President Joe Biden issued an executive order on Wednesday designed to protect the health care of transgender youth, just weeks after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration asked the state board regulating doctors to ban Medicaid coverage for minors seeking transition-related care.

The president's executive order directs the Department of Health and Human Services to work with states to promote expanded access of gender-affirming care.

The executive order will:

• Address discrimination and barriers faced by LGBTQI+ youth, parents, caretakers, and families in foster care
• Support families with LGBTQI+ youth
• Review access, and barriers, for families to federal programs and benefits
• Address LGBTQI+ homelessness and housing instability
• Support LGBTQI+ students in our Nation’s schools and educational institutions

“I don’t have to tell you about the ultra MAGA agenda attacking families and our freedoms,” Biden said at the White House ceremony announcing his executive order. “Three hundred discriminatory bills introduced in the states across this country. In Texas, knocking on front doors to harass and investigate parents who are raising transgender children. In Florida, going after Mickey Mouse, for God’s sake.”

That was a reference to the legislation signed by DeSantis in April that revoked the Walt Disney Company’s special district status, which came after the company announced its opposition to the Parental Rights in Education law.

Biden also announced that the Department of Health & Human Services will “explore guidance to clarify that federally-funded programs cannot offer ‘conversion therapy,’" which aims to change people’s sexual orientations or gender identities. There are 20 states that ban the practice, but Florida is not one of them. In 2020, a federal appeals court declared that conversion therapy bans in Palm Beach County and Boca Raton were unconstitutional.

Brandon Wolf, a spokesperson for Equality Florida, says that the Biden administration is issuing a “warning” to states like Florida and others around the country that if they want to be in alignment with the federal government, then they need to offer the best possible care to young people and their families.

“I also think it’s a word of support to LGBTQ young people, especially trans young people across this country, who are really afraid right now because they see political leaders like Gov. DeSantis, who are not basing any of their policies in scientific fact or even a care empathy for the physical or mental well-being of these young people, and instead are simply building political careers on the backs of those vulnerable young people.”

Wolf also says calls the “right-wing obsession” with transgender kids to be “very disturbing.”

Central Florida GOP state Rep. Anthony Sabatini says that Florida has it right and the federal government has it wrong when it comes to this contentious issue.

“They’re pushing really dangerous policies that, by the way, most people disagree with,” Sabatini said. “They don’t want to see these dangerous surgeries pressed upon children who aren’t even old enough to know anything about the world, much less the nature of sex and gender. So it’s sick what’s happening. It’s wrong and it’s ‘woke’ medicine is what it is.”

A spokesperson for the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration sent a response to Spectrum Bay News 9 about the Biden executive order.

“It’s ironic that the Biden administration continues to claim their policies only support 'affirming care' while simultaneously defending and promoting permanent, harmful, and irreversible sex-change operations for children,” wrote Brock Juarez, communications director for AHCA. “We have remained consistent that in Florida we must protect children and parental rights, and our Medicaid program should not be paying for medical experiments.”

He went on to write in a written statement, "The Agency For Health Care Administration recently released a report that found several services for the treatment of gender dysphoria promoted by the Federal Government – i.e. sex reassignment surgery, cross-sex hormones, and puberty blockers – are not consistent with widely accepted professional medical standards and are experimental and investigational with the potential for harmful long term affects. The Biden administration was found to be using low-quality studies to affirm the guidance they released."