President Donald Trump has revived a debunked 2024 campaign claim that schools are secretly sending children off for gender surgery, and when CNN asked the White House for proof, it couldn’t produce a single example.
At a Georgia rally Friday, Trump claimed there are “five states where your child goes off to school as Tim and comes back as Tammy, three or four days later," wrote CNN's Daniel Dale.
“And you say, ‘Where’s my son? My son is in the hospital.’ Can you imagine?” Trump added. “They don’t even need approval. It’s sick. You’ll have five – I think Minnesota and some others – I think it’s five or six states.”
CNN’s fact check called the claim “nonsense.” No state allows schools to send a child to a hospital for elective surgery without parental approval, and experts in gender identity care said they know of no case in which a U.S. school secretly sent a child for gender surgery.
Asked for examples, the White House instead sent an unsigned email listing cases in which schools allegedly helped students socially transition, by using different names or pronouns, without their parents’ knowledge. Most of the cited articles didn’t mention surgery at all.
The one case that did mention surgery undercut Trump’s claim. Colorado parents sued after a school counselor allegedly discussed hormones and surgery with their daughter. According to the lawsuit, the parents refused consent and no surgery took place.
The White House insisted Trump was “clearly explaining” a “direct nexus” between school policies and children “eventually” undergoing procedures, but Dale noted that Trump said no such thing and instead claimed schools were sending kids directly to the hospital – which experts dismissed as absurd.
“Even giving a student Tylenol typically requires written parent or guardian permission,” said Lynn Nelson, board president of the National Association of School Nurses. She called Trump’s claims “false.”
A Minnesota education department spokesperson called the claim “unequivocally false.”
“There are no documented cases of schools taking children to hospitals for gender-affirming surgery,” said Landon Hughes, a Harvard Medical School instructor who has studied gender care among minors.
Lindsey Dawson of the health policy group KFF said surgery among young people is “extremely rare” and “certainly not happening in schools or because of school policy.”
The limited data available suggests that the few gender surgeries minors receive are mostly chest procedures for 15- to 17-year-olds. Parental consent is required even in states where such care is legal.
Dale contacted five conservative organizations for examples, and none responded.
Trump has repeated versions of the claim at recent rallies in Kansas, Kentucky and Ohio.