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Rep. Paul Gosar grills Biden official on government funding of underage ‘gender transitions’
U.S. Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona.
From LifeSiteNews
“I thought the USA was better than that. I thought we were the leaders in science, not followers. I find it disgusting that you still sit there and hide behind that”
The federal government is funding underage “gender reassignment” procedures for the families of government employees and has no interest in keeping track of how many, according to a recent exchange between U.S. Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) and Rob Shriver, acting director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM).
During a hearing Tuesday of the House Oversight & Accountability Committee, Gosar pressed Shriver on the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHB) contracting with health plans that commit surgical and chemical “transition” procedures on children suffering from gender confusion – particularly at a time when the United Kingdom and other European governments are moving away from the practices in response to mounting evidence of their medical dangers that U.S. authorities continue to ignore.
Shriver responded that “the health plans that participate in the FEHB decide on the benefit packages that they make available,” claiming that his office had no authority over the specific benefits of FEHB plans. Gosar was incredulous that he was essentially “allowing a bad product to go forward here,” then noted that FEHB actually mandated coverage of “gender transitions” or “sex transformation” in a 2016 program carrier letter.
Citing restrictions on puberty blockers adopted in recent years by Denmark, England, Finland, Norway, and Sweden, the congressman lamented, “I thought the USA was better than that. I thought we were the leaders in science, not followers. I find it disgusting that you still sit there and hide behind that, when children are being mutilated.”
Shriver also deflected Gosar’s call for “greater transparency” and data collection on children being “transitioned” through FEHB health plans, noting that former OPM director Kiran Ahuja, who stepped down earlier this month for reported health and family issues, previously refused to mandate reporting on how many children receive the “services.”
Gosar previously introduced language to deny taxpayer funding to any FEHB plan that covered “gender transitions” in the most recent government appropriations package, but it was cut from the final version that was signed into law in March.
Contrary to the Biden administration’s pretense of acting in children’s best interests, a significant body of evidence shows that “affirming” gender confusion carries serious harms, especially when done with impressionable children who lack the mental development, emotional maturity, and life experience to consider the long-term ramifications of the decisions being pushed on them, or full knowledge about the long-term effects of life-altering, physically transformative, and often irreversible surgical and chemical procedures.
Studies find that more than 80% of children experiencing gender dysphoria outgrow it on their own by late adolescence, and that full “reassignment” surgery fails to resolve gender-confused individuals’ heightened tendency to engage in self-harm and suicide — and may even exacerbate it, including by reinforcing their confusion and neglecting the actual root causes of their mental strife.
The Biden administration’s own Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) released a since-deleted report last year acknowledging that self-professed homosexual and bisexual adults “are more likely than straight adults to use substances, experience mental health conditions including major depressive episodes, and experience serious thoughts of suicide.”
Yet the White House continues to give uncompromising support to all major aspects of the LGBT agenda, including reopening the military to recruits afflicted with gender dysphoria, promoting gender ideology within the military (including “diversity” and drag events on military bases), holding White House events to “affirm transgender kids,” condemning state laws against underage “transitions” as “close to sinful,” promoting underage “transitions” (potentially at taxpayer expense) as a “best practice,” and trying to force federally funded schools to let males into female athletic competitions and restrooms.
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
The Trump administration will soon push the United Nations (UN) to rewrite the international asylum rules, calling the current framework a “haphazard and chaotic system” routinely abused by bad actors, the Daily Caller News Foundation confirmed.
U.S. officials are planning an event later this month during the UN’s annual General Assembly to spotlight reforms aimed at curbing asylum abuses that have “disrupted entire regions, enriched criminal cartels and violated the sovereignty of nations,” a State Department spokesperson told the DCNF. Proposed changes include requiring migrants to seek protection in the first country they enter rather than “asylum shopping” for a destination of choice.
“The United States plans to begin a conversation on reforming an outdated, decades-old system that has long been abused by bad actors and economic migrants to fuel the global migration crisis,” the spokesperson told the DCNF.
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Most countries, including the U.S., are signatories to UN treaties that set a framework for those fleeing persecution to seek asylum at another country’s borders. The Trump administration, however, plans to push for “commonsense and necessary reforms” emphasizing that every nation has a right to control its borders, there is no right to receive asylum in a country of choice, asylum is meant to be temporary, sovereign states determine when return is possible, and that every country is obligated to accept return of its citizens, the spokesperson said.
