- All articles

All articles

- NYU Langone First Known Hospital to Face Federal Criminal Subpoena Over Trans Youth Care

- Federal Judge Rules Trump Government Has Animus Towards Trans People, Blocks Org Subpoenas

- Trans Youth Who Want Hormone Therapy But Can't Get It Face Twice Suicide Risk, Says National Survey

- Pensacola State College Bans Student Journalists From Publishing On LGBTQ+ Stories

NYU Langone First Known Hospital to Face Federal Criminal Subpoena Over Trans Youth Care

S. BAUM | MAY 11, 2026, 11:34 PM EDT | SOURCE

A federal grand jury in the Northern District of Texas issued the subpoena demanding information on every minor who received gender-affirming care since 2020.

Justice.gov

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Northern District of Texas has issued the first known criminal subpoena directed at a health care institution for offering gender-affirming care to transgender youth—at NYU Langone, a hospital situated almost 2,000 miles away in the greater New York City area.

The notification was sent to patients (and/or parents) via their online portal just after 7pm on May 11, as per screenshots obtained by Erin in the Morning. In a public statement, Langone indicated there were other health care institutions that received this kind of subpoena, too.

“We are writing to inform you that on May 7, 2026, NYU Langone Hospitals (”NYULH”) was one of several institutions that received a grand jury subpoena from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Northern District of Texas,” the notification reads.

“Among other requests, the subpoena directs NYULH to provide information pertaining to patients under the age of 18 who received gender affirming care at NYULH between 2020-2026, as well as the names of NYULH providers and others who were involved in offering such care at NYULH in that timeframe.”

It continues: “Pursuant to the New York State Shield Law, any entity in New York State that receives a request for information regarding legally protected health activity, such as the provision of reproductive health care or gender-affirming care, must make a reasonable attempt to notify the individuals to whom that request pertains at least 30 days before complying with or providing information in response to the request.”

“We understand that these developments may be concerning to our patients, providers, and others,” it concluded. “Please know that NYU Langone takes the privacy of your protected health information very seriously and we are evaluating our response to the subpoena.”

Almost two dozen hospitals or clinics have received subpoenas from the Department of Justice under the Trump Administration targeting young trans patients.

But this is a dire escalation. Those were administrative subpoenas—meaning the cases were civil in nature. But this round of subpoenas entails a criminal case, meaning providers or hospital officials face risk of arrest and jail time. It does not appear to target parents of trans kids or trans patients.

News of the subpoena also means the federal government has assembled a grand jury, an important step towards criminal proceedings.

At the same time, New York has strong Shield Laws to protect providers from out-of-state prosecution. That same policy is what mandated the notification sent to patients and/or parents. It is unclear what information, exactly, the DOJ requested; whether this includes personally identifiable data on patients, such as names, or whether the requested information can be anonymized; nor does the statement indicate what crime the federal government alleges Langone committed.

The hospital may try to fight the subpoena, in whole or in part, in court—but because the federal government is strategically pursuing the case in one of the most conservative courts in the country, Langone faces an uphill battle. This round of litigation could also put the efficacy of Shield Laws to the test.

“This is a blatant unlawful effort by the [Department of Justice] to intimidate providers of gender affirming care to trans youth by engaging in judge and forum shopping,” Alejandra Caraballo, a Harvard Law instructor and legal scholar told Erin in the Morning.

“They are allegedly investigating actions by NYU that took place in New York City and yet using a grand jury in a rural Texas courtroom to send these subpoenas. There is no low that this Justice Department won’t stoop to in an effort to abuse the justice system to persecute their political enemies.”

In April, the Trump Administration filed in that same Texas district court in an attempt to force a Rhode Island hospital to hand over patient data to federal authorities.

Gender-affirming care remains legal in New York; in fact, it benefits from robust protections against federal encroachment. Attorney General Letitia James condemned hospitals that caved over the last year for rolling back gender-affirming care over Trumpian threats, on the grounds that in doing so they were discriminating against transgender New Yorkers.

Neither NYU Langone nor Attorney General Letitia James immediately responded to a request for comment.

Photo Credit: Christopher Street Project - Alert sent by NYU Langone through their patient portal on May 11th at 7:03 PM

This article was downloaded from https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/nyu-langone-first-known-hospital at May 12, 2026 at 7:51 PM EDT.

