their work and their model legislation.

0:17:16 Thomas: They got them past.

0:17:18 Lydia: Not necessarily. In some states, yes. But, it you was put forward in 40 states, 130 bills. And the language in this legislation is so inflammatory. It's been called out by a number of different people, you know, folks that work in pediatric space the in general, as well as the editor of the gender dysphoria section of the American Psychiatric Association's 2022 DSM updates. He specifically said that the language in the model legislation, quote, is designed to inflame. It's not serious. It is not a serious approach to legislating appropriate health care, which is exactly what we would expect from these people and folks like Stanley Goldfarb, who wrote the title of that book, Take Two Aspirin and Call Me By My Pronouns. Like, it's just it's unserious.

0:17:18 Thomas: Oh, OK. OK.

0:18:03 Thomas: Two aspirin and call me by my pronouns. Like I want someone to do a dissertation on that title. So call me by my pronouns.

0:18:09 Lydia: Yeah. I think it is that the doctor I think it's the doctor saying that they're saying here, take two aspirin, but make sure you call me like my pronouns are she her.

0:18:13 Thomas: OK. Call me by my pronouns.

0:18:18 Lydia: Yeah. Because he says after the colon, why turning doctors into social justice warriors is destroying American medicine.

0:18:18 Thomas: OK. Okay. Okay. But like, first off, you don't like, you just call your doctor like, hi doctor. Like that's usually what it is.

0:18:27 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Who are you interfacing with in front of your doctor where you would refer to them by a pronoun anyway?

0:18:38 Thomas: Yeah. I just want to know, like, I know, know, I just want to know what that interaction is like, hi, hello. I'm Dr. Stevens take two aspirin. You haven't even like done anything. When In the process, is this imaginary argument you're having, or this imaginary conversation you're having? When is it, it happening? I want to know, I just need detail.

0:18:42 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You haven't even told me to lose weight yet. Like, yeah.

0:18:56 Thomas: Yeah, yeah. And you're imagining it.

0:18:58 Lydia: Yeah. So as a reminder, they could have looked at CMS billing data. There is billing data that the federal government collects through Center for Medicaid Services. They didn't look at that. They decided to look at a database that is maintained by a political, you know, right-wing anti-LGBTQ, you know, called out by the SPLC as being anti-gay, anti-trans, anti-everything. They decided to use that as their source instead of something that is also readily available and that

0:19:01 Thomas: Was a good one, yeah.

0:19:38 Lydia: Serious people use. Yeah. And that serious people use for their research when they're looking into billing practices and, health care services and various things like that.

0:19:39 Thomas: Like data Well, Also They're Like They're the people, I was going to say, there's an amazing, amazing synergy between asshole fundamentalists who also aren't good students, and people who are like, oh, we're a group of assholes who is actually good students, let's do your homework for you. That's a dangerous comment. Imagine RFK Jr.'s response to that. Like, oh, no, I'm going to write it myself. I'm going to do the groundwork myself. It's like, yeah, I'll take that.

0:20:01 Lydia: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, no way. Uh huh. Just a little bit from their introduction, um, that I want to share. Policies of President Donald J. Trump have discouraged hospitals from providing these interventions, but how was this madness allowed to fester under America's hospital system? This report concludes that a litany of political and financial incentives led providers to offer and indeed urge the prescription of sex rejection drugs and surgeries for minors. So already, like, exactly.

0:20:41 Thomas: Rejection drugs, huh?

0:20:42 Lydia: Like, you can hear the angle to this immediately. First, as will be explained in detail in subsequent chapters, health care providers were able to turn a tidy profit from these procedures. Children who, quote, transitioned were placed on a course that would require expensive drugs, surgeries, And in italics, lifelong medical interventions, et cetera, et cetera.

0:21:03 Thomas: Lifelong medical. I don't know if that's true, is it?

0:21:04 Lydia: Oh, yeah. Well, if you choose to detransition, it can be, I guess, on the other end of it.

0:21:10 Thomas: Oh, because they're assuming everyone's going to eventually be like, Like, ah, I was trans.

