At a September 7 rally in Wisconsin, former President Donald Trump again repeated his baseless claim that schools could be providing gender-affirming surgeries to minors without parental consent.

Mainstream outlets have debunked Trump's claim, assuring readers that “no children are going to school and receiving surgery there for gender dysphoria.” According to CNN, “Trump’s own presidential campaign could not provide a single example of this ever happening.” 

But accusations that schools "groom" children into identifying as trans have circulated throughout right-wing media and politics in recent years. Some outlets and media figures have gone even further. 

At a 2023 event, Rafael Cruz, father of Texas senator and onetime Trump primary opponent Ted Cruz, claimed that children were being “mutilated” by gender affirming care in public schools. Right-wing outlets including National Review, The Federalist, and The Daily Wire have all promoted claims that public schools are providing cross-sex hormones to children, leaving out of their headlines the important detail that parental consent is required to access this treatment. 

The day before Trump made this claim, the account Libs of TikTok also appeared to make the same unsubstantiated accusation by implication.

The National Center for Youth Law notes that under the law in question, only very specific services can be provided for minors without parental consent, such as STD testing, abortion care, and treatment for sexual abuse. Those services do not include gender-affirming care, which cannot be provided to a minor without parental consent in the state of California. 

Libs of TikTok has a documented history of posting misleading and false content. Chaya Raichik, the creator behind the account, has maintained a right to do so as recently as February 2024, asking an interviewer who questioned the policy, "Is there a law against lying?”

While conservative groups have similarly acknowledged that there is zero documented evidence of expensive gender-affirming surgeries being performed in cash-strapped public schools, their resident anti-trans obsessives say that accuracy isn’t the point. 

“Are kids getting surgery in school? No they’re not,” Moms for Liberty co-founder Tiffany Justice admitted to CNN, insisting, however, that Trump’s statement “grabbed your attention, and we’re talking about it now, and that makes me very happy.” 

Thomas Jipping, a senior legal fellow at the Project 2025 partner Heritage Foundation, also defended the claim to CNN. “Just change a couple words,” he said, and the claim “is 100% accurate and correct” — a standard that could be applied to any lie ever told.

Right-wing activists appear to see Trump’s words not as statements to be evaluated for accuracy, but rather as non literal expressions of presidential priorities. And indeed, the former president has laid out a draconian set of policy proposals targeting the trans community in a hypothetical second term. 

These proposals include targeting federal funding for hospitals providing gender-affirming care, creating a “new credentialing body” for teachers that promotes conservative ideas about the nuclear family, and asking “Congress to pass a bill establishing that the only genders recognized by the United States government are male and female, and they are assigned at birth.”

When asked about these priorities at the Moms for Liberty event last Friday, Trump issued a chilling reply: “The President has such power.”