Anatomy of a Hit Piece: Deconstructing The New York Times' Attack on Transgender Rights in U.S. v. Skrmetti

Seemingly not content with the US v. Skrmetti decision issued by the court siding with Tennessee to ban gender affirming care for trans youth, the New York Times was ready to pour salt on the fresh wound of the trans community and kick them in the teeth for good measure. The article "How the Transgender Rights Movement Bet on the Supreme Court and Lost," by Nicholas Confessore, presents itself as a work of objective, investigative journalism, a post-mortem on a supposedly failed legal strategy.^[1] It purports to tell the "inside story" of the Skrmetti case. However, the article is something else entirely: a carefully constructed political narrative designed to victim blame the transgender community and its advocates for their own persecution.

Confessore's article is not a neutral chronicle but a sophisticated rhetorical exercise in victim-blaming. It achieves its political purpose through three primary mechanisms. First, it systematically misrepresents a necessary and desperate legal defense as an arrogant and ill-conceived "gamble," thereby erasing the context of a community under an unprecedented, coordinated legislative siege. Second, it manufactures a "scientific controversy" by uncritically platforming a single, deeply flawed, and politically motivated foreign report while dismissing the overwhelming consensus of every major American medical association. Third, and most critically, it almost completely erases the existence of the well-funded, extremist political campaign that is the actual source of the anti-trans crisis, allowing a manufactured "backlash" to take its place.

The article's central thesis posits that the transgender rights movement, driven by "radicalized politics" and a reliance on "uncertain science," made a "strategic error" that set its cause back a generation. This thesis is untenable when confronted with the full body of evidence. The article's power, and its danger, lies not in overt bigotry but in its tone of "concerned" analysis. It adopts the posture of a sympathetic observer chronicling a tragedy of hubris, a tactic often described as "concern trolling" in online communities. This rhetorical strategy is far more insidious than a polemic from a right-wing outlet because it provides a permission structure for mainstream, liberal-leaning readers to disengage from the fight for transgender rights. By painting the movement as ideologically rigid, scientifically dubious, and strategically inept, it absolves the reader of the responsibility of solidarity and recasts a human rights crisis as a self-inflicted wound. It allows powerful institutions and individuals to maintain a veneer of intellectual seriousness while abandoning a vulnerable minority to a state-sponsored campaign of eliminationist politics. This is not journalism; it is a hit piece in service of the New York Times’ war on trans people.

Manufacturing a "Strategic Error": The False Premise of the Movement's "Gamble"

The foundational claim of Confessore's article is that the transgender rights movement, led by an arrogant ACLU, made a reckless and arrogant "bet" on the Supreme Court. This narrative of a "tragic gamble" is a deliberate and profound distortion of reality. It systematically erases the context of a community under siege, reframing a desperate act of self-defense as an offensive strategic blunder. It is a form of DARVO, a rhetorical sleight of hand designed to shift blame from the aggressor to the defender.

Confessore’s narrative is built on the language of choice and risk-taking. He claims "the movement bet its future on a far more fraught question" and that Skrmetti was a "tragic gamble built on flawed politics and uncertain science".^[1:1] This framing choice is fundamental to his argument, as it establishes the transgender rights movement as the primary actor responsible for the disastrous outcome. It implies that advocates had other, safer options but chose a high-stakes, high-risk path out of arrogance or ideological fervor.

This framing is a lie of omission. The legal challenges to state bans on gender-affirming care were not an offensive "bet"; they were an unavoidable act of self-defense against an existential threat. The "fight" was not chosen by the ACLU or the transgender community; it was initiated and relentlessly escalated by anti-transgender politicians and extremist groups. As ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero states in the article itself, "I didn't pick this fight around trans rights... The right-wing conservatives of the MAGA G.O.P. have made this one of their cause célèbre issues". The litigation was, as Romero also noted, a response to "demands for justice of people who walk into our front door".

