It’s Tuesday, April 14. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: Peter Savodnik interviews Matt Mahan, “the normie candidate” for California governor. Arthur Brooks on what Harvard gets wrong about grade inflation. Should the government tame AI’s most powerful models? And much more.

But first: new fronts in the transgender wars.

Is a war over transgender identity still raging in America? If you ask President Donald Trump, he’ll say the dispute was settled when he was elected in 2024. By Election Day, polls showed that a majority of Americans believed “changing one’s gender is morally wrong,” while more than 60 percent opposed transition surgeries and hormone treatments for minors. Trump and Republicans pledged to roll back transgender norms and practices, and their victory seemed to reflect a broad mandate.

Yet the war has simply shifted to other fronts. Proponents of transgender identity gained influence within America’s medical and legal institutions long before the issue became a matter of public debate. Today, lawyers, judges, doctors, and lawmakers are struggling behind the scenes, either to roll back that progress, or to entrench trans identity in how the country operates despite widespread public skepticism.

For a close-up view of this quiet war, take a look at the American Medical Association. In February, it took the bold step of discouraging gender reassignment surgery for minors. But then came the revolt, with many of its members and several other groups suggesting that the change was a gross kowtow to Trump. Benjamin Ryan has the details on the fight among doctors over the basic rules for how we treat our children.

The Supreme Court entered the fray last month with a major ruling. The justices held that the practice of discouraging patients from embracing trans identity is protected by the First Amendment. James Kirchick believes this type of counseling helps undo a new kind of “conversion therapy,” in which therapists steer children with same-sex attraction toward adopting an entirely new gender. Read the piece for an explanation of how trans identity and same-sex attraction often end up at odds, despite their shared support from progressive activists.

—Mene Ukueberuwa

The Free Press

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