0:21:12 Lydia: Change their mind. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

0:21:16 Thomas: He did it, officer. Sorry, they did it.

0:21:18 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah. Second, medical institutions have been

0:21:22 Thomas: Hold on, I got to take my ass for it and use the right pronouns.

0:21:27 Lydia: Captured by ideology. This report contains firsthand accounts from children and from the parents of children pressured to undergo sex-rejecting procedures. These stories and the data showing the explosion in sex-rejecting interventions suggest that children suffering from gender dysphoria are likely to encounter an ideologue at gender clinics predisposed to embrace the child's story.

0:21:47 Thomas: So when they are fabricating these, did they, I want to know, did they use like some crayons or something? Like is the report there? How did they fabricate these? Because I

0:21:55 Lydia: I I will tell you, we will talk about one in particular, um, because it has a little tie into a second story we're gonna talk about related to this. Um, so you'll get to hear one of those individuals who, third, the federal government actively pushed acceptance of sex-rejecting procedures for minors under the Biden administration. Registration, this report does not claim to be comprehensive, etc, etc, etc. And then if you click into footnotes, Matt Cameron, if you're listening over on OA, I know you love your footnotes, there's a whole lot of footnotes in here. And I want to actually give a shout out to Snopes. You know, Snopes has been doing the debunk for a long, long, long time. And they looked through a lot of this report, and they clicked on all the footnotes basically, basically, and went to the actual methodology document for the Stop the Harm database.

0:22:29 Thomas: Snopes.

0:22:41 Thomas: Oh, wow. They bothered making one of those?

0:22:45 Lydia: Yes, they did. And it's, you know, it's pretty comprehensive. And so what I want to actually start out with is like first the third of it, they have a section in their methodology document that says limitations. Limitations, and one of those limitations says, "Transgender related procedures and treatments: while we have employed stringent criteria in selecting and filtering procedure codes, diagnosis codes, and national drug codes to focus on gender transition related treatments, there remains a possibility that some of the billing data may reflect treatments administered for congenital conditions or other non-gender transition-related reasons."

0:22:46 Thomas: Okay.

0:23:13 Thomas: That we're making all of this up. Oh, yeah, sure. Yeah, that was I was sitting on that, too, because I mean, when we've covered this in the past, it's cis people getting like breast reductions and stuff like it's a lot of stuff that is both gender affirming and valuable. If you're a cis boy and you have that condition that, you know, we've talked about where you're developing like breasts. Yeah, that that would suck.

0:23:25 Lydia: Yeah. Yep.

0:23:40 Thomas: I think you should have the right to affirm your gender with some care. You know, you might say. And so should everybody.

0:23:43 Lydia: Yep. Yep. Exactly. Yeah. Actually, to put a finer point on it, Snopes did look at this specifically with regard to this report and the Stop the Harm database. Of the 151 breast reductions the study found among cisgender male minors and transgender minors, 146, or 97%, were on cisgender boys.

0:24:03 Thomas: Oh, come on. Really?

0:24:04 Lydia: Yeah, 146 out of the 151. And you're going to claim all 151 as, sex rejecting, when it literally is not.

0:24:05 Thomas: Wow. That's so high. Yeah. Yeah. Someone, this is a job for AI because we're not going to put in the work. Someone should rewrite this report. Claude, rewrite this report, taking out all of the CIS people and then give me the like pitch. It was over $114 that they made, you know, like four years, three patients.

0:24:29 Lydia: Over the course of four years across the entire country. Yeah.

0:24:33 Thomas: Yeah. It's like read, redo those numbers. Give me the real tally.

0:24:38 Lydia: So, nicely, I will, you know, the only shout out I would give do no harm is this methodology document. Like are they pretty clear about what they're including.

0:24:45 Thomas: They're like we know No one reads these. No one cares except Snopes and like Lydia and Thomas.

0:24:46 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Maybe Jenessa.

0:24:52 Thomas: They name literally named us like hi, like friends with us.

