In politics, they say timing is everything. Tuesday was President Donald Trump’s first full day back in office. But it was also the first full day in almost a year that Oregon’s part-time legislature was back in session. The timing isn’t a coincidence — it’s a call to action.
The incoming Trump administration is managing a lot of moving parts right now. Territorial expansion and sovereignty, immigration and border security, economic and energy policies, foreign policy and defense, and social policies such as education and healthcare. To be most effective, the Trump administration must move federal-state relations and state governance, especially in blue states, to the top of the playbook.
The Democratic Party’s regional state governance strategy has given it a stranglehold on the West Coast since at least 2013, the year former President Barack Obama began his second term. The strategy in California, Washington, and my home state of Oregon, called their “West Coast offense”, is an attempt to pilot their progressive nonsense on the West Coast through state legislation, state rulemaking, and state executive orders and then drive their bad ideas across the country.
As we saw this month during the California wildfires, Democrats’ disastrous policies in that state, from water and forest management to homelessness and emergency response and even construction and insurance mandates, have life-and-death consequences. And the policies in Washington and Oregon are the same, or worse.
Oregon’s political makeup and small population make it easy and cheap for Democrats to use the state as a petri dish for their progressive experiments. For example, Oregon has been the national test site for dangerous healthcare policy experimentation. This ranges from piloting Medicare for All to promoting abortion tourism to pushing transgender ideology and sex-change surgeries on children, in most cases with federal Medicaid funds. Trump must use the power of the Medicaid purse to put a stop to this dangerous nonsense.
In Oregon, Democrats try to sideline and silence anyone who dares speak common sense on these issues, which I know from firsthand experience.
In an apparent attempt to marginalize me as soon as I took office as a state representative, last February, my Democratic colleague, Oregon state Sen. Kate Lieber, tried to brand me, by way of a press release, as something of a “transphobe.” Lieber claimed I had made “dishonest and disrespectful statements” and that I was “promoting hate and harm toward others,” simply because as a member of the Grants Pass City Council, I refused to participate in a “Gay Pride Month” proclamation and spoke out about the sexualizing of children.
Then in December 2024, my Democratic colleague, Oregon House Speaker Julie Fahey, removed me from the healthcare committee, against my expressed wishes. This was after I had spoken out against Oregon’s Medicare for All scheme and the politicization of Oregon’s premier medical institution, Oregon Health Sciences University.
As most people now know, premier medical institutions such as OHSU are being used to launder and legitimize transgender ideologies and conduct dangerous and unnecessary transgender treatments, even on children.
Despite a 2023 review commissioned by Oregon’s Health Evidence Review Commission finding limited evidence for the efficacy of transgender treatments, the HERC disregarded its findings and adopted guidelines from an advocacy group without analysis. This has led to an exponential increase in children undergoing possibly irreversible medical interventions, often without adequate proof of their safety or effectiveness.
To scope out the problem, in August 2024, I opened an inquiry with the Oregon Health Authority, asking for patient counts and dollars spent for so-called “gender-affirming care”, both surgical and pharmacological. I asked for the data to be broken out by patient age and by year, for 2015 through 2023.
In December, the OHA responded with a memo report showing that “gender affirming-care” surgical treatments have increased almost 1,000% from 2015 (123 surgeries) to 2023 (1,324 surgeries) in Oregon. Pharmacy treatments, such as hormone therapy and puberty suppression prescriptions, have increased by almost as much.
Unfortunately, despite my request, the OHA refused to provide me with the breakout between children and adults for the surgical treatments. I was told only that in each year, there were fewer than 50 children treated surgically for “gender dysphoria” and that confidentially prohibited disclosure of the actual numbers. This lack of transparency by a state agency in response to legislative oversight should be shocking. But it’s par for the course in the one-party state of Oregon.
Another intentional omission, this one inexplicable, was that while Medicaid patient counts were included in the report, Medicaid dollars spent were not. Of course, it is a federal crime to bill Medicaid for medically unnecessary procedures.
Fast forward to Jan. 1 when new insurance rules from Oregon’s Department of Consumer and Business Services went into effect. The new rules mandate that private insurers and the Oregon Health Plan and Medicaid may not deny or limit coverage of “gender-affirming” treatment claims.
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Although Oregon regulations now require insurers and Medicaid to pay for these treatments, recent reports highlight the total lack of proof that these procedures are medically necessary, especially for children.
On Inauguration Day, Trump issued a flurry of executive orders, one of which expressly prohibits the use of federal funds to promote gender ideology. The executive order is a wonderful first step toward dismantling the West Coast offense pushing progressive nonsense in Oregon. The next step must be a legislative agenda that prioritizes using the power of the Medicaid purse to reform healthcare policy in off-the-rails states like mine. It’s time to start blitzing.
Dwayne Yunker is a Republican representing House District 3, Grants Pass and Josephine County, in the Oregon House of Representatives.