The folks at Snopes like to advertise themselves as fact-checkers, but on Friday, Rae Deng (pronouns: their/they) ditched the idea of fact-checking to accuse the Trump administration of being “outright unethical” for their attempts to get the Bureau of Prisons to stop giving “gender-affirming care” to inmates. In the summary section, Deng writes, “The journalist, Aleksandra Vaca, used legitimate policy and court documents to argue that the proposal amounts to medical experimentation. She said the government "is throwing out existing medical standards and instead wishes to force arbitrary guidelines onto a captive population — all the while being fully aware of the risks and actively documenting the results."  Vaca is a transgender activist, but that aside, Deng adds in the actual article, “She alleged the administration ‘is throwing out existing medical standards and instead wishes to force arbitrary guidelines onto a captive population—all the while being fully aware of the risks and actively documenting the results.'" Deng also writes, “Factually, the proposal rejects medically accepted standards of care for trans patients with gender dysphoria and would forcibly detransition trans prisoners. A court order blocked the policy from going into effect as of this writing, but filings from the American Civil Liberties Union indicated that some trans prisoners still did not receive their treatments, such as hormone therapy.” Later, Deng reports on the policy’s actual details, “The Trump administration's policy calls for treating gender dysphoria by prioritizing psychotherapy and preventing access to sex modification surgeries, hormone replacement therapy and ‘social accommodations.’ The policy also proposes individualized ‘tapering’ plans to remove patients off of hormones who already receive them (see Page 7).” In other words, the Trump administration does not want taxpayer-funded sex change surgeries, makeup, wigs, breast pads, or several other “social accommodations” for prisoners. As for hormones, Deng was also forced to acknowledge that people who have taken them for an extended period of time will not be forced to quit cold turkey, ‘“It may not be appropriate in all cases for the initial tapering plan to include cessation of hormones. But tapering plans should be reevaluated regularly with respect to cessation of hormones,’ the policy said on Page 8, indicating that the end goal is stopping hormones for all trans prisoners.” Nevertheless, Deng added, “Experts Snopes spoke to agreed the Trump administration's policy would not pass through a research ethics board.” Deng then quoted Stanford bioethicist Alyssa Burgart as saying, ‘“This policy is saying that they're using informed consent, but when there's a blanket prohibition … it is actually impossible to have informed consent,’ Burgart said. She compared the policy to a history of forced sterilizations in California state facilities due to both policies' coercive removal of bodily autonomy.”  After several additional paragraphs on the state of the legal fight over the policy, Deng turned to “The bottom line," which was “The Trump administration has plans to forcibly detransition trans people in prison.” Deng also claimed, “The experts Snopes spoke to disagree on whether that's medical experimentation. What's more important, they say, is that denying medically necessary care to a vulnerable population is outright unethical.” Fact-checkers are supposed to check facts, and Deng didn’t do that, choosing instead to write a lengthy opinion piece against a policy restricting hormone treatment for prisoners, even if it isn’t actually trying to implement a one-size-fits-all tapering plan. In the meantime, Deng never did explain why the taxpayers should be forced to provide butt pads to prisoners.