Brian Laird on WNYC.

So NYU's hospital system is caught between local and national politics right now.

The Trump administration says no more gender affirming care for

minors or they'll cut off federal funding. The state of New York says NYU is required to offer that care.

We will discuss now with a couple of guests. First, just on what's going on with NYU in this political vice.

We have Julia Hayward, Day of Reporter here at WNYC and Gothamist, and after her, we'll hear

from Dr. Jack Turbin, adult child and adolescent psychiatrist and author of the book,

Free to Be, Understanding Kids and Gender Identity on what this moment means for

the patients caught in the middle. Hey, Julia, welcome back to the show. Hey, thanks for having me.

So how did NYU Langone explain its decision to close its transgender youth health program?

Because they were doing this. Yes. Okay. So the families that we

spoke to said that NYU told them directly. And when we reached out to the hospital ourselves,

they confirmed this. And what they, a spokesperson for the hospital said that they were ending the

program because of the current regulatory department.

Basically, the Trump administration has been trying to penalize hospitals that offer gender affirming care to children and teens for a while.

Right. The current regulatory environment was their quote, but on February 25th, as Gothamist and other outlets reported, Attorney General for New York State, Letitia James published a letter ordering NYU Langone to reinstate the program within 10 days. That deadline was March 11th.

So what's her legal argument for why the hospital has to comply with the state rather than the

federal government? That is a great question. Okay, so basically hospitals right now, the ones that

have been shuddering gender-affirming care for children and teens, are doing so to sort of get ahead of a proposal from the Trump administration.

The Trump administration is proposing stopping hospitals that perform gender reforming care treatments on minors from receiving Medicare or Medicaid funding.

This is a lot of money.

And so what some hospitals are doing is just getting rid of the practice altogether in order to be in compliance ahead of time.

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