Pregnant ‘boys’? Trump HHS slashes hundreds of millions in LGBTQ grants

The Trump administration’s Health and Human Services Department has canceled hundreds of millions of dollars in grants dedicated to researching illegal sexual behavior in children, pregnancy prevention for “transgender boys,” and so-called sleep inequality affecting black sexual-minority men.

In March, HHS canceled at least $530 million of funding for LGBTQ health research programs, according to a grant tracker from Noam Ross of rOpenSci and Scott Delaney of Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

HHS previously provided more than $990 million of grant funding to LGBTQ health research programs, according to the tracker.

The National Institutes of Health’s newly sworn-in director, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, said that under his tutelage, the agency would shift its priorities toward “research aimed at preventing, treating, and curing chronic conditions like cancer, diabetes, heart disease, obesity and many others that cause so much suffering and deaths among all Americans, LGBTQ individuals included.”

The shift “away from politicized DEI and gender ideology studies” is in “accordance with the president’s executive orders,” HHS spokesman Andrew Nixon told The Daily Signal.

The priority shift included cutting funding for studies focused on radical gender ideology, critical race theory, and other topics that polls show to be wildly unpopular with Americans, according to The Daily Signal’s review of terminated grants.

For instance, the Trump administration cut off $10,000 of promised funding to a conference Feb. 25-27 at the University of Oklahoma called “Be Curious Not Judgmental: The 4th National Symposium on Sexual Behavior of Youth.”

“Professionals and parents continue to use myths and misunderstandings as the base of decisions on problematic and illegal sexual behavior of children and adolescents,” the symposium’s website reads. “Adults worry about addressing sexual topics, and yet youth continue to be inundated with graphic sexual images and messages.”

“We need to better equip professionals and parents to understand and support healthy sexual development and to identify problematic sexual behavior early and intervene with all children and caregivers impacted,” the description continues.

One breakout session at the conference focused on “The Help-Wanted Prevention Intervention for Minor Attracted Individuals,” a euphemism for pedophiles.

On March 21, Trump’s NIH terminated a $2.9 million grant to the University of Minnesota for research on “adolescent health at the intersections of sexual, gender, racial/ethnic, immigrant identities and native language.”

The study aimed to determine “what positive and negative experiences are particularly relevant to the overlapping, simultaneous production of inequalities by [sexual and gender minority] identity, race/ethnicity, immigration experiences, and native language?”

The pre-Trump NIH promised the Research Triangle Institute $100,507 to study “social influences on sexual health among Latinx adolescents and emerging adults who identify as LGBTQ+ in an agricultural community.”

NIH ended a $1.5 million grant to Urban Health Partnerships for “leveraging a community-driven approach to address the impact of social determinants of health on structural inequities among Miami-Dade County’s intergenerational LGBTQ+ Community.”

Hunter College lost its $211,100 grant to study “development and feasibility of a psychosocial intervention for sexual and gender minority autistic adults.”

On March 18, NIH cut off Virginia Commonwealth University’s $205,308 grant focused on “using youth-engaged methods to develop and evaluate a measure for disordered eating behaviors in transgender and gender-diverse youth.”

“Transgender, nonbinary, and gender-diverse (TNG) youth face stigma due to the marginalization of their gender identities,” the study says. “TNG youth also have increased vulnerability to body dissatisfaction due to pubertal changes and development of secondary sexual characteristics that might be misaligned with their gender identity, which may be exacerbated by a youth’s inability to access gender-affirming medical care (i.e., puberty blockers, gender-affirming hormones).”

Yale University lost government funding for a program, “Training in Behavioral Design Interventions to Address Stigma Among Men Who have Sex with Men.”

“This study will explore relationships of different discrimination experiences and sexual health among young Black men who have sex with men (YBMSM),” the project narrative says. “This study aims to better the sexual health of YBMSM throughout their lives by informing future interventions that help decrease new cases of HIV and other poor sexual health outcomes.”

The NIH terminated its $2,368,492 contract with Brown University to study “improving mental health among the LGBTQ+ community impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.”

NIH had committed more than $1.3 million to Princeton University to study “Views of Gender in Adolescence.”

“Gender diverse children often experience disparities in mental health and well-being,” the project narrative says. “Further questions concern the stability of their gender, as that has implications for medical transitions. The proposed work would examine the role of gender beliefs and self-categorization in predicting mental health and well-being, as well as provide better estimates of rates of stability and change across time in the identities of both cisgender and gender-diverse youth.”

Trump’s HHS terminated a $1.3 million grant to the Center for Innovative Public Health Research to study “Adapting an LGB+ inclusive teen-pregnancy prevention program for transgender boys.”

The project’s goal was to change the title of “Girl2Girl,” a text messaging-based teen prevention pregnancy program, to “#TranscendentHealth, a gender-inclusive [teen prevention pregnancy program] for transgender boys.”

Other grants funded by the NIH before Trump took over included $2.5 million to a study on “Efficacy of a Multi-level School Intervention for LGBTQ Youth”; $6.4 million to “Multilevel strategies to understand and modify the role of structural and environmental context on HIV inequities for sexual and gender minorities of color”; and $1.8 million to “Sexual minority couples’ health during the transition to marriage.”

NIH canceled a grant of $1.3 million to examine “the Mechanisms and Consequences of Sleep Health Inequities Affecting Black Sexual Minority Men.”

“Using a syndemic and multilevel approach, this project seeks to investigate relationships between sleep and HIV treatment outcomes and behaviors (e.g., viral suppression and retention in care) among Black gay, bisexual and other sexual minority men (SMM),” the project narrative says, “a population in the United States heavily impacted by HIV/AIDS.”

The National Institutes of Health “remains fully committed to supporting research aimed at improving the health and well-being of every American, regardless of their sexual identity,” HHS spokesman Nixon said.

[Editor’s note: This story originally was published by The Daily Signal.]