The context that Confessore minimizes is an unprecedented, coordinated legislative assault aimed at the eradication of transgender people from public life. Data from legislative tracking projects reveals an exponential increase in anti-transgender bills across the United States. In 2020, there were 91 such bills introduced. This number jumped to 143 in 2021, 174 in 2022, 615 in 2023, 701 in 2024, and a jaw dropping 940 bills in 2025 as of June 19th.^[2] By March 2025, 25 states had enacted blanket bans on gender-affirming care for youth, disrupting healthcare for over 100,000 young people.^[3] This was not a simple "backlash"; it was a meticulously planned political campaign a decade in the making.^[4]

The choice of words like "bet" and "gamble" deliberately obscures the condition of duress under which the transgender community and its legal advocates were operating. A choice made under duress is not a gamble; it is a survival tactic. The alternative to challenging these laws in court was not a neutral status quo. The alternative was the guaranteed, immediate loss of medically necessary healthcare for thousands of young people, the forced medical detransition of those already in treatment, and the normalization of absolute state control over the bodily autonomy of a targeted minority. In a separate article, ACLU lawyer Chase Strangio poses the essential question that Confessore’s analysis evades: "For the people who now tell transgender people that instead of fighting these bills targeting our health care, our education, our history, we should have waited for a more opportune time to defend our rights and survival, the question is: what should we have done? Just accepted our wholesale exclusion from public life?".^[5] By framing a desperate defense as a "gamble," Confessore transforms a story about state persecution into a story about the poor judgment of the persecuted. This is the article's primary rhetorical move, and it is fundamentally dishonest.

The "Concerned Insider" Trope: Weaponizing Internal Debate to Invalidate a Movement

To bolster the narrative of a movement led astray by its own hubris, Confessore employs a classic journalistic trope: the "concerned insider." He gives disproportionate weight and narrative significance to a handful of critical voices, namely activists Dana Beyer and Brianna Wu, and an anonymous law professor—to create the illusion of a movement in widespread disarray and rebellion against its leadership.

Beyer’s quote, "People know the movement is stuck. They know we've gone too far. They know we've lost the thread," is presented not as one person's opinion but as a definitive summary of the movement's internal consensus. Wu is cast as a key strategist delivering a damning post-mortem on what she calls "one of the biggest mistakes in the history of trans activism". This framing is a powerful rhetorical tool. It allows the article to position its critique as coming from within the trans community, lending it an authenticity and credibility it would otherwise lack. (I recommend you watch this video to get an understanding of who Brianna Wu really is.)

Confessore's article does not just report on division; it actively manufactures and amplifies it. By elevating a few dissenting voices, the Times provides ammunition to the movement's external enemies and sows discord internally. This tactic has a long and sordid history, used repeatedly to fracture civil rights coalitions by highlighting internal disagreements over strategy and tactics. Internal critique, however, is a sign of a movement's vitality and moral conscience, not its collapse. Confessore, however, weaponizes dissent, using it as a cudgel to delegitimize the entire movement.

He constructs a simplistic hero/villain narrative, contrasting the supposedly "reasonable" critics like Wu and Beyer with "doctrinaire" and "radical" activists like Chase Strangio. This framing serves a clear political purpose: it encourages a split between "good" trans people who are pragmatic and "bad" trans people who are ideological "activists." This is a classic divide-and-conquer strategy deployed by those in power against social movements. The New York Times article, therefore, is not merely a passive observer of this dynamic but an active participant in creating it, providing its enormous platform to a narrative that undermines movement solidarity at its moment of greatest crisis.

The Unraveling of "Uncertain Science": A Case Study in Journalistic Malpractice

The most damaging and scientifically irresponsible element of Confessore's article is its sustained effort to portray the medical consensus on gender-affirming care as "unraveling". This narrative is central to his thesis that the trans rights movement built its legal case on "uncertain science" that crumbled under scrutiny. This claim is a gross misrepresentation of the facts, achieved through three distinct acts of journalistic malpractice: first, dismissing the overwhelming and durable consensus of the entire American medical establishment; second, uncritically platforming the deeply flawed, and politically weaponized Cass report from the United Kingdom; and third, decontextualizing the attacks on the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) to create a false narrative of scientific scandal.

