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On September 4, the Mount Sinai hospital system in New York City – one of the largest health networks in the city – agreed in a settlement with President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice (DOJ) to permanently stop providing gender-affirming care for minors.

The settlement also included an agreement that the hospital system will pay an undisclosed financial penalty, and that it will allocate $2 million toward former patients who want to pursue “detransition.”

This marks the latest capitulation to the Trump administration that has left parents of transgender youth worrying what comes next.

Mount Sinai has claimed that the settlement was reached to protect trans youth, as the DOJ subpoenaed multiple NYC hospital systems in May, demanding the names and medical records of transgender minors who have received care at the networks. But others have pointed out that a court order was put in place in June blocking the release of these records, so the hospital system would not have needed to take this step. In addition, the hospital had preemptively, and quietly, stopped providing care to trans youth in February – meaning the September settlement has simply formalized what the hospital had already largely enacted.

Truthout spoke to two parents of transgender children who had received care from the Mount Sinai system, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

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“I was shocked,” one parent, who we’ll call S, told Truthout. “The first thing I heard about was that Mount Sinai had been subpoenaed and that they were told to hand over records of any minors who had gotten care at the hospital, which would include my son. He was 15 when he started getting gender-affirming care at Mount Sinai.”

S told Truthout that she was shocked to be seeing such rapid changes in a state like New York, which is “supposed to be a sanctuary state for trans people.”

When S found out that Mount Sinai would be cancelling youth gender-affirming care entirely, she was “outraged,” she said. “When I think about my son, in his own words,........

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