Federal Judge Rules Trump Government Has Animus Towards Trans People, Blocks Org Subpoenas

ERIN REED | MAY 8, 2026, 2:35 PM EDT | SOURCE

The government tried to get WPATH communications going all the way back to 1979 to target transgender people.

Valerie Plesch / Bloomberg via NBC News

Last night, Chief Judge James E. Boasberg of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia granted preliminary injunctions in two parallel cases—Endocrine Society v. FTC and World Professional Association for Transgender Health v. FTC—enjoining the Federal Trade Commission from enforcing civil investigative demands against the two leading medical organizations on transgender health. The judge ruled in both cases that the FTC likely violated the organizations' First Amendment rights and engaged in unlawful retaliation against them for their protected speech supporting gender-affirming care. Boasberg further found that the Trump administration and the FTC had pursued the organizations based on "extensive evidence of animus" and "wafer-thin justifications" for their demands. For now, the private communications, internal deliberations, and member information of these two organizations are protected from the Trump administration's escalating campaign of government censorship and retaliation against the medical institutions that support transgender people.

"On this preliminary record, with extensive evidence of animus and wafer-thin justifications lacking evidentiary support, [the Court] finds that WPATH is likely to demonstrate a causal link between its protected speech and the FTC's issuance of the CID,” said the judge in the WPATH ruling. In the parallel Endocrine Society ruling issued the same day, the judge went likewise found similar violations: "The Court finds the same systemic targeting of proponents of medical treatment for gender incongruence at work here. The Society is the latest casualty in some Executive Branch agencies' bid to investigate hospitals, medical providers, and charitable organizations that support transgender health. The CID's focus on academic and medical speech, combined with the FTC's paucity of logic or evidence pointing to a genuine investigation, confirms the conclusion that the CID was likely issued for a retaliatory purpose."

The cases center on Civil Investigative Demands—administrative subpoenas the FTC issued to both organizations in January 2026, demanding sweeping and unprecedented access to their internal operations. The FTC ordered the organizations to turn over decades of internal communications about their clinical guidelines on gender dysphoria, every educational and advocacy material, every financial record, and the names of every member who had ever helped develop claims about gender-affirming care—potentially thousands of people. The CID to WPATH alarmingly reached back to 1979, the year WPATH was founded. The CIDs are part of a sprawling Trump administration campaign to suppress speech about transgender people and crush the institutions that provide it: the Kennedy Declaration, which drove more than 40 hospital systems to shutter their trans youth programs before a federal judge vacated it as unlawful last month; CMS proposed rules that would bar Medicare and Medicaid-receiving hospitals from providing such care entirely; and DOJ subpoenas to hospitals across the country, which federal judges have repeatedly quashed as "smokescreens" for retaliation. The FTC's CIDs were the latest weapon in that campaign.

The organizations challenged the demands in federal court. Last night, they won. Boasberg ruled that the CIDs were retaliation against WPATH and the Endocrine Society for their protected speech in support of gender-affirming care, and that the FTC's campaign against them was rooted in extensive animus. Among the evidence the judge cited to show extensive animus towards transgender people was: Trump's executive orders denouncing gender identity as "subversive" and "false ideology" and labeling gender-affirming care "mutilation"; FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson's pre-appointment memo pledging to "fight back against the trans agenda" and investigate "the doctors, therapists, hospitals, and others" providing such care; senior FTC staff publicly accusing medical associations of "malpractice" and calling journalists covering trans issues "partisan morons"; and the FTC's July 2025 workshop "The Dangers of 'Gender-Affirming Care' for Minors," at which speakers called gender dysphoria "science fiction" and "the foundational fraud" and described their work as a "battle of good versus evil." The judge also noted that one workshop participant—who explicitly recommended investigating medical associations to make them "start losing members" and "lose revenue streams"—was subsequently hired by the FTC.

The judge also ruled that the CIDs were designed to chill protected speech regardless of whether the FTC ever pursued formal enforcement. "The CID and the accompanying threat of future enforcement sit as a Sword of Damocles suspended over Plaintiff's head," Boasberg wrote. "To mix weaponry metaphors, the Society alleges that the FTC is using its investigative demands as a cudgel, 'inflict[ing] concrete and ongoing injuries that suppress speech,' regardless of any later enforcement action." The judge grounded that conclusion in a recent D.C. Circuit ruling, Media Matters for America v. FTC, in which the appellate court blocked another retaliatory FTC subpoena—that one targeting the progressive media watchdog group over its reporting on advertisements appearing next to white nationalist content on Elon Musk's Twitter platform. Citing that precedent, Boasberg wrote that Congress would never have intended to give an agency "license to run roughshod over a party's First Amendment rights." With that, he blocked the FTC from enforcing the subpoenas against WPATH and the Endocrine Society while the cases proceed.

