Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) took aim at President Donald Trump’s nominee to oversee the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Dr. Mehmet Oz, for his treatment of gender transition medicine for minors on his long-running television program.
Oz, a celebrity surgeon and winner of multiple Emmy awards, charmed senators on the Finance Committee last week during his confirmation hearing, but the matter of gender transition medicine for minors, including puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries, did not come up during the nearly three hours of questioning.
Hawley, who is not on the Finance Committee, submitted several questions to Oz for the record to inquire about his stance on the matter following the resurfacing of episodes of his television program in which he interviewed transgender-identifying children and their parents.
“I’ve been reading up on Dr. Oz – I see he’s praised trans surgeries for minors and supported hormone treatments & puberty blockers for kids in the past,” Hawley posted on X Wednesday, adding that he hopes Oz “changed his views to match President Trump!”
As CMS administrator, Oz would have some of the responsibility of executing Trump’s executive order prohibiting any federal insurance programs or private insurance from covering transgender medical treatments for minors. The executive order was signed during Trump’s second week in office.
A spokesperson for Oz declined to comment when asked by the Washington Examiner about Hawley’s questions.
Transgender medicine and The Dr. Oz Show
Oz discussed transgender medicine on his TV show well before it became a high-priority matter in national politics.
In 2010, during Season Two of The Dr. Oz Show, Oz interviewed an 8-year-old male-to-female transitioner and a 15-year-old female-to-male transitioner and their respective parents.
During the episode, the 8-year-old said they identified as a female because they would get angry when forced to get male haircuts as a toddler and younger child. The 15-year-old positively described having a double mastectomy as an affirming surgery.
In the episode, Oz focused primarily on the personal experience of the children rather than solely the medical matter, which at the time was called “gender identity disorder” and is today termed “gender dysphoria.”
The episode earned Oz and his team praise from the LGBT rights group GLAAD, which called it “unprecedented in its refrain from an intrusive focus on anatomy.”
GLAAD did not respond to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment on Oz’s CMS nomination.
Oz went on in later seasons to interview Jazz Jennings, a child with a reality TV show about transitioning from male to female, and Dr. Christine McGinn, a gender transition surgeon.
Paul Dupont, a policy adviser with the American Principles Project, a key advocacy group that opposes gender transition procedures for children, told the Washington Examiner that much has changed regarding transgender matters in the years since Oz first discussed them on his program.
This includes not only more medical evidence regarding the effects of gender transition medicine for minors but also more testimony from detransitioners or those who reverted to identifying with their biological sex after social or medical transition.
“Just in the last few years, we’ve seen this huge increase in the number of detransitioners, and their stories are being told now,” said Dupont. “You’re now seeing that side of the issue, which wasn’t necessarily visible back when Dr. Oz was first talking about this on the show.”
Oz for Senate
Oz definitively came out against transgender medicine for children during his 2022 Senate campaign, which he eventually lost to Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA).
In April 2022, Oz said in an interview with the local news outlet Delaware Valley Journal that most children with gender dysphoria “if they’re not influenced, go back to their biological gender.”
“Once in a while, Johnny walks in mom’s shoes. It doesn’t mean anything,” Oz said. “Love the child, embrace them, let them be who they need to be. And over time, they work it out. If you interfere with that process, you hurt people.”
Oz, along with three other Republican candidates in Pennsylvania, signed a pledge to “protect children from experimental ‘gender transition’ procedures” in April 2022 before the primary.
The Big Family Pledge from the American Principles Project also contained a promise not to allow biological males in female sports and to “protect life from conception to natural death.”
Oz was also the only Senate candidate in the 2022 race to gain the endorsement of Trump, which was essential in clinching his primary victory.
Looming confirmation vote
Following Oz’s confirmation hearing on Friday, Hawley submitted several questions for the record to inquire whether or not Oz would commit to supporting Trump’s stance against gender transition procedures for minors.
When he nominated Oz, Trump said the celebrity surgeon would “be a leader in incentivizing Disease Prevention, so we get the best results in the World for every dollar we spend on Healthcare in our Great Country.”
Trump added that Oz would work closely with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “to take on the illness industrial complex.”
It is not clear when the Senate Finance Committee, which has jurisdiction over CMS due to its role in the insurance market, will progress Oz’s nomination to the full Senate for consideration.
Last week, Hawley used social media to raise questions about the abortion-related record of the career Justice Department attorney selected to be the chief counsel for the Food and Drug Administration.
The attorney, Hilary Perkins, was hired under the first Trump administration but stayed with the DOJ and argued on behalf of the Biden administration with respect to the abortion pill mifepristone and several COVID-19-era policies.
Following Hawley’s inquiries, Perkins resigned from the FDA chief counsel position. Hawley said during his Senate health committee vote on FDA nominee Marty Makary that he would not have voted for Trump’s nominee without Perkins’s resignation.
Hawley’s office did not respond to the Washington Examiner when asked if Oz’s prior coverage of transgender medicine would change his vote before the full Senate.
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Dupont said, from the outside looking in, Trump chose Oz “because he had confidence in him.”
“I think it’s pretty clear that he’s, you know, he’s, he was picked to carry out the president, President’s agenda, that’s what he’s committed to,” said Dupont. “I don’t expect that the stuff from his show or any stuff from further back in his past is necessarily going to play a major role in his confirmation vote or the process from here on out.”
