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Exposed: Extreme Right Wing Physicians’ Group Behind Anti-Trans Laws
The American College of Pediatricians, a small, right-wing extremist group of physicians who for two decades has struggled to gain traction finds itself for the first time with more power than it has ever had as the far-right takes greater hold on America.
But along with their new-found power comes a deep dive into at least 15 years worth of their internal documents, the result of the group reportedly publishing a link to its own unsecured Google drive in April, which WIRED uncovered and reported on back in May.
The Washington Post combed through 10,000 of the group’s documents, and on Thursday publishing its exposé on the American College of Pediatricians, which the Southern Poverty Law Center lists as an anti-LGBTQ hate group.
“The American College of Pediatricians (ACPeds) is a fringe anti-LGBTQ hate group that masquerades as the premier U.S. association of pediatricians to push anti-LGBTQ junk science, primarily via far-right conservative media and filing amicus briefs in cases related to gay adoption and marriage equality,” SPLC writes in its extensive report.
According to The Washington Post, the American College of Pediatricians is a “small group of conservative doctors” that “has sought to shape the nation’s most contentious policies on abortion and transgender rights by promoting views rejected by the medical establishment as scientific fact.”
The American College of Pediatricians promotes the discredited practice of “conversion therapy,” which has been called “torture” by some who have been subjected to it. Conversion therapy, which purports to change a human being’s sexual orientation or gender identity, is outlawed in several states, while most credible medical organizations have denounced it.
The group’s success comes at the expense of transgender youth.
“The organization’s quest to ban the use of puberty blockers and hormone therapy for transgender minors has culminated in a string of recent legislative wins following lobbying in at least eight states, internal documents show,” The Post reports. “Arkansas first enacted such a law in 2021, after Michelle Cretella, then executive director of the American College of Pediatricians, described such care as ‘experimental and dangerous‘ to legislators. A federal appeals court temporarily blocked it.”
“Versions of the law have since passed at least 20 other state legislatures, including Florida, Idaho, Indiana, West Virginia, Oklahoma, Missouri, Montana, Texas, North Dakota and Louisiana this spring alone; some face court challenges and one was vetoed by a governor. Similar bills are making their way through legislatures in North Carolina and Ohio.”
In other words, lawmakers in about half the country are working to harm transgender children, with the help of the American College of Pediatricians.
Also among the American College of Pediatricians’ more dangerous efforts over the years have been its attacks on homosexuality.
“Internal records from 2010 show how the group tied homosexuality to health risks — even death — in a letter campaign to educators, citing a 1991 study to demonstrate that for each year adolescents delay ‘self-labeling as ‘gay’,’ the risk of suicide decreases by 20 percent.”
That claim we know today is false.
“According to more recent research, suicide risk rises with therapy directed at changing sexual orientation. Lesbian, gay and bisexual people who experienced conversion therapy were almost twice as likely to think about suicide and to attempt suicide compared with peers who had not experienced conversion therapy, according to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law,” The Post adds.
2010 may seem like light years ago, but LGBTQ rights were very much a large part of the national conversation back then.
In 2010, President Barack Obama directed the federal government to extend spousal benefits to same-sex couples. A critical portion of the anti-LGBTQ federal law, the Defense of Marriage Act, was ruled unconstitutional by a federal court. President Obama also signed into law the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” that year. And a federal judge ruled California’s infamous Prop 8 was unconstitutional.
But also in 2010, just as LGBTQ people were starting to be able to access the rights and recognition they had always been denied, the American College of Pediatricians sent a letter, The Post reports, “to 14,800 public school superintendents [that] urged school officials not to affirm any student expressing homosexuality. It directed them to a website operated by the group that pushed ‘sexual reorientation therapy’ for those with ‘unwanted homosexual attractions.'”
The Heritage Foundation, a once-vaunted right-wing think tank that has succumbed to pro-Trump MAGA far-right extremism, is a big fan of the American College of Pediatricians.
“They have had the courage to take stands in court and to speak as medical professionals in relating their experience when it comes to questions of human dignity in unborn life, freedom of conscience, and the protection of children,” Roger Severino, Heritage’s vice president of domestic policy, told The Post.
Severino, a far-right religious extremist, served in the Trump administration as the head of the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Civil Rights.
