What are the facts?
J. D. Vance said in an interview with ABC News’s Jonathan Karl that Minnesota governor Tim Walz has supported “taking children from their parents if the parents don’t consent to gender reassignment.” The following exchange occurred:
KARL: I heard Donald Trump, give, give this speech in Montana. . . . He said that Tim Walz has signed a letter letting the state kidnap children, to change their, their gender, that allowing pedophiles to claim, you know, I mean, to, to be exempt from crimes. I mean, this is not true. It’s not remotely true.
VANCE: Well, what President Trump said, and I haven’t watched the whole rally—
KARL: What he said was not true.
VANCE: What President Trump said, Jon, is that Tim Walz has supported taking children from their parents if the parents don’t consent to gender reassignment. That is crazy. And by the way, Tim Walz gets on his high horse about mind your own damn business. One way of minding your own damn business, Jon, is to not try to take my children away from me —
KARL: He has not signed a law —
VANCE: — if I have different world views than you.
KARL: — allowing the state to kidnap children to change their sexual identity.
VANCE: How would you. . . what I just explained to you, I would describe as kidnaping, Jon.
KARL: That’s crazy.
VANCE: He has absolutely done this stuff. It’s not crazy, Jon. Come on.
KARL: It’s not what he’s done—
VANCE: You should not be able to take people’s children away from them—
KARL: And that’s not what he’s proposed.
VANCE: If you disagree with decisions about gender reassignment. Yes, he has proposed that, Jon. He absolutely has. . . .
So, what are the facts?
In 2023, Governor Walz signed an executive order stating, “We are committed to protecting access to gender affirming health care services,” and therefore “no one who is lawfully providing, assisting, seeking, or obtaining such services should be subject to legal liability or professional sanctions.” The order directed state agencies to coordinate to protect people or agencies who are “providing, assisting, seeking, or obtaining gender affirming health care services” in Minnesota. The order further instructed state agencies to decline assisting other states seeking to penalize such services, including cases where another state issued a subpoena about a person or a person’s child who traveled to Minnesota for the treatments.
Shortly after issuing the executive order, Walz signed Minnesota’s HF 146, which was introduced by Democrat state representative Leigh Finke, a self-described “transgender pioneer” whose platform states that “we must embrace anti-racist values in every policy and plan we make for the future.” Finke said that the law would make Minnesota a “trans refuge state” by “protecting trans people, their families, and medical practitioners from the legal repercussions of traveling to Minnesota to receive gender-affirming care.”
HF 146 grants a state court “temporary emergency jurisdiction” if a child in the state has been 1) abandoned, 2) threatened with or subjected to familial abuse, or 3) “unable to obtain gender-affirming health care.” The law defines “gender-affirming health care” as “medically necessary health care or mental health care that respects the gender identity of the patient, as experienced and defined by the patient,” including “interventions to suppress the development of endogenous secondary sex characteristics” and “developmentally appropriate exploration and integration of the patient’s gender identity.” Such an expansive definition covers everything from preferred clothing to medical interventions such as hormonal therapy and surgery.
“Emergency jurisdiction is necessary in this bill because what we are doing, what we are saying is that parents have a right to receive gender-affirming care if they live in South Dakota,” Finke said. “If South Dakota is not going to allow those parents to provide for the best care for their child, then Minnesota can do that, and if that’s going to lead to custodial decisions, then we need to be able to have temporary emergency custody in the state of Minnesota for those parents to have their ability to provide for their children.”