The article's premise is that "some of the central medical claims... began to unravel amid growing scrutiny by other doctors and experts" and that the movement's advocates "had overstated the medical case" for care.This assertion is a demonstrable falsehood. The evidence reveals an overwhelming and unwavering consensus among every major relevant medical and mental health organization in the United States, and many globally, that gender-affirming care is safe, effective, and medically necessary.

Confessore mentions this consensus only to immediately dismiss it. He allows a single, contested foreign report, the Cass Review, to declare that "the much-cited consensus of medical associations was a mirage".This is an extraordinary act of journalistic false balance, elevating the opinion of one incredibly flawed report over the unified, evidence-based position of the entire American medical establishment. The opposition to this care does not come from mainstream "doctors and experts," as the article implies, but from fringe political organizations like the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine, a group designated as an anti-LGBTQ+ hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.^[6] Confessore’s failure to distinguish between the consensus of mainstream medicine and the political activism of fringe groups is a profound dereliction of journalistic duty.

The Cass Review as Political Weapon: A Methodological Autopsy

The centerpiece of Confessore’s "unraveling science" narrative is his uncritical and reverential treatment of the Cass Review, a report commissioned by the UK’s National Health Service (NHS). He presents its findings as definitive gospel, shattering the "mirage" of consensus with claims of "remarkably weak evidence" and "no evidence" that care reduces suicide. This is journalistic malpractice of the highest order, as the article completely fails to inform its readers of the numerous, detailed, and devastating critiques of the Cass Review's methodology, bias, and conclusions that exist in the scientific and academic literature.

A comprehensive paper from the Yale, "An Evidence-Based Critique of the Cass Review," provides a point-by-point takedown, finding that the review "repeatedly misuses data," "violates its own evidentiary standards," "subverts widely accepted processes for development of clinical recommendations," and "repeats spurious, debunked claims about transgender identity and gender dysphoria".^[7] Several damning critiques have similarly eroded the credibility of the Cass Review as anything but the product of an inherently political process.^[8]

The uncritical use of the Cass Review by the Times demonstrates also decontextualizes the major effort to undermine trans rights in the UK which is currently undergoing an effort by its main human rights body to implement a full national bathroom and facilities ban that suggests trans people should not be allowed to use any facility at all.^[9] A key tactic of the global anti-trans movement: laundering a government-sponsored report from another country to give a veneer of international, objective authority to a domestic political agenda. The UK's political environment, which has become intensely hostile to transgender rights, is the unmentioned context in which the Cass Review was produced and embraced.

The Times acts as a laundering agent, importing this deeply contested document and presenting it to an American audience as unassailable fact, knowing full well that it is being cited in U.S. court cases and by politicians to justify discriminatory laws far beyond the realm of healthcare. This is not reporting; it is the amplification of an international political strategy to eliminate trans rights globally.

The WPATH "Scandal" in Context: Political Siege vs. Scientific Integrity

To complete his triptych of "unraveling science," Confessore presents the internal WPATH emails, revealed through litigation in Alabama, as a smoking gun proving scientific fraud and political manipulation. He highlights internal discussions about "gaps in research" and pressure from HHS official Rachel Levine to remove age minimums from the Standards of Care 8 (SOC-8) as evidence of a compromised process. This narrative, sourced primarily from a legal brief filed by the state of Alabama, a hostile party actively seeking to ban care, strips the events of their crucial context.^[10]

When placed in context, the documents reveal not a conspiracy of fraud, but an organization of medical professionals struggling to create evidence-based guidelines while under an intense and coordinated political and legal siege.

The discussion of "gaps in research" is a hallmark of scientific humility, common and necessary in any field of medicine. The scandal is not that scientists acknowledge the need for more research; the scandal is that anti-trans forces and journalists like Confessore weaponize this routine scientific diligence to undermine organizations under significant political attack. The pressure from Assistant Secretary for Health Rachel Levine regarding age minimums was not a secret plot to hide science from the public. It was a pragmatic and desperate conversation about how to write guidelines that would cause the least harm in a hyper-politicized environment. The fear, explicitly stated in the documents, was that listing specific age minimums, even those grounded in clinical consensus, would be immediately seized upon by hostile legislatures to pass "devastating legislation" banning all care up to that age, or to misrepresent the guidelines entirely. This was a strategic discussion about risk mitigation in the face of bad-faith actors, not a corruption of the scientific process.

