Donald Trump told a rally crowd in South Carolina that hospitals are performing reverse transgender surgery because he ordered them to, a claim no hospital, medical association, or federal agency has confirmed.
He was on stage Friday night stumping for Republican Senate candidate Darline Graham ahead of Tuesday’s runoff, which is the second round of voting that happens when nobody clears the threshold to win outright the first time. He went after her opponent over transgender rights, then pivoted to say that things are changing, that hospitals are now doing reverse surgery at his order, and added that nobody ever heard about it.
That last part is the only accurate piece. Nobody has heard about it.
There is no public record of any hospital system reversing gender transition surgeries. There is no executive order directing one, an executive order being a written instruction from a sitting administration to federal agencies. There is no announcement from the Department of Health and Human Services, no statement from the American Medical Association, and no reporting from any outlet covering this beat. A claim this size would not stay quiet, especially given how loudly this administration has publicized every other action it has taken on this issue.
It is also worth understanding what he is describing, because the medicine does not really work that way. Gender-affirming care is the umbrella term for treatment given to people whose gender identity does not match the sex they were assigned at birth. For young people it consists mostly of therapy, and sometimes medication such as puberty blockers or hormones. Surgery on minors is rare. Surgical procedures on adults are not simple to undo, and there is no standard procedure called a reversal that hospitals perform in batches.
What the administration has actually done for the last 18 months is the opposite of reversing surgeries. It has been trying to stop this care from happening at all.
A week into the second term, Trump signed an executive order stating that the federal government would not fund, sponsor, promote, assist, or support the transition of a child from one sex to another. On his first day in office he signed a separate order declaring that the federal government would recognize only two sexes. In the months after, HHS put out a report attacking the research behind this care and sent warnings to state Medicaid directors. The Justice Department subpoenaed children’s hospitals and threatened doctors with prosecution.
Then in December, HHS proposed a rule that would have stripped Medicare and Medicaid funding from any hospital or doctor performing gender-affirming surgery on a patient under 18. Medicare and Medicaid are the federal health insurance programs covering older Americans and low income Americans, and losing access to that money would financially cripple most hospital systems. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said at the press conference announcing the rules that the administration would not stand by while young people were pushed into decisions they could never reverse, and called it malpractice rather than medicine. Mehmet Oz, who runs the agency overseeing Medicare and Medicaid, described the treatments as a bandage over a deeper problem.
That rule did not survive. In July, HHS quietly shelved it. The American Medical Association and the Children’s Hospital Association had both filed comments asking the agency to pull it. Sam Bagenstos, a Michigan Law professor who served as HHS general counsel under Biden, called the retreat a win for people defending trans rights.
So the record shows an administration that pushed hard, got pushback from the country’s largest medical organizations, and backed off one of its signature efforts a month ago. Nothing in that record involves hospitals undoing surgeries.
There has been movement in the direction the administration wants. In February, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons issued a statement recommending doctors wait until a patient is at least 19 before performing gender-related surgery. Deputy HHS Secretary Jim O’Neill called it a victory for biological truth. The plastic surgeons group told NPR the statement was not a reversal of any earlier position and not a new clinical guideline, just a recommendation given where the evidence and the laws currently stand. Twenty-seven states have their own bans, and the Supreme Court upheld Tennessee’s in June 2025.
The broader medical field has not moved. The American Academy of Pediatrics said the December rules were a baseless intrusion into the relationship between patients and doctors, with its president Susan Kressly saying families and physicians should be making these decisions rather than politicians. The AMA has urged states not to restrict the care at all.
Public opinion sits closer to the administration than the doctors do. An Associated Press and NORC survey conducted in May 2025 found about half of American adults approved of how Trump was handling transgender issues, which helps explain why a line like this shows up at a rally two days before a runoff.
