PBS Information continues to be driving the wrecked transgender practice. One would have hoped PBS would have hopped off the discredited motion, given the rising piles of proof on the results of irrevocable “gender-affirming” operations, the dearth of science backing up the emotional blackmail claims of the motion, and the departure of trans-obsessed reporter Laura Barron-Lopez.
However reporter William Brangham truly outdid Barron-Lopez in his anti-journalistic transgender-teen advocacy and euphemistic tendencies in Wednesday’s section. There isn’t a dissent allowed. It is probably the most delicate profile possible, or you may name it propaganda, an infomercial, that makes the crimson states sound repulsive for opposing trans “rights.”
The story is a follow-up to a 2023 story a couple of “transgender” male teen, now named Leah, whose household was feeling persecuted in close-minded Texas. Now they’ve moved to extra tolerant Colorado, the place the faculties characteristic tales about homosexual teenagers.
After a short flashback to 2023, Brangham confirmed his bias on the transgender-teen subject was simply as blatant as that of his predecessor.
Homosexual propaganda within the colleges earned the household’s seal of approval, in addition to that of PBS.
The daddy provided one other ridiculous parallel, with no journalistic pushback from Brangham, solely empathetic approval.
So how did PBS Information react to President Trump’s new transfer that may finish so-called “gender-affirming care” for minor youngsters? Badly—however extra on that quickly.
This blatant trans-teen advocacy was delivered to you partially by Client Mobile.
PBS Information Hour
12/17/25
7:46:26 p.m. (ET)
Geoff Bennett: In 2023, we launched you to a transgender woman named Leah. She was residing in Texas together with her mother and father, John and Mary. We hid their identities as a result of households like theirs confronted rising threats.
Since then, lawmakers have taken steps to additional limit the rights of transgender folks. In June, the U.S. Supreme Courtroom upheld state bans on transition medical look after minors. And this night, the U.S. Home handed a invoice that might make it a felony to offer these remedies. It nonetheless wants Senate approval.
William Brangham just lately caught up with Leah and her household as they wrestled with their subsequent steps.
William Brangham: It is a day that, for some time, Leah hoped would by no means come. She informed us as a lot a pair years in the past.
Leah, Teenager: We simply have our entire life right here, and the very last thing I wish to do is, it’s a must to transfer.
William Brangham: However now, on the age of 15, Leah and her mother and father, John and Mary, have determined they have to transfer. They’ve packed their complete life into packing containers prepped for the truck of their driveway. They’re leaving Texas for Colorado, looking for refuge in a state with friendlier insurance policies for transgender youngsters like Leah.
Leah: I’ve lived right here just about all my life, so positively it should be an enormous change.
William Brangham: Leah got here out as trans a number of years in the past. First, she transitioned socially, altering her identify and her garments. She did years of counseling, began on puberty blockers, and simply over a 12 months in the past started taking estrogen.
These steps are all thought of gender-affirming care, which is endorsed by main U.S. medical associations. However these remedies have come underneath elevated scrutiny lately, and greater than half of U.S. states now have legal guidelines limiting this sort of look after anybody underneath 18. Texas handed its ban in 2023.
Final 12 months, Leah and her household started making common journeys to New Mexico for her therapy, touring lots of of miles and spending hundreds of {dollars}.
Mary, Mom of Leah: Now we have different youngsters. Now we have grownup youngsters, and I really feel like we now have given them each alternative for something that they wished to do, and we can not try this proper now for Leah. And he or she deserves that too.
William Brangham: Texas now requires an individual’s driver’s license to match the gender on their start certificates. It bars academics from discussing gender identification or sexual orientation, and prohibits college golf equipment targeted on these points.
And simply this month, a legislation went into impact banning the usage of public bogs that do not correspond to an individual’s intercourse at start.
Mary: It nonetheless did not really feel unsafe essentially, however it felt — it did really feel direct. We needed to discuss to Leah about simply laying low, which it simply form of goes in opposition to every thing we consider and have at all times informed our children to, like, be themselves and be happy with who they’re.
And it was form of the primary time we actually needed to be like, we will not discuss this in any respect.
William Brangham: So, this fall, John and Mary determined to place their Home in the marketplace.
John, Father of Mary: We simply have to do away with the anchor. We’ll hang around right here. After which, that method, we are able to go as wanted. The best way issues unfolded, the home bought inside days of setting it up. So we simply had to take a look at the scenario and say, OK, possibly it is time to go now.