"WPATH welcomes the Court's decision to grant our request for a preliminary injunction against this unlawful and retaliatory investigative demand by the FTC. We are hopeful that this preliminary injunction will prevent further harm to the First Amendment rights of WPATH and its members. For more than 50 years, WPATH has been committed to developing guidelines informed by established scientific standards, expert consensus, and patient-centered values. WPATH's dedication to this mission and the patient population it serves remains unwavering," WPATH said in a emailed statement Thursday evening.

"The D.C. District Court ruling is an important victory that recognizes medical guidelines are a valued resource that allow doctors to support patients in making decisions about their care. This ruling sends a powerful message that government efforts to pressure the medical and scientific community to abandon evidence-based practices are not permissible. In addition to affirming the Endocrine Society's First Amendment right to speak freely on matters of public health, the court recognized the chilling effect the government's actions have on the Society's work and the harm to public interest. This decision is a helpful step in ensuring the Endocrine Society can continue to advance endocrine health and patient well-being by providing clinicians with medically sound, evidence-based information," the Endocrine Society said in its own statement to the Advocate.

A third parallel case—brought by the American Academy of Pediatrics, which received its own CID from the FTC on the same day as WPATH—remains pending before Judge Christopher R. Cooper, another Obama-nominated judge on the same D.C. District Court.

You can find the WPATH and Endocrine Society rulings here:

Endocrine Society Memorandum Opinion

308KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

Wpath Memorandum Opinion

199KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

This article was downloaded from https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/federal-judge-rules-trump-government at May 12, 2026 at 7:51 PM EDT.

Trans Youth Who Want Hormone Therapy But Can't Get It Face Twice Suicide Risk, Says National Survey

ERIN REED | MAY 7, 2026, 1:55 PM EDT | SOURCE

The Trevor Project survey revealed deep anxieties over losing healthcare access among trans youth.

Photo by Delia Giandeini on Unsplash

On Wednesday, the Trevor Project released a massive survey of LGBTQ+ youth, with one of the largest subsamples of transgender people of any survey previously recorded. The survey, which questioned 16,667 respondents, included over 10,000 trans, nonbinary, and genderqueer respondents. The survey found harsh experiences among LGBTQ+ people and especially transgender people, including high rates of bullying and harassment, difficulty accessing healthcare, and nearly a third of respondents saying anti-LGBTQ+ policies had made them or their families consider moving to a different state. Among the most significant findings, however, was the impact of access to gender-affirming care on transgender youth: transgender and nonbinary young people who wanted hormones to support their gender transition but were unable to access them were nearly twice as likely to report a past-year suicide attempt compared to those who were currently taking hormones.

"Transgender and nonbinary youth who reported being unable to access hormones to support their gender transition or expression were nearly twice as likely to report a past-year suicide attempt compared to those who were currently taking hormones (15% vs 8%)," reads the report. The finding is consistent with a growing body of peer-reviewed research linking anti-trans policies to worsening mental health outcomes. A 2024 study published in Nature Human Behavior—the first to establish a causal link between anti-trans laws and suicide risk—found that state-level anti-transgender laws increased past-year suicide attempts among trans and nonbinary youth by as much as 72%, with the highest increases among those under 18. The CDC's own Youth Risk Behavior Survey has documented similarly elevated rates, finding that over half of transgender high school students seriously considered suicide and more than a quarter attempted it during the rise in anti-trans legislation. Taken together, the evidence points in one direction: restricting access to gender-affirming care is harmful for transgender youth.

Difficulty in accessing hormones and suicide risk

Importantly, the survey also showed that the vast majority of transgender youth do not have access to or are not taking hormones or puberty blockers. Among transgender and nonbinary respondents aged 13-17, only 10% reported taking hormones to support their gender transition. Among those 18-24, the number rose to 44%, still less than half. Just 3% reported taking puberty blockers. These numbers run counter to the political narrative that transgender youth are being rushed into medical intervention. The reality, according to the survey's own data, is that the overwhelming majority of transgender minors are not receiving hormones or puberty blockers at all.

