In his latest anti-trans rant, former President Donald Trump made the outrageous assertion that schools are forcibly transitioning kids on their campuses without parental consent. No part of this claim is true.

“Your child goes to school and they take your child: It was a he, and comes back a she,” Trump said at his Wednesday rally in Reading, Pennsylvania. “And they do this. And they do it, and often without parental consent. Can you even believe we’re saying this?”

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“It shows that Republicans are desperate right now.”

Trump has made various iterations of this claim before, including claiming that a child may return from school having undergone a “brutal operation” to change their gender.

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He also once declared, “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 claims are so blatantly absurd that it almost feels unnecessary to explain why they’re wrong. Not only would surgical operations never take place in school, but gender-affirming surgery is almost never performed on minors anywhere.

The gender-affirming care trans youth do receive — in doctor’s offices and hospitals through puberty blockers and hormone replacement surgery — is often reversible. Study after study has also shown that trans youth mental health significantly improves when they have access to this critical care. Additionally, schools with inclusive policies are not encouraging students to be transgender, but rather are accepting kids for who they are and allowing them to be their authentic selves. No schools prescribe or independently authorize gender-affirming medical care.

A CNN fact-check of these claims said the Trump campaign “could not provide a single example of this ever happening.”

Trump’s latest anti-trans speech attracted the ire of conservatives like George Conway, who pondered on X “whether this guy has some sort of mental condition that makes him a pathological liar on a level that no one else in our political history has ever approached, and that maybe this goes to whether he’d make a good president?”

Another popular account called Trump a “deeply sick & twisted psychotic maniac” for telling this “ABSOLUTELY DEMENTED LIE, that no one remotely sane could think is true.”

For the 10th time, this deeply sick & twisted psychotic maniac tells this ABSOLUTELY DEMENTED LIE, that no one remotely sane could think is true. And none of his enablers apparently can tell him how off the charts insane and delusional this is.

And the MSM will pass over this. https://t.co/myGciaZSyE

— Spiro’s Ghost (@AntiToxicPeople) October 10, 2024

Some parents on X also pointed out how many hoops they have to jump through to permit schools to give their children basic medication.