Taxpayers paid $9.6 million for a gender ideologue's puberty-blocker study. She hid it. Now we know why.



A study of puberty blockers has finally seen the light of day, despite the best efforts of the activist physician behind it.

The former medical director of what was long the nation's biggest child sex-rejection clinic suppressed the results of a taxpayer-funded study following 95 children who were given puberty blockers, expressing fear that the results might be used against her craft and ideology.

'Every taxpayer should be furious that this research was encouraged and funded.'

The study, which was obtained by the Oversight Project and published on Thursday by the Daily Signal, is every bit as injurious to the gender ideologue's preferred narrative as she apparently suspected.

Suppression

Johanna Olson-Kennedy, the president of the U.S. Professional Association for Transgender Health, has made no secret of her radicalism.

This former medical director of the gender clinic at Children's Hospital Los Angeles — a clinic that conducted medical procedures on minors and provided confused children with puberty blockers that could affect their future fertility — has, for instance, publicly argued against mandatory psychological assessments prior to sex-rejection mutilations; compared teen girls cutting off their healthy breasts to taking the SATs; and allegedly provided sex-rejection hormones to kids as young as 12 and referred little girls as young as 13 for double mastectomies.

A year prior to her clinic's closure in July 2025 — the result of a crackdown by President Donald Trump and his administration — Olson-Kennedy revealed that she and her team had suppressed the results of the years-long study funded by the National Institutes of Health regarding "long-term outcomes of medical treatment for transgender youth."

When asked why she was refusing to publish the data for which taxpayers paid at least $9.6 million, Olson-Kennedy "said the findings might fuel the kind of political attacks that have led to bans of the youth gender treatments in more than 20 states, one of which will soon be considered by the Supreme Court," reported the New York Times.

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"I do not want our work to be weaponized," said Olson-Kennedy. "It has to be exactly on point, clear, and concise. And that takes time."

The reason her findings were politically sensitive is because the study apparently showed that the so-called "gender-affirming care" promoted at the L.A. clinic and elsewhere was not all it was cracked up to be.

Amy Tishelman, a psychologist at Boston College who was one of the study's original researchers, noted at the time, "I understand the fear about it being weaponized, but it’s really important to get the science out there."

Tishelman acknowledged that the study had found that kids given puberty blockers — drugs that have long been used to chemically castrate sex offenders — did not see psychological improvements but suggested that "no change isn't necessarily a negative finding."

Despite the interest expressed by Tishelman and others in releasing the study, it remained under wraps.

Exposure

According to the newly released report of Olson-Kennedy's study, titled "The Impact of Early Medical Treatment in Transgender Youth," two years of puberty blockers didn't make much of a difference for the mental health of the test subjects, one-quarter of whom went in reportedly having thoughts about suicide and 8% of whom previously attempted to kill themselves.

Activists and so-called experts previously claimed that puberty blockers amount to a "lifesaving option" and that "withholding puberty blockers to treat gender dysphoria will very likely have serious adverse effects on the health and well-being of young people." The Mayo Clinic still suggests on its website that puberty blockers might "improve mental well-being."

Rather than "improve" the kids' mental health, the study merely said of puberty blockers:

Over 2 years of medical intervention that started with blockers, mental health remained relatively stable and was on par with the population at large. These youth showed no worsening of their mental or emotional health and suicidality decreased from baseline to 24 months. Mean scores on mental health measures remain stable in a clinically non-significant range over two years.

In a previous progress report, Olson-Kennedy hypothesized to the National Institutes of Health that kids taking puberty blockers for two years would show “decreased symptoms of depression, anxiety, trauma symptoms, self-injury, and suicidality, and increased body esteem and quality of life over time," reported the Times.

Neal Cornett, the Oversight Project's director of state litigation, said in a statement to Blaze News, "The final report confirms what anyone sensible would know — treating troubled youth with puberty blockers and hormone treatments does nothing to improve their mental health. What it does do is support a medical-industrial complex that must provide lifelong medical care to those who suffered from its harmful medical interventions. Every taxpayer should be furious that this research was encouraged and funded for the decade the country lost its collective mind."

Cornett added, "Dr. Olson-Kennedy was no doubt concerned that the final report would call into question the rationale behind her research. That isn’t weaponization. It’s justifiable scrutiny of a practice the majority of Americans rightly oppose."