In 2020 Severino, as The New York Times reported, “finalized a regulation that will erase protections for transgender patients against discrimination by doctors, hospitals and health insurance companies, a move announced on the four-year anniversary of the massacre at a gay nightclub in Orlando and in the middle of Pride Month.”
In its report on Thursday, The Washington Post adds that Severino “said [he] relies on the American College of Pediatricians for scientific expertise.”
Amplifying far-right wing anger that the LGBTQ Pride flag was hanging from the White House during President Joe Biden’s historic Pride celebration over the weekend, the Heritage Foundation lashed out, attacking the entire LGBTQ community and the Biden administration.
On Wednesday the Heritage Foundation declared that the LGBTQ Pride flag “does not represent anything good and it certainly does not represent America.”
The ‘Pride Flag’ does not represent anything good and it certainly does not represent America. It should have never disgraced the South Portico of the White House.
We are one Nation and we salute one American flag. #FlagDay pic.twitter.com/htrMD1qLqI
— Heritage Foundation (@Heritage) June 14, 2023
Image by David Prasad via Flickr and a CC license
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White nationalist influencer Nick Fuentes, who infamously once dined with President Donald Trump and Kanye West (Ye) at Mar-a-Lago, blasted the president last week as a “weird guy” who is “not right in the head.”
“Look, something’s wrong with him, man,” Fuentes told a viewer on his online streaming show, as Mediaite reported. “And I’m not saying that to be nasty, but like, he’s a weird guy.”
“And some of the stuff that he does, just the way that he’s always glazing himself, and repeats himself.”
READ MORE: ‘Existential Threat’: U.S. on Path to Authoritarianism Warn Ex-Intelligence Officials
“Something’s, he’s not right in the head, and I don’t know if that’s his psychology or if it’s just his age, but there’s something not right there, and anyone that’s been around him will tell you that,” Fuentes charged.
“He’s a weird dude,” he added. “Like, he’s an odd cat, and maybe you need to be to be as tough as he is, but he’s not sharp. If there was something wrong with him ten years ago, it was a lot less apparent, because ten years ago, he’s a lot more sharp, and, I think, compelling, and general, and now, he’s just slow and monotonous, and repeats himself, and seems to really not know what’s going on.”
Fuentes was responding to a viewer who had written, “Looks like your assessment of Trump as a tired old man is correct.”
“Saw a report today that lots of his view of Chicago or NYC is from old BLM riot clips people show him. He just wants to play golf, fly on AF1, have fancy dinner parties, sign Oval Office EOs, watch 80s movie and get told he is getting revenge on [John] Bolton.”
Something is not right with Trump…
“The way that he’s always glazing himself and repeats himself. He’s not right in the head.” pic.twitter.com/oHksiLQ3Uo
— Fuentes Updates (@FuentesUpdates) October 18, 2025
READ MORE: ‘Sick’: Jeffries Torches Trump’s ‘Out of Control’ Press Secretary
Image via Reuters
The Steady State, a network of nearly 350 former U.S. Intelligence Community officials, says its members have applied the tools of their professions to determine that the United States is headed toward authoritarian rule. Calling its overall findings “sobering,” the group points to President Donald Trump’s executive branch overreach as the “primary” cause, and warns that, without organized resistance, that rule could become permanent.
In the executive summary of their newly-published, 29-page report, “Accelerating Authoritarian Dynamics: Assessment of Democratic Decline,” The Steady State “concludes—with moderate to high confidence—that the cumulative effect of multiple reinforcing dynamics is placing the nation on a trajectory toward competitive authoritarianism,” which they define as “a system in which elections, courts, and other democratic institutions persist in form but are systematically manipulated to entrench executive control.”
They warn of five trends, including “Executive overreach,” which is “being consolidated through governance by decree and weaponization of the state.”
READ MORE: ‘Sick’: Jeffries Torches Trump’s ‘Out of Control’ Press Secretary
Also, “Erosion of judicial independence” that has “advanced not only through partisan appointments, but through strategic reliance on the Supreme Court’s ‘shadow docket;'” “Legislative weakness and abdication” that have “diminished Congress’s capacity to serve as a coequal branch;” and a re-shaping of the electoral system.
Finally, they add that “the undermining of public trust, knowledge, and civil society through attacks on the press, academia, watchdog institutions, and dissenting voices has weakened democratic culture and civic resilience.”