For transgender youth who do have access to care, there is enormous anxiety over whether it will continue. Of the transgender and nonbinary youth currently taking hormones, 87% reported being concerned about losing access. Ninety percent of all LGBTQ+ youth said recent anti-LGBTQ+ laws, policies, and debates caused them stress or anxiety, and 94% of trans and nonbinary respondents answered likewise. Worse, 32% of LGBTQ+ youth said these laws and policies had made them or their families consider moving to a different state altogether. That finding is consistent with broader migration data: a Movement Advancement Project/NORC poll found 400,000 transgender people had relocated since the 2024 election alone.

The survey comes amid an unprecedented wave of attacks on transgender youth and their ability to access care. Over the last two years, the Supreme Court has greenlit a suite of anti-trans policies, including in United States v. Skrmetti, which upheld state bans on gender-affirming care for transgender youth. Several states, all Republican-controlled, have now banned such care. The Trump administration has gone further still, issuing the Kennedy Declaration to threaten hospitals' federal funding for providing care—a policy that caused more than 40 hospital systems to shut down their trans youth programs. Meanwhile, anti-trans pseudoscience groups are attempting to launder misinformation about care and push conversion therapy-like practices at major medical conferences. This survey cuts through the false claim by the far-right that their efforts are somehow protective of youth. Denying transgender youth who want hormones clearly does not help them, but rather, is associated with nearly double the rate of suicide attempts.

Gender-affirming care saves lives. A Cornell review of more than 51 studies found that such care significantly improves the mental health of transgender people. One major study reported a 73 percent drop in suicidality among trans youth who began treatment; another found a 40 percent reduction in actual suicide attempts in the previous year. Research published in the Journal of Adolescent Health in April 2024 showed puberty blockers sharply reduced depression and anxiety. Abroad, a German review backed by 27 medical organizations endorsed gender-affirming care for youth, and a recent French medical consensus did the same. The evidence has driven a historic resolution from the American Psychological Association—representing 157,000 members—formally condemning bans on trans care.

“Given the current climate in our country, it comes as no surprise that many LGBTQ+ young people are reporting high rates of anxiety, depression, and suicidality. Similar to previous research, this national survey demonstrates that LGBTQ+ youth experience these negative mental health outcomes not because of who they are, but because of how they are mistreated by others,” said Jaymes Black, CEO of The Trevor Project, in a press release. “These young people report they are being bullied, discriminated against, and debated about by politicians simply for being themselves. While many of these results are difficult to read, this year’s data point to a hopeful reality for LGBTQ+ youth in the U.S., too: When LGBTQ+ young people report they have welcoming and supportive communities, spaces, and people in their lives, their risk for attempting suicide lowers significantly. As adults and allies, this is our call to action: we must continue to vocally and visibly show the LGBTQ+ young people in our lives that they belong, exactly as they are.”

This article was downloaded from https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/trans-youth-who-want-hormone-therapy at May 12, 2026 at 7:51 PM EDT.

Pensacola State College Bans Student Journalists From Publishing On LGBTQ+ Stories

ERIN REED | MAY 6, 2026, 11:05 AM EDT | SOURCE

The allegations, which were made public in a letter from FIRE, represent a stunning restriction on campus free speech.

On May 1, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression published a letter alleging severe restrictions on the freedom of speech of students at Pensacola State College in Pensacola, Florida. The letter alleges that three student-written articles about LGBTQ+ people—a profile of a local drag queen, a piece on a queer bookstore, and a story about a community poetry club—were barred from publication in a student journalism magazine sponsored by the college. According to FIRE, Brenda Kelly, the college's Associate Vice President of Academic Affairs, met with journalism professor Marisa Mills on April 29 and told her the articles could not be published because their LGBTQ+ content could violate Florida's Stop WOKE Act. The fight is now blowing up as the latest example of college students being restricted from even mentioning LGBTQ+ people in academic and journalism contexts—following Texas Tech's ban on student theses about LGBTQ+ topics and the DOJ's investigation of 36 Illinois schools for acknowledging that LGBTQ+ people exist.