European countries that have taken in millions of refugees, many from Muslim-majority nations, have been grappling with social turmoil and violence linked to migrants. Germany alone — with a population of 83 million — had 3 million refugees as of mid-2024, according to the UN.
The push aligns with President Donald Trump’s broader push to tighten asylum standards and “realign” U.S. policy.
“Cities and small towns alike, from Charleroi, Pennsylvania, and Springfield, Ohio, to Whitewater, Wisconsin, have seen significant influxes of migrants,” Trump wrote in his Jan. 20 executive order temporarily suspending the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, which is currently being challenged in court.
“The United States lacks the ability to absorb large numbers of migrants, and in particular, refugees, into its communities in a manner that does not compromise the availability of resources for Americans, that protects their safety and security, and that ensures the appropriate assimilation of refugees,” the order continued.
The administration is also expected to set its refugee admission ceiling for fiscal year 2026 this month. More than 100,000 refugees were admitted into the country under former President Joe Biden in fiscal year 2024 — the highest figure since 1994 — according to the Migration Policy Institute.
Meanwhile, Trump has highlighted the violence and discrimination faced by Afrikaners, the minority group of predominantly Dutch descent in South Africa, whose harrowing testimonies the Daily Caller has documented. In May, the president signed an executive order promoting the resettlement of Afrikaners, and several groups have already arrived in the U.S.
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright warned International Energy Agency (IEA) head Fatih Birol in July that he was considering cancelling America’s membership in and funding of its activities due to its increasingly political nature.
Specifically, Wright pointed to the agency’s modeling methods used to compile its various reports and projections, which the Secretary and many others believe have trended more into the realm of advocacy than fact-based analysis in recent years.
That trend has long been clear and is a direct result of an intentional shift in the IEA’s mission that evolved in the months during and following the COVID pandemic. In 2022, the agency’s board of governors reinforced this changed mission away from the analysis of real energy-related data and policies to one of producing reports to support and “guide countries as they build net-zero emission energy systems to comply with internationally agreed climate goals” consistent with the Paris Climate Agreement of 2016.
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One step Birol and his team took to incorporate its new role as cheerleader for an energy transition that isn’t actually happening was to eliminate the “current policies” modeling scenario which had long formed the base case for its periodic projections. That sterile analysis of the facts on the ground was replaced it with a more aspirational set of assumptions based on the announced policy intentions of governments around the world. Using this new method based more on hope and dreams than facts on the ground unsurprisingly led the IEA to begin famously predicting a peak in global oil demand by 2029, something no one else sees coming.
Those projections have helped promote the belief among policymakers and investors that a high percentage of current oil company reserves would wind up becoming stranded assets, thus artificially – and many would contend falsely – deflating the value of their company stocks. This unfounded belief has also helped discourage banks from allocating capital to funding exploration for additional oil reserves that the world will almost certainly require in the decades to come.
Secretary Wright, in his role as leading energy policymaker for an administration more focused on dealing with the realities of America’s energy security needs than the fever dreams of the far-left climate alarm lobby, determined that investing millions of taxpayer dollars in IEA’s advocacy efforts each year was a poor use of his department’s budget. So, in an interview with Bloomberg in July, Wright said, “We will do one of two things: we will reform the way the IEA operates, or we will withdraw,” adding that his “strong preference is to reform it.”
Lo and behold, less than two months later, Javier Blas says in a September 10 Bloomberg op/ed headlined “The Myth of Peak Fossil Fuel Demand is Crumbling,” that the IEA will reincorporate its “current policies” scenario in its upcoming annual report. Blas notes that, “the annual report being prepared by the International Energy Agency… shows the alternative — decades more of robust fossil-fuel use, with oil and gas demand growing over the next 25 years — isn’t just possible but probable.”
On his X account, Blas posted a chart showing that, instead of projecting a “peak” of crude oil demand prior to 2030, IEA’s “current policies” scenario will be more in line with recent projections by both OPEC and ExxonMobil showing crude demand continuing to rise through the year 2050 and beyond.
Whether that is a concession to Secretary Wright’s concerns or to simple reality on the ground is not clear. Regardless, it is without question a clear about-face which hopefully signals a return by the IEA to its original mission to serve as a reliable analyst and producer of fact-based information about the global energy situation.
The global community has no shortage of well-funded advocates for the aspirational goals of the climate alarmist community. If this pending return to reality by the IEA in its upcoming annual report signals an end to its efforts to be included among that crowded field, that will be a win for everyone, regardless of the motivations behind it.
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