This episode reveals the strategy of "lawfare" being waged against the transgender community. The legal discovery process, intended as a tool for finding truth, is weaponized to generate politically useful soundbites through the subpoena of years of internal communications. These decontextualized snippets are then sent to the press, including the Times to gin up fake scandals. Confessore's article completes the cycle by reporting the content of these revelations as the primary story, rather than reporting on the political strategy of the release themselves. The real story is not that WPATH is a "political" organization, but that anti-trans states are using the legal system to wage a political war on a medical organization to achieve a predetermined political outcome. The Times article completely misses, or willfully ignores, this crucial meta-narrative, choosing instead to parrot the talking points of the attackers.

How the Times Obscures the Coordinated Anti-Trans Campaign

Perhaps the most profound and disqualifying failure of Confessore's article is its near-total erasure of the sophisticated, well-funded, and centrally coordinated political campaign that is the true engine of anti-trans persecution in the United States. By framing the crisis as a "backlash" to the trans movement's own alleged missteps, the article obscures the identity and methods of the actual aggressors, rendering them invisible. This omission is not a simple oversight; it is the central pillar that allows the entire victim-blaming narrative to stand.

The article attributes the tidal wave of anti-trans legislation to vague, impersonal forces: a "Trump-era backlash," the actions of "right-wing politicians," and the influence of generic "conservative groups".This language creates the impression of a spontaneous, grassroots, and popular uprising against a trans rights movement that had "gone too far".

This narrative is a fiction. The legislative assault is not a diffuse "backlash"; it is a centrally planned and executed campaign. Investigative reporting, particularly a March 2023 exposé in Mother Jones based on leaked emails, has laid bare the architecture of this campaign. As early as August 2019, a "secret working group" of anti-trans activists, lawyers, and lawmakers was collaborating on model legislation, sharing talking points, and coordinating strategy to criminalize gender-affirming care nationwide.^[11] (personal note: I came into possession of these working group emails prior to the Mother Jones publication and pitched them to the New York Times' journalist Katie JM Baker who dismissed them and refused to look into a major scoop)

The key players are not anonymous "conservative groups" but well-documented extremist organizations with vast resources and clear political agendas. These include the Alliance Defending Freedom, the Heritage Foundation, the American College of Pediatricians (a fringe splinter group), the Family Research Council, and the Child & Parental Rights Campaign. These organizations work in concert to provide "expert" testimony, lobby lawmakers, and create a false impression of medical and popular support for their agenda. Nearly all of these are designated anti-LGBTQ hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center.^[12]

By failing to name these organizations and detail their coordinated efforts, Confessore allows the architects of the persecution to remain in the shadows. He reverses cause and effect: the campaign created the "backlash" as a political tool, not the other way around. This journalistic choice to grant anonymity to extremist actors is a political act. It normalizes their agenda and makes it appear far more mainstream than it is. It allows the article to frame the "trans rights movement" as the radical pole in the debate, when in fact the truly radical, anti-democratic actors are the ones being shielded by the Times' sanitizing language.

When the sheer scale of the legislative assault is presented clearly, the article's narrative of a "movement mistake" becomes untenable. The data provides a powerful counter-narrative that shifts the focus from the movement's internal dynamics to the overwhelming external attack it faces. The number of anti-transgender bills introduced in state legislatures annually has skyrocketed in a manner that cannot be explained by any single action of the transgender rights movement. This coordinated attack has targeted every facet of transgender existence. The number of bills targeting gender-affirming healthcare rose from 42 in 2020 to 189 in 2024. Bills targeting schools, curricula, and student rights jumped from 6 in 2020 to 207 in 2024.^[2:1] Bills targeting bathroom use made a stunning comeback after years of being avoided with 28 being introduced in 2024.^[2:2] The total number of anti-trans bills introduced went from 91 in 2020 to 940 in 2025.^[2:3] This is not a "culture war debate"; it is a legislative carpet-bombing campaign.

