


One of the most conspicuous, insidious, and yet also representative members of the (blessedly) now-departed Biden administration was the assistant secretary for health and human services Rachel (formerly Richard) Levine. Levine, who entered the Biden administration after a disastrous stint as Pennsylvania state health secretary, became more than the face of the Left’s wholesale embrace of radical transgender ideology. In his position, he also tried to promote that ideology, with such actions as his pressuring the World Professional Association for Transgender Health to drop the age limits for medicalized gender transition of minors.
In an NPR interview earlier this month, Levine (with his interviewer’s solicitous assistance) made a failed attempt to whitewash this record. He also denied mounting evidence that the treatments he advocates ill-serve the very people on whom he wishes to foist them. He did much the same in a recent interview with Politico. In it, he evinces more of the same failure to appreciate how he personified the transgender ideology against which voters revolted in the most recent election and once again seeks to depict himself and his fellow travelers as guardians of the distressed youth their preferred policies would only further immiserate.
Most brazen: Levine claims to regret nothing. “I’m not a person who has regrets about anything,” he told Politico. “I am very proud of my service in Pennsylvania and here [in Washington].” Levine is already defining the legacy of Biden, who promised normalcy and competence and brought in radicalism and mismanagement, thereby helping to reelect the very person he succeeded as president. Levine’s undaunted posture in the face of obvious realities may now become emblematic of the Left as a whole.