In a scathing rebuke, they write that “the primary driver of the U.S.’s increasing authoritarianism is the increased frequency of Executive Branch overreach. President Donald J. Trump has leveraged emergency powers, executive orders, federalized military forces, and bureaucratic politicization to consolidate control and weaken checks and balances.”
READ MORE: ‘Needs an Intervention’: Newsom Scorches ‘Unhinged’ Trump Over San Francisco Threat
Without “organized resistance by institutions, civil society, and the public,” the group warns, “the United States is likely to continue along a path of accelerating democratic erosion, risking further consolidation of executive dominance and a loss of credibility as a model of democracy abroad.”
The Steady State says its members include former officers of the CIA, NSA, DIA, State Department, and other national-security agencies.
They said they wrote the report “because the same tools we once used to assess foreign risks now show unmistakable warning signs at home.”
In a video announcing their report, the group’s executive director Steven Cash said that “America is facing an existential threat of growing autocracy here in the United States.”
Tomorrow, we release the Steady State’s assessment of American democracy—written by former national security officials using the same tools once used to evaluate authoritarian regimes abroad. Their conclusion is clear: the threat is real. America is facing an existential threat… https://t.co/84gwLlbrqL pic.twitter.com/VKfXmoVAX6
— TheSteadyState (@steadystate2025) October 15, 2025
READ MORE: Johnson Wavers After Agreeing to Debate Jeffries ‘Anywhere Anytime’
Image via Reuters
House Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries is the latest to lash out at Karoline Leavitt over the White House press secretary’s Thursday attack on the Democratic Party, during which she alleged it is “catering” to “Hamas terrorists, illegal aliens, and violent criminals.” Leavitt’s widely-denounced remarks came as Republicans on Capitol Hill repeatedly targeted the nationwide “No Kings” Day protests set for Saturday as “Hate America” rallies.
“The Democrat Party’s main constituency are made up of Hamas terrorists, illegal aliens, and violent criminals,” Leavitt said on Fox News on Thursday afternoon. “That is who the Democrat Party is catering to — not the Trump administration, and not the White House, and not the Republican Party, who is standing up for law abiding Americans, not just across the country, but around the world.”
Speaking to reporters on Friday, Jeffries blasted Leavitt, but first took aim at a variety of Republicans over controversial issues and what he described as “racist” and “antisemitic” remarks.
READ MORE: ‘Needs an Intervention’: Newsom Scorches ‘Unhinged’ Trump Over San Francisco Threat
“We’ve already seen a rise in political violence and hatred in America,” the Democratic leader began. “And then you’ve got swastikas apparently appearing in the offices of Republican members of Congress.”
“You’ve got Young Republicans engaging in the most antisemitic and racist speech possible,” he continued, referring to a Politico report that drew condemnation of the group’s members.
“Like, this is apparently who many of these people are,” he said.
“They are ripping the sheets off, in plain view of the American people. Their words, their actions, revealing themselves in so many different ways.”
READ MORE: ‘I Don’t Like Being Mad Mike’: Johnson ‘Upset’ Over Dems’ Health Care Demands
“And then you got Karoline Leavitt, who’s sick,” he charged. “She’s out of control. And I’m not sure whether she’s just demented, ignorant, a stone-cold liar, or all of the above.”
“But the notion that an official White House spokesperson would say that the Democratic Party consists of terrorists, violent criminals, and undocumented immigrants — this makes no sense.”
“That this is what the American people are getting from the Trump administration, in the middle of a shutdown,” he observed. “So their actions continue to speak for themselves, which is why they’re on the wrong side of public sentiment.”
Jeffries: “You’ve got Karoline Leavitt, who’s sick, she’s out of control. And I’m not sure if she’s just demented, ignorant, a stone cold liar, or all of the above. But the notion that an official WH spokesperson would say that the Democratic Party consists of ‘terrorists,… pic.twitter.com/RXqBFlsujY
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 17, 2025
READ MORE: Johnson Wavers After Agreeing to Debate Jeffries ‘Anywhere Anytime’
‘Not Right in the Head’: White Nationalist Influencer Fuentes Goes Off on ‘Weird’ Trump
‘Existential Threat’: U.S. on Path to Authoritarianism Warn Ex-Intelligence Officials
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