While Olson-Kennedy's study is undoubtedly a gut-punch for gender activists, major studies released in the U.S. and the U.K. have already made clear that puberty blockers are not worth the risk.

The Cass Review, an independent investigation into sex-rejection drugs and procedures that was commissioned by NHS England and published in 2024, concluded that:

  • the quality of previous studies suggesting that puberty blockers are beneficial in reducing mental distress and improving the well-being of gender-dysphoric youth is "poor";
  • the alternatively high-quality "University of York systematic review found no evidence that puberty blockers improve body image or dysphoria";
  • puberty blockers "may reduce psychological functioning";
  • most kids' gender dysphoria appears to be "resolved by puberty"; and
  • "brain maturation may be temporarily or permanently disrupted by the use of puberty blockers."

The Department of Health and Human Services' exhaustive peer-reviewed 2025 report on pediatric treatments for "gender dysphoria" also highlighted numerous physical risks associated with puberty blockers including reduced bone mineral density, compromised skeletal development, infertility, and sexual dysfunction.

Olson-Kennedy could not immediately be reached for comment.

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'Our results shocked us': HHS report confirms your darkest suspicions about trans ideology



Amid ruinous pro-trans policies advanced by Democrat lawmakers around the country and a seemingly interminable string of horrific attacks allegedly plotted and/or executed by trans-identifying radicals, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services commissioned a study on the connection between gender ideology and leftist authoritarian beliefs.

The findings in the study published on Wednesday are damning — but likely won't surprise anyone who has been paying attention.

'Greater political liberalism independently predicted higher justification of political violence as well.'

The new study commissioned by HHS, titled "Where the Clinic Meets the Movement: Does Gender Ideology Arm Left- Wing Authoritarian Psychology?," is the latest addition to the genre of scientific literature confirming what the right already knew.

The research team behind the study included Joel Finkelstein, chief science officer and co-founder of the Network Contagion Research Institute; Lee Jussim, head of the Social Perception Laboratory at Rutgers University; and Colin Wright, an evolutionary biologist who serves as a fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

Together, they developed a "Clinical Gender Affirmation Scale," measuring endorsement of five positions related to gender ideology.

The five positions derive from official guidance issued by organizations that "represent the official scientific and clinical establishment on care for individuals who identify as transgender," according to the researchers.

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The five consensus positions with which respondents were asked to agree or disagree included:

  • "Failure to affirm a transgender person's gender identity increases the risk of serious psychological distress to the trans person."
  • "People should be supported in expressing their transgender identity."
  • "Using the name a person chooses as part of their gender transition is a necessary form of support."

'Biological-sex classifications and traditional parental or familial authority is seen as structures of harm.'

Using a questionnaire provided to over 1,200 majoritively Democrat-leaning Americans, the researchers tracked whether there was any correlation between endorsement of these organizations' consensus positions in the CGAS and left-wing authoritarianism.

"Our results shocked us," said Colin Wright.

"All correlations were substantial," said the study.

"The relationship was not merely descriptively correlational; endorsement of CGAS was a strong statistical predictor of left-wing authoritarianism."

The study noted that endorsements of both the CGAS and left-wing authoritarianism "were significantly positively correlated with justification for political violence" against President Donald Trump, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities, wealthy Americans' property, the police, and two recent victims of assassination — Charlie Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA, and Brian Thompson, the late CEO of UnitedHealthcare.

"CGAS was a consistent and statistically significant predictor of political violence justification," said the study. "... Political identity was also a significant predictor across all six outcomes, indicating that greater political liberalism independently predicted higher justification of political violence as well."

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Since the American Psychological Association, the American Psychiatric Association, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, and the American Academy of Pediatrics have supported the five positions at some point, the findings of the research "raise a question of scientific responsibility," continued the study.

The researchers cautioned, however, that gender ideology "was not simply standing in for being politically left-wing; it explained additional variation in political violence justification beyond political identity. Thus, its association with political violence cannot be reduced simply to ordinary left-right political identification."

According to the researchers, gender ideology appears to function as a framework through which left-wing authoritarian tendencies can be concentrated.

After all, it not only provides left-wing authoritarians with potential targets to go after — including straights, Republicans, conservative Christians, and law enforcement — but "mandates institutional norm enforcement" by way of compelling speech, crackdowns on parental resistance, and institutional discipline.

This framework also provides left-wing authoritarians with "a third form of ideological fuel: a conventional order to dismantle. As such, biological-sex classifications and traditional parental or familial authority is seen as structures of harm requiring a moralized project of institutional correction."