William Brangham: In October, they piled into the transferring truck and made the over-14-hour trek from Austin to Denver. Colorado is called a trans refuge state, and lots of households with trans youngsters have moved right here lately. It is considered one of 17 states within the District of Columbia that shield entry to gender-affirming care.
Earlier this 12 months, Colorado handed an anti-discrimination legislation that, amongst different provisions, goals to make sure that trans persons are referred to as by their chosen names. So, whenever you noticed the “Welcome to Colorado,” it felt like?
John: As quickly as we crossed over, there was somewhat bit wave of emotion. And I didn’t count on that in any respect, the movement of reduction. There was a happiness to it, and there was a right away calmness.
Mary: Simply at the moment, you mentioned “I have never felt this peaceable” in I do not know the way lengthy. So simply that, I believe, has made all of this price it, truthfully.
William Brangham: Leah, John and Mary are actually renting a home within the Denver space. Leah has began at a brand new college and he or she just lately bought into an area clinic for her care.
Leah: All people is rather like — needs me right here. It is wonderful.
Mary: She’s going to share, like, “As we speak, in English class, we learn an essay and the essay was a couple of homosexual boy.” And he or she’s like, “I am simply — I am so comfortable we’re right here.”
And I am identical to, OK, this is the reason we did this.
William Brangham: Regardless of that reduction, John particularly is shaken by the concept that they’ve turn into refugees in their very own nation.
John: I’ve been having conversations with my mother and father about our parallel journeys. Again within the 80s, we fled Central America due to the communist wars and we fled to america. And america gave us a life, gave us alternative that we did not count on.
So now we’re , we have to maintain our household, protected. What does that imply? We’re it from one state to a different state inside the nation. Throughout the nation that the world used to flee to for security and alternative, we’re seeking to flee from. And that is simply mind-blowing.
William Brangham: And there is a bigger concern that, even in Colorado, the threats aren’t eradicated.
President Donald Trump: Official coverage of america authorities that there are solely two genders, female and male.
(Cheering)
William Brangham: Since retaking workplace, President Trump has moved to limit the rights of transgender People. The State Division stopped permitting passports that match trans folks’s gender identities. The Pentagon reinstated a ban on transgender troops.
Pete Hegseth, U.S. Protection Secretary: Expressing a false gender identification divergent from a person’s intercourse can not fulfill the rigorous requirements needed for army service.
Donald Trump: The struggle on girls’s sports activities is over.
(Cheering)
William Brangham: The administration threatened to withhold funding from states the place transgender women are allowed to play in women sports activities.
Donald Trump: We’ll defend the proud custom of feminine athletes and we is not going to enable males to beat up, injure and cheat our girls and our women.
William Brangham: And an government order in January put hospitals and clinics vulnerable to dropping federal {dollars} in the event that they continued to follow gender-affirming medical care.
Karoline Leavitt, White Home Press Secretary: The Biden administration peddled harmful insurance policies that defied medical science in favor of radical transgender ideology. However President Trump has put an finish to that, to make sure America’s youngsters’s innocence is protected.
William Brangham: Some suppliers preemptively stopped these remedies, even in states the place they had been in any other case protected. A number of clinics in Colorado stopped look after some time.
Mary: We had been different states due to that. We ended up right here as a result of we now have different youngsters and we should be close to them, and this was the closest that we might be to them. However that was positively one thing that we took into consideration and for some time crossed Colorado off of our listing. However right here we’re and we really feel protected for now.
John: On the finish of the day, we’ll maintain her protected and he or she’s going to transition. Whether or not we bought to do it right here in Canada, in Spain, in Antarctica, wherever it’s, we’ll try this. And we now have determined that we’re going to be ready to pivot as a lot as we have to.
William Brangham: Leah says, regardless of all her mother and father’ efforts, the stress on trans folks in America is pervasive and it is exhausting to maintain it at bay.
Leah: Transitioning is like the most effective factor that is ever occurred to me. So, like, I by no means take that again. Now that I am right here with my people who wish to shield me, I imply, it is a completely totally different mind-set, as a result of, in some unspecified time in the future, I did really feel like I damage so, so, a lot from the children at college and simply from folks in taxes on the whole that I began to query, am I the issue?
Mary: I did not know you thought that. She’s achieved an ideal job of hiding that. She’s the bravest individual I do know, fearless.
William Brangham: For the “PBS Information Hour,” I am William Brangham in Denver, Colorado.
