The Trump administration wants to bar Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program from paying for gender-transition medication and surgery for transgender adolescents.
Page F1From§Eachthe late evening edition — 2 September 2026
Administration threatens to defund sanctuary cities Wednesday, moves to defund children's health care Thursday.
As it ran on the front
The item on the books keeps changing name. On Wednesday, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin told Fox News the administration is exploring withholding federal funding from sanctuary cities, an idea raised in an Oval Office meeting after an aggressive New York enforcement action. By Thursday the same lever — withhold the check until the recipient falls in line — had moved to a new column: The New York Times reported the administration wants Medicaid and CHIP barred from paying for transition-related medication and surgery for transgender adolescents, and that states are suing to stop it.
This is not the first entry this fiscal quarter. On Aug. 27, a coalition of 23 states sued the administration in Maryland federal court over new conditions on a family-planning grant program — the same funding-held-until-compliance structure, applied to clinics instead of cities. A week before that, on Aug. 20, Santa Fe Public Schools adopted a Gender Support Plan requiring parental involvement in transgender students' care. The Washington Examiner, reporting on the district Aug. 29, noted its federal funding could still be at risk — the paper's own read of the district's exposure, not a line from any agency letter or memo.…
…(cont) Four entries, four different account names — sanctuary cities, family-planning grants, one New Mexico school district, and now Medicaid and CHIP for transgender adolescents — running on one mechanism: money already appropriated gets held up until the recipient changes a policy the administration doesn't like. Four times in the past two weeks, that same threat has attached itself to a new line item.
None of this quarter's disputes have resolved. The August family-planning suit is still open in Maryland federal court. The Medicaid and CHIP suit filed this week joins it. Santa Fe's schools are still operating under the plan the Examiner flagged as a funding risk, with no ruling yet on whether the risk is real. What's checkable today, filed and dated, is the sequence: a funding threat aimed at sanctuary cities one day, the same threat aimed at children's health coverage the next, entered under a different program name each time.
The ledger doesn't need adjectives, hon. It needs a column wide enough to keep adding lines, because the entries aren't stopping — they're just finding new places to write themselves in.
“It's the same con every time, folks — they don't cut a whole program, that gets headlines. They just quietly attach a string to the check: sanctuary cities one week, a kid's Medicaid the next, some school district's federal money the week before that. Different targets, same trick — hold the money hostage until you fall in line, and call it policy instead of what it is. Somebody's kid loses coverage so somebody else's press release gets a talking point.”
“Look, nobody's "defunding" anything, these are — okay, these are conditions, reasonable conditions, on federal money that comes with strings attached, that's how federal money has always— did I just say always? Strike that. The administration is simply asking states and school districts to align with, with sound policy, and if a state would rather sue than comply that's their prerogative, their taxpayers' dime, not ours.”
The receipts
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin says Trump explored withholding federal funding from sanctuary cities during an Oval Office meeting.
Santa Fe Public Schools has changed its gender transition policy to require parental involvement in a Gender Support Plan. It is a move advocates for parental rights are calling a step in the right direction, but the school could still…
A coalition of states sued the Trump administration Thursday to block changes to a family planning grant program that it alleges would strip federal funding from states and providers unless they align with the administration’s political…
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.