0:24:55 Lydia: God, that would be so funny. I actually would really like that. I'd be like, OK, they see us, you know, like they know that we're looking at them. I can appreciate that. So on page 17 of this document, they list out the codes that they consider procedures that are gender affirming care or, you know, sex rejecting, I guess, in the way that the Wolves report is calling it. Yeah. Because that's the opposite of gender affirming is sex rejecting, I guess.

0:25:17 Thomas: Sex rejecting I don't get I don't, I guess, I mean, yeah, no, I think you're right.

0:25:25 Lydia: I don't know. I mean, that's yeah. It's

0:25:27 Thomas: I was, I was wondering what they're, how they're using that, like, sex rejecting, because are they against the the mere vocabulary term gender?

0:25:28 Lydia: The rhetoric. Yeah. Yes.

0:25:36 Thomas: Oh, they are? They don't even want like that

0:25:38 Lydia: I think that they really are. I think they they feel like that is muddying the waters because there what is gender except for. Yeah. Except for who you are. Like if you're a boy or a girl.

0:25:43 Thomas: Concept of gender Okay. No, yeah, when you say that, I think that probably is what thereafter, yeah, because I was like, why don't you just say gender reject or whatever, you know, whatever. Like

0:25:52 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah. No, no. They think we're trying to trick people with our rhetoric by saying gender when there's just biological sex.

0:25:59 Thomas: There's actually no such thing. This word that has existed for a long, long, long, long time, we just made up? What,

0:26:03 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Tell Merriam-Webster's Dictionary that there's no such word as gender. So on page 17, they say these codes, that they were vetted by medical professionals and rated, quote, high confidence for gender transition. As long as, and let me just say this very quickly, as long as the procedure that was billed here included at least one of the corresponding diagnoses that they list in a previous table. And those diagnoses, just because this is the world we live in, these are terrible. I'm sure there's a history to this. This is from the ICD-10, which is like medical billing. Transvestic fetishism, transsexualism, gender identity disorder in children, transsexualism with asexual history, transsexualism with homosexual history, transsexualism with heterosexual history. I don't know how many people are actually being diagnosed with this, you know. Gender identity disorder in adolescents or adults, etc., etc. There's two transsexualisms, one with a lowercase t, one with a capital T. Dual role transvestism.

0:26:45 Thomas: Yeah.

0:27:08 Thomas: Rhymes with P, and that stands for pool.

0:27:12 Lydia: Gender identity disorder of childhood. Let's see, transvestic fetishism again, but with a capital T. History of sex reassignment. It. So if an individual had a diagnosis code somewhere in their chart with that, then if they also received a procedure code here, they said, okay, this kid is trans. And some of the procedure codes include by electrolysis. Do Hair removal by electrolysis. Mean, some people have like excessive arm hair that they are not comfortable with and they're cis and they're going to go have that taken care of.

0:27:22 Thomas: Oh, Wow. Colonoscopy. Sure, well, yeah, or That also might be trans people, but also, then that kind of blows your whole thing, like, sorry, you're telling me that getting some hair error removed is the irreversible thing That's ruining their lives. So stupid.

0:27:51 Lydia: Yeah. Yes. Exactly. Exactly. The way that this is framed is that in the report, they say, you know, this is 5,500 surgeries. Okay. The surgeries were hair removal, hair removal surgery. Okay. Incision of bladder with drainage. Okay. That, that could be related to some other sort of issue that's happening within their body. That sounds like a completely separate organ and could be related to a number of different things and not necessarily their efforts to affirm their gender.

0:28:15 Thomas: Huh? Yeah. Yeah.

0:28:29 Lydia: I don't know. I'm not a doctor.

0:28:30 Thomas: I don't, I don't know what that would

0:28:31 Lydia: I don't even know. Yeah, I don't know. Upper eyelid skin removal. That's an upper bleph for anyone who's like into plastic surgery. Facelift, cheeks, chin, neck. Dermal filler, super popular just with anybody these days, honestly.

0:28:31 Thomas: Be. Yeah. Okay.

