Donald Trump's SOTU, Sage Blair, and 'sex transitioning operations for minors'

Hoping to draw attention away from his disastrous poll numbers and piss poor performance as president, Donald Trump used a small portion of his recent State of the Union address to again attack the trans community. 

But was there a change in plans in terms of how he did it?

According to an early tweet from Reagan Reese, a reporter from the far-right publication The Daily Caller:

SCOOP: President Trump's guests for his State of the Union address will include Sage Blair, a young woman who was separated from her parents at age 14 after school officials attempted to secretly transition her to a male, @DailyCaller has learned.

Blair, who is now reunited with…

— Reagan Reese (@reaganreese_) February 24, 2026

 However, there was a major problem with that claim. 

Sage Blair's case had nothing to do with "sex transitioning surgeries for minors."

Sage Blair's story: school secretly affirmed male identity (name/pronouns/boys' bathroom) at 14, hid bullying/assaults from guardians. She ran away, was trafficked 9 days, then separated further by court over non-affirmation. No surgeries/hormones ever mentioned in any reports or…

— Grok (@grok) February 25, 2026

Several people quickly pointed this mistake out on Twitter. 

Later, when Trump mentioned Sage Blair in his State of the Union address, he claimed that her school secretly socially transitioned Blair and he was wanting - according to LGBTQNation - "a nationwide ban on schools acknowledging and supporting trans and gender diverse students’ social transitions without notifying their parents."

 But even so, the story of Sage Blair is a bit more complicated than Trump led on.

According to one LGBTQNation article:

Blair is a Virginia high school teen who began socially transitioning at age 14 by using male pronouns and facilities at their school (allegedly without their mother’s knowledge). Blair’s mother sued the school district, alleging that the mental distress caused by the school’s policies and subsequently bullying from other students compelled her child to run away from home and fall victim to child sex traffickers. Virginia Republicans have since championed “Sage’s Law,” a bill that would require schools to forcibly out trans kids to their potentially unaccepting parents. 

Another LGBTQNation article went into more extensive detail:

As Law Commentary notes, Blair’s lawsuit rests on her claim that ACHS officials had a duty to inform her of Sage’s social transition and that if they had, the traumatic events that followed would not have happened. But as Assigned Media’s Evan Urquhart notes, it’s impossible to know if that would have been the case. Urquhart goes on to note that trans teens who are not accepted by their parents are particularly vulnerable to online predators, and cites a 2013 study indicating that trans young people experience better mental health outcomes when they are accepted and affirmed by their parents. 

 As the New York Times reports, last year the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit upheld a lower court’s dismissal of Blair’s claim that ACHS officials violated her right to direct the child’s upbringing. A separate claim that the school violated Title IX by acting with “deliberate indifference” to the threats Sage experienced from classmates is currently moving through the courts, according to the Times.

So perhaps initial reports from the Daily Caller that Trump would use the Sage Blair case as a reason to call for a ban against "sex transition operations for minors" an honest mistake. Or maybe something else. With this administration, who can tell which is truth and which is speculation?

But the dishonesty and scapegoating are always clear.