Former President Donald Trump, unlike his Democratic challenger, laid out another policy position should he win the November election last week during an appearance at the Livingston County Sheriff’s Department in Howell, Michigan.
As Vice President Kamala Harris continues to avoid format interviews with the media to lay out her policy visions for the country, Trump is staking out hard positions on everything from the economy to foreign affairs and domestic policy.
During his campaign stop on Tuesday, he noted: “And to protect our children from sexual mutilation, we will make it a felony for any medical professional to perform surgery on a minor without parental consent.”
Trump also said he would be “asking for the death penalty for child rapists and child traffickers.”
Transgender medical interventions for minors, such as double mastectomies for girls and the use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, have become a highly contentious cultural issue in recent years.
The former president’s campaign posted the news on social media.
The Biden-Harris administration has advocated for maintaining the legality of these interventions for minors, including challenging age restrictions on certain transgender procedures in a case in Alabama, according to court documents.
Last year, Trump promised to task several federal agencies with working to “stop” transgender medical interventions for minors, calling it “child abuse.” Also, the 45th president had said he would bar federal agencies from working to “promote the concept of sex and gender transition at any age.”
The Republican nominee also said last year that he would push schools to “promote positive education about the nuclear family” and “the roles of mothers and fathers.”
Detransitioners—individuals who underwent transgender surgeries and hormone treatments at a young age but now regret their decisions—have recently voiced concerns about the harm these treatments have caused. They argue that their doctors failed to address underlying mental health issues, such as autism, anxiety, or depression, before directing them toward transgender medical interventions.
In addition, many parents are expressing frustration over public schools affirming their children’s new gender identities without their knowledge or consent.
According to a list compiled by Parents Defending Education, more than 19,000 schools nationwide have policies that permit or require staff to withhold a student’s gender identity from their parents.
According to a poll conducted last year, only about 44% of Democrats expressed opposition to schools counseling children on their sexual orientation and gender identity without parental knowledge.
Meanwhile, on Friday, Trump pledged to form a commission on assassination attempts that would include releasing the remaining documents related to John F. Kennedy’s murder in November 1963.
Trump made his announcement at a rally in Glendale, Ariz., just hours after receiving Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s endorsement following the former Democrat-turned-Independent’s decision to end his presidential bid earlier in the day. Kennedy’s father, Robert F. Kennedy Sr., JFK’s brother, was also assassinated during a presidential bid of his own on June 5, 1968, at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, Calif.
JFK was assassinated in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963.
During his rally speech, Trump referenced the assassination attempt against him last month in Butler, Pa. “They will also conduct a rigorous review of the attack last month,” Trump noted, as reported by the New York Post. “But I tell you, I have never had more people ask me, ‘Please, sir, release the documents on the Kennedy assassination,’ and we’re going to do that.”
Trump also reiterated his pledge to establish a panel of “top experts working with Bobby” that would investigate the cause of a “decades-long increase in chronic health problems and childhood diseases.”