0:28:46 Thomas: This is just, yeah. I mean, most of this is required for Mar-a-Lago face. So like you better watch out.

0:28:50 Lydia: Exactly. Nose tip reshaping, that's on here. Hair transplant. Breast reduction.

0:28:56 Thomas: Okay. I mean, plenty of this could be trans stuff, whatever, trans healthcare, as you're saying that paired it with some very horrifying sounding diagnosis that shouldn't exist anymore.

0:28:57 Lydia: Yeah. Could be. Could be. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. Could it be? But the way that it all gets lumped together, and it's by an organization that has a vested interest in this continuing To be a problem, I don't think we can take it seriously. And that the report is prepared by incredibly biased actors that have vested interests in this continuing to be an issue. Things. I mean, there's like three pages of procedure codes here that include things like tissue tissue graft with repair of small blood vessel, enlargement of chin, vocal box, you know, related work, removal of uterus, et cetera, et cetera. Or even more clear things where like there's a literal billing code that says operation to change sex male to female. Like, yeah, okay, I get that that one.

0:29:06 Thomas: All right. Yeah. Okay.

0:29:51 Thomas: I should just use that one. That seems more

0:29:55 Lydia: Uh-huh.

0:29:55 Thomas: Straightforward.

0:29:56 Lydia: Suction-assisted removal of fat of leg. I mean, that could be for anyone who's Just, yeah, again, wanting to feel good in their body and that's something they want to do. Also call out in their methodology document that there a particular procedure that they queried without needing to look at diagnosis, I That the procedure code specifically that they said like, oh, it doesn't need to necessarily be linked to a diagnosis that indicates that this person is gender dysphoria and it's intersex surgery, male to female. But I will say, I will say the the only issue, and they call it out here too, is that theoretically can be used for surgeries related to intersex conditions in newborns. And

0:30:00 Thomas: Yeah, it could definitely be anything.

0:30:15 Thomas: Oh, okay. Well, yeah. Yeah,

0:30:35 Lydia: That, right. Or it could be that someone was born intersex and they might not be,

0:30:35 Thomas: I would think that would only be that. Sorry. What's The correct answer conservative-wise to that? Well, if you're intersex, then you gotta stay intersex, I don't like, what's the proper, what's the non-woke mind virus way to deal with intersex people?

0:30:50 Lydia: Yeah, yeah. Well, and so they say that the occurrences that this might happen are, quote, statistically rare based on the age distribution of patients. But that's assuming that people who are born intersex have that handled immediately. And they might not. I mean, who knows? Who knows what kind of access to health care people have? Who knows what kind of insurance people have? Who knows what the parents might have been quoted for a surgery there?

You know, who knows how extensive it seems to really interfere with the baby's life? We don't know. Yeah, they're definitely making some assumptions there. But that is a particular code that they called out, they did not query against the diagnosis code as well. Now, in this methodology, appendix where they look at the national drug codes. And so they say like, okay, list of codes for these group of patients, they were vetted by medical professionals and ranked as high confidence that the prescription was used for. As long as the patient who was prescribed the drug had one of the corresponding diagnoses within 90 days before or after the prescription was written. But the drugs include things like birth control pills, like all forms of birth control pills. And I don't know why that necessarily means that you're taking birth control then. Like, like they're tying this as pharmaceutical industry, you scam and benefit and stuff. But we're talking about birth control pills. I mean, like what, what's the dollar figure

0:32:21 Thomas: They think that they give those to like trans women as like as part of the thing here you get to take these and pretend it does something thing

0:32:26 Lydia: On that? I don't. Yeah. I mean, some of them are like, you know, the progesterone only, I think, or estrogen only. And then there's the combined but or there's testosterone. Testosterone.

0:32:38 Thomas: Okay like it's actual hormone treatment maybe or

0:32:40 Lydia: It could be, but like, but some of these are legitimately, I mean, they're birth control pills. But there's a host of other things that, you know, it can impact. It's not just that it prevents pregnancy. Like I had an irregular period when I was in high school. And so I took it just to regulate my period. But it also has like other impacts for people who like experience like polycystic ovarian syndrome, like they might have benefit on certain types of birth control where it helps regulate some of those hormones. Lots of different things. Acne. I don't know.

