Senator JD Vance of Ohio on Wednesday attacked Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, his Democratic rival, for a Minnesota state law enshrining rights for transgender children to gender-affirming care, promoting a baseless claim that the law allows a state to engage in “legalized kidnapping” of transgender children.
It was the latest effort by the Trump campaign to use Mr. Walz’s record on transgender rights to attack him as a far-left liberal. Mr. Walz has been a prominent champion of transgender residents as governor, issuing an executive order and signing legislation that made it easier for transgender patients to receive gender-affirming care and shielded patients, parents and providers from punishment from other states — a so-called sanctuary law.
Here’s what we know.
What was said
“He signed legislation, he supported legislation, that would take children away from their parents if their parents don’t want to do sex changes.”
“He wants the government to steal your children from you if you don’t agree with Tim Walz’s values. That is not small government. That is disgusting, and he should be ashamed of himself.”
— Mr. Vance said at an event hosted by the conservative group Turning Point Action in Mesa, Ariz.
This is false. Since Mr. Walz was picked as Vice President Kamala Harris’s running mate, conservative groups, including the Alliance Defending Freedom — the conservative Christian legal advocacy group — have claimed that the Minnesota state authorities can terminate the parental rights of parents who prevent their children from receiving gender-affirming care. A spokeswoman for Mr. Vance pointed to the alliance’s arguments to support his claim.
But those groups have been unable to point to a case in which that has happened, pointing instead to hypothetical scenarios about a provision in the law that grants Minnesota courts “temporary emergency jurisdiction” during custody disputes crossing state lines if a child “has been unable to obtain gender-affirming health care.”
PolitiFact, citing legal experts and family law practitioners in Minnesota, concluded that the law “does not authorize the government to take custody of children whose parents don’t consent to them getting gender-affirming care.”
In a response to The New York Times, Taylor Van Kirk, a spokeswoman for Mr. Vance, disputed The Times’s conclusion but failed to provide evidence with which to refute it, instead repeating Mr. Vance’s false contention that the law “would allow for children to be removed from the custody of their parents.’”
Some of the provisions of an executive order that Mr. Walz signed protected the parents of transgender children, preventing the state from enforcing subpoenas and judgments from other states meant to punish transgender care. Rather than giving the state the power to terminate parental rights, the executive order prevents other states from terminating parental rights solely on the basis of a parent’s providing gender-affirming care to their child.
Mr. Vance’s remarks about transgender children, which earned some of the strongest applause of his appearance in Arizona, came just days after former President Donald J. Trump made a similar false claim that schools are secretly providing gender-affirming surgeries for transgender children against the will of their parents.
“The transgender thing is incredible,” Mr. Trump said on Friday at a gathering of the conservative group Moms for Liberty. “Think of it. Your kid goes to school and comes home a few days later with an operation. The school decides what’s going to happen with your child.”
The Trump campaign and conservative organizations did not provide any evidence to support that claim to CNN for a fact check, while medical experts also told CNN that the claim was false.
The post Fact-checking JD Vance’s Attacks on Tim Walz Over a Transgender Sanctuary Law in Minnesota appeared first on New York Times.