"This study raises important questions about what happens when ideology is given the authority of medicine," said Assistant Secretary for Health Adm. Brian Christine. "The association between sex-rejecting clinical beliefs, authoritarian attitudes, and the justification of political violence warrant[s] serious scientific scrutiny."

Christine noted further that "HHS will continue to pursue rigorous research that examines these relationships and gives the American people the evidence they deserve."

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Study: Ketanji Brown Jackson Speaks More Than Twice As Much As Any Of Her Fellow Justices

If there’s one thing Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson loves to do more than anything during Supreme Court oral arguments, it’s talk — and talk, and talk, and talk some more. On Thursday, The New York Times reported on a new study that found Jackson is “by far the most talkative justice” on the court over […]

New study shows big health disadvantage for women who stay up late — and it isn't about losing sleep



Night owls who stay up watching TV or on their devices are known to get a little less sleep, but there is another factor that is contributing to a lower quality of life.

A glance at studies over the last decade have shown that watching devices in the bedroom and at night before bed has increased, with nearly half the population giving in to the blue glow.

'When people eat may be just as important as what they eat.'

ET phone home

A 2025 study of more than 120,000 participants found that over 40% (~50,000) reported daily screen use before bed.

However, another nighttime ritual is contributing to poor health, specifically among women: late-night eating.

A study from New Zealand evaluated hundreds of women and their eating habits, tracking body-fat percentage, body mass index, and fat ratio.

Broken down into "evening types" and "morning types," those who stay up late had a higher body-fat percentage than the morning people.

Staying up seemed directly related to diet, as the study showed the nighthawks consumed more energy, protein, carbohydrates, and fat after 8 p.m.

The ET group also had a reportedly worse lipid profile, which refers to blood sugar levels.

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Night feeding

The bodies of women who were evening types burned off less energy and ate food that is less nutrient-dense as well. This was coupled with lower dietary intake in the morning and eating more in the evening. The study said that evening intake was "significantly associated" with a higher body-fat percentage.

For evening type ladies, there was also a "potentially greater susceptibility to obesity."

Compared to the morning types and those in between, evening types had a 20.3% higher body mass index and had approximately 6% more body fat. There was also a +12.6% difference in the android fat to gynoid fat ratio; meaning a greater proportion of body fat is concentrated in the abdomen area rather than the hips and thighs.

This all came despite the ETs and MTs both consuming similar amounts of energy and nutrients.

"The research highlights that when people eat may be just as important as what they eat," said a senior author of the study, Rozanne Kruger, per Newsmax.

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Hitting the sack? Don't snack

According to Kruger — a professor and nutrition researcher at Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia — limiting food late at night could improve health even in those who feel the need to stay up.

The study further concluded that the timing of meals in relation to when a person goes to sleep is important to ongoing "metabolic health outcomes."

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Mental illness has become a political identity — and SURPRISE, it's on the left: Study



There have been numerous studies in recent years highlighting correlations between political affiliation and mental health.

A 2021 study published in the journal SSM-Mental Health, for instance, concluded — on the basis of an analysis of depressive attitudes among conservative and liberal 12th graders from 2005 to 2018 — that "conservatives reported lower average depressive affect, self-derogation, and loneliness scores and higher self-esteem scores than all other groups."

'These findings have far-reaching consequences.'

A 2023 study conducted by Gallup on behalf of the Institute for Family Studies found that adolescents with "very conservative parents are 16 to 17 percentage points more likely to be in good or excellent mental health compared to their peers with very liberal parents."

A 2025 study published in the journal PLOS One found that "even after accounting for a variety of other factors, there is a clear propensity of conservatives to provide more positive assessments of their mental health in comparison to liberals" — although the researchers ultimately attempted to credit this tendency to stigma or survey terminology.

The American left's mental health issues show no signs of clearing up. In fact, while conservatives continue to enjoy relatively superior mental health, the sickness on the other side appears to be attracting sufferers into a political identity all its own.

In a study strongly recommending "replication and further exploration" that was recently published in the journal Political Behavior, Lauren Van De Hey of Utah State University found that "mental health identity has begun to function as a political identity for some individuals," particularly among "younger (Gen Z) and more liberal Americans."