"On April 29, 2026, Brenda Kelly, General Studies Associate Vice President of Academic Affairs, held a meeting with Professor Marisa Mills and told her that students could not publish the stories that contained LGBT+ content," reads the letter from FIRE. "Kelly explained that publishing this content could violate the Stop WOKE Act, specifically its prohibitions on funding advocacy 'for diversity, equity, and inclusion' and 'instruction' in a public university or college that 'espouses, promotes, advances, inculcates, or compels' a student 'to believe' any viewpoint contained on an enumerated blacklist. At the meeting, she shared Florida College System guidance on implementing these two provisions of the Stop WOKE Act."

The college has denied the allegations. In a response to FIRE's letter, Kelly said that "Dr. Mills' students completed the collaborative project without any intervention from me or any other PSC administrator" and that she only met with Mills on April 29 "to discuss the optional, not required, printing of the magazine."

But students tell a different story. Casey Hignite, a student in Mills' class who also writes and draws political cartoons for the college's student newspaper, told the Pensacola News Journal that the magazine's content was censored. Only one of the three LGBTQ+ articles would have been allowed to remain only after heavy editing to strip out its central themes—the author chose to pull the piece entirely rather than gut it. Hignite said they also chose not to submit their own story about a local goth shop because the shop's owner "wouldn't want to take part in censorship." The magazine has not been published. "This is just the latest in what PSC has done to censor and intimidate its faculty and students," Hignite said. "There are issues that are not even being reported on because people are afraid to lose their livelihood." Mills, the journalism professor at the center of the dispute, declined to comment after her union representative advised her not to speak publicly.

The move to censor students from writing about LGBTQ+ people breaks with both recent and longstanding precedent, and the cited justification doesn’t even hold up. Florida’s Stop WOKE Act, signed by Governor Ron DeSantis in 2022, prohibits public colleges from funding “advocacy” for diversity, equity, and inclusion and establishes a sort of Don’t Say Gay protocol that applies to colleges. But a federal judge blocked the law’s provisions, calling them “positively dystopian” and finding that the act “officially bans professors from expressing disfavored viewpoints in university classrooms while permitting unfettered expression of the opposite viewpoints.” The 11th Circuit affirmed that injunction in 2024, describing the law as “the latest attempt to control speech by recharacterizing it as conduct” and calling viewpoint-based restrictions “the greatest First Amendment sin.” The law remains enjoined to this day; PSC is censoring students to comply with a law it is not even legally required to follow.

More broadly, student press freedom at public colleges is well established. In Papish v. Board of Curators of the University of Missouri (1973), the Supreme Court held that a public university could not punish a student for distributing a newspaper containing content administrators found offensive, ruling that “the mere dissemination of ideas—no matter how offensive to good taste—on a state university campus may not be shut off in the name alone of ‘conventions of decency.’” In Rosenberger v. Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia (1995), the Court held that a public university cannot withhold funding from a student publication based on its viewpoint. Notably, that is the precise mechanism PSC is using here. Repeatedly, the Supreme Court has acted to protect student publicaitons.

This is not the only case of severe restrictions on speech involving LGBTQ+ people in recent months. Just last month, Texas Tech issued a memorandum that barred graduate students from writing theses or dissertations centered on LGBTQ+ topics, required professors to skip over LGBTQ+ content in textbooks, and used an AI algorithm to scan the entire system's course catalog for references to sexual orientation or gender identity—flagging over 1,400 courses for review. Meanwhile, the Trump administration has launched investigations into 36 Illinois school districts for the apparent offense of teaching students that LGBTQ+ people exist—threatening federal funding losses if schools allow transgender students to use bathrooms or include LGBTQ+ content in their curriculum.

FIRE demanded that PSC reverse course by May 4, warning that administrators who violate "clearly established law" can be stripped of qualified immunity and held personally liable for monetary damages. Meanwhile, the students are taking matters into their own hands. "We're working right now on removing the magazine from under PSC," Hignite told the Pensacola News Journal. The magazine has not been published.

This article was downloaded from https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/pensacola-state-college-bans-student at May 12, 2026 at 7:51 PM EDT.

Table of Contents

Erin in the Morning: 2026 May 12

All articles

NYU Langone First Known Hospital to Face Federal Criminal Subpoena Over Trans Youth Care

Federal Judge Rules Trump Government Has Animus Towards Trans People, Blocks Org Subpoenas

Trans Youth Who Want Hormone Therapy But Can't Get It Face Twice Suicide Risk, Says National Survey

Pensacola State College Bans Student Journalists From Publishing On LGBTQ+ Stories