0:32:41 Thomas: But Was this one where they confirmed that these are trans people?

0:33:13 Lydia: I wouldn't say confirmed, under that same methodology where they said, if you have one of the diagnoses that we talked about, like transvestite fetishism, which indicates that someone likes to, dress in another gender's clothing and is excited by it sexually,

0:33:29 Thomas: I feel like, again, those people if they need or want birth control should be able to get it. I don't, I don't understand what, what am I missing on that? They just seized on birth control just thinking that is a trans thing. Oh, okay.

0:33:35 Lydia: Yeah. I don't know that you're missing anything it's a hormone. Yeah. And if it's coupled with you have somewhere in your chart a diagnosis, or I don't even know if it's like officially a diagnosis or mentioned like within your chart, like, oh, this might be what's going on. They might count that, I don't know, within 90 days before or after the prescription was written. So they put like kind of like a time sort of thing around it where saying that that likely means it is tied to your gender dysphoria diagnosis. And that's the reason why you got this prescription to begin with. No reason this report should have come out because a couple of years ago, there was a significant study, the researchers at Harvard's T.H. Chan School of Public Health, where they looked into gender-affirming surgeries for transgender and gender-diverse minors in the United States.

0:34:30 Lydia: And this is published in JAMA Network Open, so anyone could read this. I You mean, the federal government doesn't even need to pay for a peer-reviewed journal. Like, they don't have to pay the $30 for the single set. Like, you could just access this if you were willing to look at this in an unbiased way, if you actually had concerns. According to the researchers, this was the first, at this point in time, summer 2024, the first quantitative comparison of gender-affirming surgery utilization between cisgender and the transgender-diverse populations. The study, they used the most recently available data at the time, which was a 2019 nationally representative pool of medical insurance claims. They did not use the Stop the Harm database. They used unbiased national insurance claims to identify individuals who received gender-affirming surgery with a TGD-related diagnosis.

0:35:20 Lydia: If they had any other medical indications for surgery outside of gender affirmation, like breast cancer, because that happens to kids, unfortunately, it happens to anybody, they would be excluded from the analysis because there's no definitive thing saying like the reason this person got surgery on their breast was related to their gender dysphoria. It could be that they also had breast cancer. Thankfully, I imagine that's not that many people, but it's not zero. They also looked at the cisgender men, which we've talked about, and the use of breast reductions by cisgender men and the transgender diverse people. They found no gender-affirming surgeries performed on transgender youth ages 12 and younger in 2019. Okay. They said that's expected because the current international guidelines don't suggest that there's medical or surgical intervention prior to puberty. Don't do it prior to puberty. That's the recommendation.

0:36:11 Thomas: Yeah, like we've been saying that this whole time.

0:36:17 Lydia: Yeah. Now, when you look at teens ages 15 to 17 and adults ages 18 and older, the rate of undergoing gender affirming surgery with a TGD related diagnosis was 2.1 per 100,000 for the 15 to 17-year-olds and 5.3 per 100,000 for the 18 and older. A majority of those surgeries were chest surgeries. And then when you look at the cisgender males having breast reduction surgery, they found that 80% of surgeries among adults were performed on cisgender men. So the 5.3 per 1,000, 80% of those are because of cisgender men reducing their breasts with issues like gynecomastia. And 97% of surgeries among minors, anyone under 18, if they were getting breast reduction, 97% of those were cisgender male teens, like the number that I cited earlier, the 151, and it was 147, right?

0:37:11 Lydia: Right. Quote, we found that gender affirming surgeries are rarely performed for transgender minors, suggesting that U.S. surgeons are appropriately following international guidelines around assessment and care.

0:37:21 Thomas: Yeah, the rules as they already were.