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Utilizing data from the national Cooperative Election Study administered by YouGov in 2022, the Utah researcher determined that a great many people now "categorize themselves as having had a mental illness, the vast majority of whom view mental illness identity and mental illness alienation as important to their sense of self."

"People who have experienced mental illness feel close to others who have experienced mental illness," wrote Van De Hey. "They are also likely to self-categorize as having or having had a mental illness, share a sense of group consciousness with others who have or had mental illness, and recognize the need to work together to change laws that are unfair to people with mental illness."

This obviously has political implications, explained the researcher, as it correlates with "support for increased state spending on health care, education, and welfare."

The study cited Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.) as an example of a political elite for whom mental health appears to have become a "politicized identity."

Smith has on numerous occasions discussed her past experiences with depression, grouped herself with sufferers, and identified "mental health parity" as a legislative priority.

"Those more likely to categorize as having a mental illness are more likely to have a college degree; be a Democrat, liberal, and white; and have slightly lower family income," said the study. "For both the [Mental Illness] Identity and [Mental Illness] Alienation scales, the only consequential variable is ideology: Those with higher MI identification or MI Alienation are more likely to be liberal."

Van De Hey concluded, "These findings have far-reaching consequences for mental health advocacy and the role mental health identity will play in the political sphere — especially as Gen Z matures as a cohort."

Dealing with a sample of 860 respondents, Van De Hey found that 26% categorized themselves as having had a mental illness in their lifetime, 22% categorized themselves as having had a physical disability, and 168 categorized themselves as having had a serious chronic physical illness.

Of the 220 respondents who said they had mental illness in their lifetime, 70% identified as "liberal" or "very liberal," 24% identified as "moderate," and 32% identified as "conservative" or "very conservative."

Of the same 220 respondents, about half stated that their identity as a person with a mental health illness was "important" or "very important to them."

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New Research Suggests Americans Revolting Against Left’s Favorite Special Interest

So-called 'toxic ideologies'

Climate hucksters wrong again: Study claiming climate change would make you poorer retracted over major flaws



German climate alarmists claimed in a study published last year in the journal Nature that even if carbon dioxide emissions were radically cut down, so-called climate change would still drive the world economy toward a global GDP reduction of 19%.

The alarmists at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research suggested further that not only would global annual climate-change damages hit $38 trillion by 2049, but that under a high-emissions scenario, global GDP would be lowered around 60% relative to the baseline in 75 years — an impact reportedly three times larger than previous estimates.

'Most people for the last decade have thought that a 20% reduction in 2100 was an insanely large number. So the fact that this paper is coming out saying 60% is off the chart.'

According to the U.K.-based Carbon Brief, this was one of the most-cited climate papers by the media, including the Associated Press, CNN, Deutsche Welle, and Reuters.

Just the News highlighted that numerous activists and institutions also cited it, including Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.) and the World Bank.

The problem for the climate alarmists and those who believed them was that the study's conclusions were bogus.

A team of American economists pointed out in a commentary published by Nature in August that "data anomalies arising from one country in [the German researchers'] underlying GDP dataset, Uzbekistan, substantially bias their predicted impacts of climate change."

The economists revealed that if the questionable data pertaining to Uzbekistan were excluded, projected global losses in 2100 would be 23% as opposed to 60%, which is more in line with previous estimates.

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The economists noted further that the Germans underestimated "statistical uncertainty in their future projections of climate impacts."

"Most people for the last decade have thought that a 20% reduction in 2100 was an insanely large number," Solomon Hsiang, a Stanford University professor who co-authored the August commentary, told the New York Times. "So the fact that this paper is coming out saying 60% is off the chart."

'We have to cut down our emissions drastically and immediately — if not, economic losses will become even bigger.'

The paper, which was originally published on April 17, 2024, was retracted on Wednesday.

The retraction notice indicates that "the results were found to be sensitive to the removal of one country, Uzbekistan, where inaccuracies were noted in the underlying economic data for the period 1995-1999."

While the German alarmists attempted to correct the data for Uzbekistan and make other adjustments, they found that "these changes led to discrepancies in the estimates for climate damages by mid-century, with an increased uncertainty range (from 11-29% to 6-31%) and a lower probability of damages diverging across emission scenarios by 2050 (from 99% to 90%)."

In other words, the original conclusions hyped by the liberal media were worthless.

When the now-retracted paper was first published in April 2024, the German researchers made no secret of the point of the exercise: justifying societal and industrial upheaval coded as "adaptation."

