As the rest of the world pumps the brakes on gender transition services for kids — with the UK and Sweden restricting puberty blockers — Minnesota is proudly hanging out a shingle as a haven for the medicalization of confused young people.

Last April, Tim Walz — the Minnesota governor turned Democrat Veep hopeful — signed the so-called “trans refuge” bill, turning the Midwestern state into a legal sanctuary for children seeking “gender affirming care” like puberty blockers, cross sex hormones and surgery.

The controversial bill was sponsored by trans Minnesota State Rep. Leigh Finke who, in a March 2024 speech at the United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities, talked about building a trans utopia for all ages in the Northstar State — using the progressive law to incentivize people to move there. (There are 25 states who have banned gender interventions for minors.)

“If you promise trans refuge, then we need to increase the number of people who are offering gender affirming care because we already had a shortage. And now more people are coming … ,” Finke said. “If [you are a provider and] you live in Missouri and all your clients can no longer access care, well, if they are leaving you might also be interested in coming with your clients.”

Notice these are clients to Finke, not patients. Just people swiping a credit card. Not kids altering their bodies.

“We want to do internship programs and fellowship programs with Children’s Minnesota [Hospital] and other places where people can learn gender-affirming care,” Finke said — speaking about “gender-affirming care” like it’s a time-honored martial arts discipline or a type of massage.

But it’s not some soft, cuddly therapy. It’s barbaric, experimental medicine being practiced, in the most extreme cases, on people who aren’t even old enough to get tattoos or legally drink.

These are children who are genuinely in mental distress but likely suffering from a litany of comorbidities such as depression, anxiety or trauma, but have been led to believe that, if only they can change their gender, these issues will disappear.

They should have mental health interventions and parental guidance — not to have their bodies pumped with puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, which wreak havoc on bone and cardiovascular health.

This is Walz’s Minnesota nice.

And this bill, critics charge, infringes on parental rights.

Where does Walz’s running mate, Kamala Harris, stand on this? Since she has refused to speak about her policy stances or even list any on her campaign website, we can only revert to the policy of the Biden-Harris administration — which opposes legislative bans on youth gender transition and supports “gender-affirming care for minors, which represents a continuum of care.” 

One can only assume Walz’s blind support for child transition was a plus for Harris during the selection.

From my experience reporting on this issue, it blurs partisan lines. A lot of resistance comes from voters who once considered themselves on the left, but it’s only politicians on the right challenging it.

Earlier this month, Republican VP candidate J.D. Vance tweeted a clip of his interview on the “Full Send” podcast, writing, “I think it’s pretty weird for adults to sterilize little kids by giving them hormone therapy. I know Kamala Harris disagrees with me on this and considers it to be totally ‘normal.'”

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the left’s standard bearer of middle-school slam-book politics, chimed in — but not with any substance or defense of Harris. Instead, she commented on the photo of Vance sitting in a chair: “Why are you sitting like that?”

She was suggesting he was manspreading.

Unserious pols like AOC can continue to lob distractive attacks to avoid engaging on the actual substance of the matter. But they do so at their own peril.

We’re seeing an increasing number of detransitioners coming forward with regrets — sharing their grim medical realities and filing lawsuits against the doctors and therapists who pushed them through this permanently damaging course.

On Wednesday, the Free Press reported on Cristina Hineman, a detransitioner and the plaintiff in the first lawsuit against Planned Parenthood for medical malpractice. At 18, she sought testosterone from her New York State Planned Parenthood clinic, a process that, she claims, took less than 30 minutes. She took the hormones and had her healthy breasts removed — only to realize that she, like many other females who radicalized online, had made a grave mistake.

There are about a dozen more lawsuits around the country, with more sure to come.

We should agree that experimenting on kids is a fundamentally bad thing — but for Walz, it will be his legacy.