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Between the 1940s and 1950s, the House Un-American Activities Committee and Senator Joseph McCarthy’s investigations targeted Americans for their beliefs, their associations, and their speech. The mechanism was not primarily criminal prosecution — it was investigation, subpoena, and the threat of institutional destruction. Its goal was compliance through fear. That fire burned through Hollywood, through the federal government, and through universities, before finally being recognized for what it is today: one of the most extreme government overreaches in American history, wielding extraordinary powers to persecute a disfavored group. Now, the federal government is engaged in a structurally identical campaign — but this time, it is waged against transgender people and the institutions that serve them, targeting hospitals with subpoenas, threatening organizations and nonprofits with funding cuts, and hauling medical societies before kangaroo courts in an attempt to beat them into submission. And with a lawsuit filed against the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) in a transparently forum-shopped court in Texas, the administration has turned toward its most prized target of all: the central organization that advocates for trans healthcare worldwide.

The lawsuit, brought by the FTC and the attorneys general of Texas, Alaska, Iowa, and Nebraska, alleges that WPATH has violated the FTC Act by engaging in “deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce” — weaponizing federal consumer protection law, statutes designed to go after companies selling snake oil and fake cancer cures. The complaint alleges that WPATH “provided the means for medical providers to make false and unsubstantiated claims to parents in order to sell pediatric medical transition services,” and that this makes them a target under consumer protection laws. This is despite the fact that WPATH sells nothing — it is a nonprofit medical advocacy organization that publishes guidelines based on its assessment of the available science, advocating for a transgender patient population that governments and medical institutions had historically forsaken. Its advocacy has led to expanded insurance coverage for transgender healthcare, recognition by every major American medical organization that gender-affirming care is legitimate medicine, and an infrastructure of clinical standards that thousands of providers rely on. For this — for succeeding in its mission — the government has deployed an unprecedented legal theory to destroy........

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