Last week, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill criminalizing providers of gender-affirming care for anyone under 18. While three Democrats voted with Republicans to approve the ban, four Republicans broke from the party to vote ‘no.’
Among them was U.S. Rep. Gabe Evans (R-CO), who is now facing criticism from his fellow Colorado Republicans for his vote — even after he voted ‘yes’ on a second bill to bar Medicaid coverage from gender-affirming care for minors.
Adam DeRito, who announced this month that he is challenging Evans for the Republican nomination in 2026, said he would have voted yes on the bill.
“This vote should have been simple. Protect children. Give families clarity. Draw a firm line when it comes to irreversible decisions involving minors,” DeRito said in a press release. “Instead, it appears Gabe Evans chose to side with political pressure and activist ideology rather than common sense and parental rights.”
The bill, introduced by U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), would make it a federal felony to provide gender-affirming care for trans youth.
Proponents of policies like this claim, falsely, that gender reassignment surgeries are performed on minors. The types of gender-affirming care that are actually performed have been deemed medically beneficial in academic research.
If Greene’s bill is signed into law, doctors could face up to 10 years in prison for providing that beneficial care. It now heads to the Senate, where it is not expected to pass.
A spokesperson for Evans did not respond to a request for comment regarding his rationale for voting against the bill, or if he had any response to Republicans who criticized him on the vote.
However, Evans appeared on KNUS Radio’s “The Jeff & Bill Show” Friday morning to clarify his position.
Evans justified his vote against the bill with three arguments: 1) Criminalizing the procedures would negatively impact the police officers who would now have to arrest doctors. 2) It would also negatively impact the doctors by overriding their professional judgment and experience. And 3) Evans also made the political point that the bill will not pass the Senate.
“So I was a no on arresting doctors and putting cops in the bad situation of having to go arrest doctors, because that bill, in addition to being just, to me, bad policy, it’s got no chance of becoming law. It’s a dead-on arrival in the Senate,” Evans said on air. “And I was like, yes, on not paying for sex change for minors, which, again, preemptively defunds that procedure, much lower level of government intrusion and government force involved there, and it actually saves money.”
DeRito was not the only Colorado Republican to criticize Evans. State Rep. Brandi Bradley (R-Littleton), who is also the president of anti-trans activist group Moms for Liberty’s Douglas County Chapter, was brought onto the Jeff & Bill Show after Evans’s interview, where she argued in favor of putting doctors in prison.
“I appreciate Congressman Evans coming on [the radio show], but he’s on the wrong side of this. … This is child abuse, to cut off healthy body parts of children, and these doctors should be put in prison and federally charged. I am blown away that we would vote no on a bill that would charge people doing harm to children,” Bradley said.