This quantitative evidence makes the article's focus on the movement's internal politics and supposed "missteps" seem myopic and absurdly out of proportion to the scale of the external threat. The data demonstrates that the legal challenges were an inevitable, multi-front response to an attack occurring simultaneously in dozens of states, aimed at nothing less than the total erasure of transgender people from public life.

A Pattern of Bias: Situating the Confessore Article within the New York Times' Problematic Transgender Coverage

Nicholas Confessore's article on Skrmetti is not an isolated journalistic failure. It is a prominent example of a well-documented and deeply problematic institutional pattern at The New York Times regarding its coverage of transgender people and issues. My own previous article on this covers many of the same disturbing framings and narratives the Times has used to erode support for the trans community.^[13] The Times has consistently laundered the credibility of anti-trans sources, platformed dangerous misinformation, and created content that is then weaponized by extremist groups in legal and legislative battles.

‘The article adopts a classic journalistic posture of detached, "objective" analysis, presenting itself as an impartial arbiter weighing the arguments of "both sides." This convention of "both-sidesism," however, is not a neutral act. In the context of a powerful, well-funded political movement seeking to strip a marginalized community of its rights, this approach creates a false equivalence that is itself a political statement. It equates the struggle for survival with the campaign for erasure.

This "view from nowhere" is, in reality, a view from a position of immense institutional power. It implicitly validates the terms of the debate set by anti-trans extremists. By framing gender-affirming care as a "fraught question" with "uncertain science," the Times lends its credibility to the core premises of the anti-trans campaign, transforming political talking points into legitimate areas of public concern. This journalistic practice does not illuminate the truth; it obscures the power imbalance at the heart of the conflict and dignifies the arguments of those seeking to inflict harm. The Confessore article fits squarely into a pattern of biased coverage that has been extensively documented by organizations like GLAAD and Media Matters for America, as well as by hundreds of the Times' own contributors.^[14]

The most damning indictment of this pattern of coverage is its real-world consequence. New York Times articles are regularly and explicitly cited in anti-trans legal briefs and by politicians in legislative hearings to justify discriminatory laws. It was cited at least 7 times in the Skrmetti decision itself and utilized by Justice Thomas to argue that transgender people should be entirely exempt from constitutional protections as a class.[^16] Extremist groups like the Alliance Defending Freedom use the "paper of record's" reporting to lend credibility to their attacks. The meticulously crafted narrative of a "movement gone too far" and its reliance on "unraveling science," is perfectly tailored to serve this exact purpose. It is not merely a report on the political landscape; it is a functional part of the machinery of anti-trans persecution.

Closing Thoughts

At the end of the day, the question remains what are the political motivations behind the Times hostile coverage against trans people. The answer is both simple and complex. Ultimately, transphobia remains rampant in the halls of power but that is a severe oversimplification of the problem. The deeper rot is the top down effort by the elites in media, Democratic party donors, and Democratic leadership to erode support for trans rights among the liberal base. This effort is one of convenience for a group of people with tremendous institutional power who simply can’t be bothered to expend political capital to defend a vulnerable minority group. Trans people are simply a political liability that they believe can be excised and thrown to the wolves.

The issue is that this political maneuvering to target a minority group is not a victimless game of cocktail party chatter for the wealthy and powerful. It is the aiding and abetting of a fascist agenda to eradicate trans people from society. This pretext to get liberals on board with abandoning trans people, framing the persecuted as deserving of their fate, has real-world consequences. It is a permission structure for the powerful to treat trans lives as an inconvenience, to be pushed aside while people lose their healthcare, are murdered on the street, and are purged from public life. What the Times and its elite allies ignore is that this regression on trans rights is the direct result of a decade-long, billion-dollar political strategy by the far right. Worse, it is part of a broader fascist strategy to divide and conquer minority groups by scapegoating and persecuting them. By participating in this narrative, they are not engaging in journalism; they are doing the political work of extremists.

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