The Trump administration has taken a principled stand by correcting the nameplate on the official portrait of Richard Levine, the former assistant secretary for health under Joe Biden, reverting it from the assumed female name “Rachel” to his biological birth name “Richard.” This change, made during the recent federal shutdown, underscores a commitment to acknowledging scientific and biological reality over gender ideology.
Levine’s spokesperson decried the move as “bigotry,” but it aligns with efforts to restore accuracy in federal representations. Levine, a pediatrician who specialized in so-called “LGBT medicine,” was appointed in 2021 as the highest-ranking openly gender-confused official in U.S. history. During his tenure, he aggressively promoted dangerous “transgender” interventions for minors, including puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries—practices now widely recognized as manipulative and harmful to vulnerable children and families.
In response, the current HHS leadership has prioritized gold-standard science, reversing the harmful policies advanced by Levine. A new report from the department exposes the significant, long-term risks of these sex-rejecting procedures, which were inadequately tracked under the previous administration. Numerous hospitals, including those at the University of Michigan, Yale, and others, are wisely scaling back or eliminating such treatments for gender-confused youth.