"Our analysis shows that climate change will cause massive economic damages within the next 25 years in almost all countries around the world, also in highly developed ones such as Germany, France, and the United States," Leonie Wenz, lead scientist on the study, said in a release.

"These near-term damages are a result of our past emissions. We will need more adaptation efforts if we want to avoid at least some of them," Wenz continued. "And we have to cut down our emissions drastically and immediately — if not, economic losses will become even bigger in the second half of the century, amounting to up to 60% on global average by 2100."

Wenz and her team are hardly the first climate alarmists to have their conclusions proven to be as incorrect as they are outlandish.

Failed presidential candidate Al Gore, for instance, concern-mongered in 2009 that in addition to the significant rise in the global sea level that was supposed to happen "in the near future" but never did, the entire polar ice cap was likely going to be seasonally ice-free, perhaps by as early as 2014.

Gore told the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference that then-new research indicated there was "a 75% chance that the entire north polar ice cap during some of the summer months could be completely ice-free within the next five to seven years."

In September, a paper published in the peer-reviewed scientific journal Geophysical Research Letters revealed that Gore was dead wrong — that over the past 20 years, "Arctic sea ice loss has slowed considerably, with no statistically significant decline in September sea ice area since 2005."

Rather than wait to be proven horribly wrong, Bill Gates — who has spent years fear-mongering about the calamities that would supposedly visit humanity unless governments neutralized certain industries and regulated into extinction certain behaviors — admitted in October that climate change "will not lead to humanity's demise."

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Grief is a killer: New study details the toll a loved one's death can take



The death of a loved one can prove devastating for a surviving spouse or parent. A study published on July 24 in the journal Frontiers in Public Health revealed that the bereaved faced an increased risk of dying from grief.

Research has long shown associations between bereavement and increased cortisol secretion, sleep disturbance, immune imbalance, inflammation, blood clots, and heart conditions, including Takotsubo cardiomyopathy — also called broken heart syndrome — and arrhythmias.

Numerous studies have also indicated that those grieving the loss of a loved one are at higher risk of dying.

A 2014 study in JAMA Internal Medicine, for instance, showed "25% higher mortality in the first year after partner bereavement in older couples, with a peak in the first 3 months." Within 30 days of a spouse's death, the study found that persons ages 60 or older were found to face twice the risk of a heart attack or stroke compared to those who had not suffered such a loss.

Dr. Lisa Shulman, a professor of neurology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, told American Heart Association News that the death of a loved one triggers the body's "fight or flight" response: "Your heart starts racing, your blood pressure increases, your respiratory rate increases, you become sweaty, as the body marshals defenses for you to protect yourself, one way or another."

Shulman indicated that in some cases, grief can leave widows and widowers in a state of permanent stress.

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Dr. George Slavich, director of the Laboratory for Stress Assessment and Research at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA, indicated that prolonged grief can be debilitating for some individuals and is linked to serious health consequences, including increased risk for cancer and mortality.

The new study in Frontiers bolsters the connection between grief and mortality.

In the study, Danish researchers tracked the long-term health outcomes of 1,735 bereaved men and women over the course of 10 years. The median age of the participants at the time of enrollment was 62.

A national register of drug prescriptions tipped researchers off to which patients were recently prescribed treatments for terminal conditions. After identifying the corresponding moribund patients, the researchers invited them and their loved ones to participate in the study.

Among the participating relatives of the dying patients, 66% ultimately lost their spouse, 27% lost a parent, and 7% lost another kind of loved relation.

The researchers assessed participants' grief symptoms prior to bereavement, six months after bereavement, and three years after bereavement, and divided the participants into five common categories of trajectories with those suffering persistently "low grief" on one end and those suffering persistently "high grief" on the other end.

Those in the "high grief" camp stood an 88% higher risk of dying within 10 years than those in the "low grief" camp.

Those in the "high grief" camp saw 186% higher odds of receiving talk therapy or other mental health services, 463% higher odds of being prescribed antidepressants, and 160% higher odds of being prescribed sedatives or anxiety drugs.

During the 10-year study period, 21.5% of the bereaved relatives in the "high grief" camp died. Only 7.3% of those in the "low grief" trajectory perished.

Dr. Mette Kjærgaard Nielsen noted that, "The 'high grief' group had lower education on average, and their more frequent use of medication before bereavement suggested that they had signs of mental vulnerability, which may cause greater distress on bereavement."

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