0:37:23 Lydia: Uh-huh. Our findings suggest that legislation blocking gender affirming care among TGD youth is not about protecting children, but is rooted in bias and stigma against TGD identities and seeks to address a perceived problem that does not actually exist. Incredible.

0:37:38 Thomas: Yep. Sorry, who did this again?

0:37:40 Lydia: This was a group out of Harvard. They're a school of public health.

0:37:43 Thomas: Those wokas.

0:37:45 Lydia: It's just so incredibly frustrating. I mean, like when we're talking about population that they're looking at, too, in 2019, approximately like just under 23 million minors are covered by insurance. And so they said, okay, in 2019. So they said, okay, there were 85 gender-affirming surgical procedures.

0:38:01 Thomas: Total? Okay. Oh my God.

0:38:08 Lydia: 82 of them were chest-related. And again, when we're talking about minors, 97% of those are for cisgender boys. Zero among minors 12 and younger. Crazy.

0:38:18 Thomas: So there might be like a handful that's like 12 to 18.

0:38:23 Lydia: Yeah, yeah, Exactly. A handful. But again, like when you rule out the breast reduction for cisgender boys, it really is a handful. It is incredibly minor. But I'm going to tell you how much money gets spent because of this tiny non-issue that the Republicans and these fear mongers have been able to exploit. And the amount of money that, like, like, honestly, if I were conservative, I'd be mad at this. I'd be like, this is wasteful.

0:38:23 Thomas: Okay. Oh,

0:38:56 Lydia: This is incredibly wasteful.

0:38:56 Thomas: No, you wouldn't because you'd be a hypocritical piece of shit that doesn't actually care if you're a conservative.

0:38:58 Lydia: Yeah, it's true. That's true. So why don't we talk a little bit about how this played out in this election?

0:39:09 Thomas: Oh, they lost. Woohoo! Well, not all the trans stuff, though, I guess.

0:39:12 Lydia: Yeah. In Ohio, Sherrod Brown had a little bit of a tough race. And I'll explain a little bit later why it was tough why and it was so close. Spoiler alert, he won.

0:39:21 Thomas: Yeah. Well, he just lost before, right?

0:39:24 Lydia: Did. He did. But there was this ad that was released in Ohio. And this is highlighting someone who was also highlighted in the Wolves in White Coats report, someone who experienced the, you know, the trans health care system firsthand. Hand. And they decided they were going to interview her and use this as an ad against Sherrod Brown in Ohio. Go

0:39:50 Clip: Changes for minors. Irreversible surgery on kids. Like me. At 11, I was groomed by strangers online. At 15, a doctor told my family I was transgender. Hormone injections. Then surgery. Without my parents' consent. I was a kid. I was confused. Sherrod Brown isn't. He knows the consequences. I, as kids, deserve better.

0:40:02 Thomas: Were they in cahoots?

0:40:13 Thomas: Okay. So he can get trans surgery then.

0:40:16 Lydia: Okay.

0:40:16 Clip: So did I. SRF Park is responsible for the content of this advertising.

0:40:21 Lydia: This person is a dishonest actor. They're not an actor. They really did detransition. But what out is that, yeah, she said that she thought she was trans starting at 11, you know, puberty blockers, et cetera, et cetera. She ended up getting surgery. She was 19. She characterizes herself as a kid, irreversible surgery. She was 19 years old.

0:40:43 Thomas: Oh, wow. Okay.

0:40:46 Lydia: Okay. So that's allowed. You're allowed to do that. You're allowed when you're over 18 and, And, you know, maybe folks can can talk about that, about like if that's appropriate or not. But she is characterizing this and the Senate Leadership Fund, which we'll talk about in a second as well. The ad is saying Sherrod Brown is all about, you butchering kids and surgery for kids. And I was a kid and I was butchered. You're a liar, actually, is what you are. You were not a kid when you had surgery.

0:40:48 Thomas: Yeah. For now. Yeah.

