LA ‘transyouth’ clinic shuts down after Trump admin pressure

One of the country’s most prominent youth gender clinics is shutting its doors – and pressure from the Trump administration is a major factor.

The Center for Transyouth Health and Development at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, overseen by University of Southern California professor Johanna Olson-Kennedy, stopped offering gender transition services to minors this week. It was one of the largest such programs in the United States. 

The decision to shut down followed a “thorough legal and financial assessment,” the hospital said in a statement to the College Fix.

“Over the past several months, President Trump’s executive orders, proposed federal legislation and rulemaking, growing economic uncertainty, and California’s deepening budget crisis, have made the situation even more dire,” the hospital’s statement said.

President Donald Trump’s executive order, issued earlier this year, bans federal support for procedures attempting to transition children from one sex to another. It called them “chemical and surgical mutilation” and condemned the lifelong medical complications and infertility often resulting from them.

“Countless children soon regret that they have been mutilated,” the order reads, “and begin to grasp the horrifying tragedy that they will never be able to conceive children of their own or nurture their children through breastfeeding.”

The order continued: “The United States will not fund, sponsor, promote, assist, or support the so-called ‘transition’ of a child from one sex to another.”

The closure is part of a larger trend.

The University of Pennsylvania’s medical system has also announced an end to sex-change surgeries on minors.

Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, chairman of the group Do No Harm, applauded the development.

“It is about time that Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles closed its infamous Center for Transyouth,” Goldfarb said. “We applaud President Trump’s Administration for pressuring CHLA to make this change and encourage continued scrutiny over the hospital’s long record of inflicting permanent harm on innocent kids.”

The center at USC had previously come under fire when Olson-Kennedy reportedly withheld negative findings from a taxpayer-funded study on puberty blockers. She was also sued last year by a former patient who underwent a double mastectomy at 14.

The center treated 265 youth between 2019 and 2023, the report said. This includes 165 surgeries and over 100 patients prescribed hormones or puberty blockers.

An October 2024 poll from the Center Square found 59% of Americans support a federal ban on so-called gender-affirming care for minors.

Currently, 27 states restrict so-called gender-affirming care for minors.