0:41:04 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. I love that It just throws... When I was 11, I was groomed on the internet. Then when I was 15, a doctor said, "Be trans," like, what are the, what, did, were you groomed by the doctor, the whole, like, was the doctor online, what, oh

0:41:18 Lydia: Yeah. Uh-huh. It doesn't make any sense. And so there's, you know, court records about this, that this is publicly available material, that she was 19 when she received surgery because she's suing the people who gave her treatment.

0:41:31 Thomas: God wait, why is there court records look

0:41:38 Lydia: Here's the other thing. What's also part of the court records is that she's not from Ohio. She's from Texas. And this happened in Texas. So why is the Senate Leadership Fund using this Texas story in Ohio? When also, Ohio already bans gender-affirming care for minors, and that ban has been in place for two years. So what is happening here? Sherrod Brown, he's overturning the Ohio ban by being a senator federal government?

0:42:08 Lydia: Sorry, what? What? And this Texas person who got surgery when she was legally an adult is going to tell me that that's what? What they're leaning on here to make this claim that, you know, Sherrod Brown is all about, know, surgery for young kids who, you know, are trans, which, is incredible coming from a person in Texas who wasn't a kid when they got surgery, who continues to, know, you detransition through Texas, who is suing the Texas doctors, you everything that has It has nothing to do with Ohio. And in Ohio, you're not even legally allowed to do this. Anyway, what Sherrod Brown did say that health care decisions are, quote, between them, their parents, their families, their doctors, not politicians. It's like the most milquetoast, you know, like easygoing answer. So, media trained kind of thing.

0:42:08 Thomas: Good point, just it's also just kind of true it's not a bad answer

0:42:57 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. I guess I don't mean milquetoast in a bad way. It's just like it's So it's so neutral. It's, it's a nothing. You know, it's not inflammatory either way. But they take that and they can spin it and say that he is all about kids having surgeries. And we're going to scare you with this person who's not even in Ohio. Ohio, again, when we look at the study that was done, what we're looking at is 2.1 per 100,000. And then again, adjust down when you look at the cisgender breast reduction for boys. Right. Right. Like we're not talking about a legitimate number of people to be launching an entire attack about something where also you're saying perfectly reasonable stuff by a PAC and just none of it makes any sense.

0:43:00 Thomas: Yeah oh

0:43:48 Lydia: So the Senate Leadership Fund, when I looked into this, you know, that's the group behind this ad in particular. Are focused on competitive Senate elections. Their goal is to secure and then maintain a Republican control of the Senate, which they lost this year. Here. In the 2024 election cycle, the Senate Leadership Fund itself spent $211 million in ads.

0:44:02 Thomas: Too bad I guess all the kids are going to be trans now that you lost, right

0:44:12 Lydia: Yeah, that was the third highest among super PACs. And when you look at the money, are funded with some dark money. So their largest donor is One Nation, which is a 501c4 nonprofit. They do not have to disclose their donors. And so the Senate Leadership Fund gets who knows how much from who via this 501c4 nonprofit. Their other donors include folks like Elon Musk, of course, Charles Schwab, Chevron, the Occidental Petroleum Corporation, Koch Industries, Rupert Murdoch, et cetera. You know, a lot of the key players that you would expect in the conservative space. In 2026, they announced that they were planning to spend approximately $350 million across eight states. Eight.

0:44:59 Lydia: That's incredible amounts of money. Their largest single commitment was $79 million in Ohio. Ohio. So they spent and millions and millions of dollars specific to something that is not legal in Ohio, from claims from someone who, that happened in Texas when they were an adult, for something that Sherrod Brown said that, like, I think any, any conservative would actually be like, "Yeah, I want the health care decisions be between between the people who are actually involved and not politicians."

0:45:29 Thomas: Two different things. They didn't spend that money for trans anything. They spent it to win an election and they did that using lies about trans people. There's also expenditure about trans stuff that's just for trans sake. That's also a waste of money and is a lie. But it's kind of like, this is this, like, they don't, I don't think they care about any of the truth of this because they were just trying to win an election and they didn't. So get fucked.

0:45:34 Lydia: Yeah. Right. Hmm. Yeah. And they didn't. And yes, Sherrod Brown won, was able to flip the seat. He won with just over 50% of the vote and beat John Husted with 45.15% of the vote. That's like a difference of, don't know, 240,000 votes. Pretty good. Further in Ohio, they also lost the governorship, right? We had Democrat Amy Acton beat Vivek Ramaswamy, which we talked about in the last episode. And then other places where they spent their money, the Senate Leadership Fund, they lost as well. Texas flipped for the Senate. Tallarico defeated Paxton. And then also we have a Texas governor that is blue as well. And then we flipped the House and the Senate. So, you know, Senate Leadership Fund bled money for no reason this election cycle.

0:46:40 Lydia: But I don't think that ultimately matters that much to them. I mean, we're talking about people who have the most money ever. This is not a grassroots group that put together this money and now they're completely broke. We're talking about, first of all, a dark money group that we don't know exactly who's donating to that. But then also Rupert Murdoch is not hurting for cash. Elon Musk is not hurting for cash. Chevron, you know, all of these things that are aligned with just general conservative interests and find Republicans to be a friendlier group in Congress as opposed to Democrats because there are no rules and no laws and no regulations, basically. And these companies can do whatever they want, especially things like oil and gas, that's always going to have a lot of money.

0:47:26 Lydia: And so they're going to keep trying these tactics. And when you have dishonest actors preparing nonsense reports for federal government agencies and departments, now you can use that to feed this narrative just kind of keep running with it. And so I just want us to be mindful of I know our audience looks at this stuff. But if you have people in your life that are like, hey, I read that Wolves in White Coats report, and that was really compelling to me. Like, I first of all, love the title. Second of all, you know, really loved.

0:47:57 Thomas: Yeah, doesn't exist. No one who would think this reads and

0:48:02 Lydia: Yeah, but if if that comes up, or or even if they're just watching Fox News and they hear JD Vance say, "Hey, we just got this report and I'm going to refer this to the Justice Department because I think that there's been so much fraud," you know, I know you guys will, but just a reminder that if you start clicking around, it all falls apart so fast and the people behind it are are always interested in the outcome in such a particular way. And we see this time and time and time again transgender health care and just the treatment of the LGBTQ population in general. I mean, it's just remarkable. This is a fight that we have to keep having. Unfortunately, Unfortunately, I think that the election made that clear too, that we lost in some of those fights, specifically with trans participation in sports.

0:48:50 Lydia: And yeah, I just want us to be aware of the groups that are behind these things, the reports that they're willing to write, and the numbers that they are willing to, I don't want to say fabricate, but massage for their purposes.

0:49:02 Thomas: Mischaracterize. That was fun. These people suck. Yeah, it does suck that the trans issues didn't go well in the election, uh, for the most part. I don't know if it's for the most part, but definitely significantly, um, but yeah, it's also, I guess, another part of this is like, if they're banning things that aren't happening anyway, I guess maybe it's hopefully the, I'm just trying to look for a silver lining.

0:49:03 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

0:49:24 Thomas: Like maybe the harm's not as much as I would think it would be. I I mean, I do feel like it'll be, those couple cases that where people really do need this care that, you know, those people will get screwed. But it feels like if they're, if trying to ban something that those Harvard doctors are saying isn't even the right care anyway, I guess, then hopefully the effect isn't too terrible. But I know they won't stop there.

0:49:45 Lydia: Yeah, I think the fear is that it very easily continues to puberty blockers and, think also just like recognition of like, what, what the kids might be experiencing and stuff, how, and to figure out how to like still appropriately give them care when you know that you're being attacked in all these other ways. But

0:50:04 Thomas: All I know is, like, are the wolves in white coats furries? Also, you know, like, are they sexy wolves and what are their pronouns, are they they/them wolves? They better be they/them sexy wolves doling out aspirin or This Is Not The United States of America I believe in. Yeah.

0:50:17 Lydia: Yep or I want my money back love it

0:50:44 Thomas: Rhymes with P, and that stands for pool. Yeah, I mean, most of this is required for Mar-a-Lago face. So