The College Fix

Trump admin needs to clarify what constitutes ‘promoting gender ideology,’ policy analyst says

Since President Donald Trump took office, the National Institutes of Health has awarded nearly $3 million to studies on transgenderism or “gender-affirming care.”

The Fix conducted this research using the NIH’s Grant Reporter and inputting the following keywords: “transgender,” “gender-affirming,” and “gender identity.” This yielded eight results. The projects were already in effect and had previously received taxpayer funding – however, all eight studies had received new money since President Trump took office.

For one study, the NIH awarded more than $680,000 to the University of Wisconsin, Madison, for an “investigation of social support for transgender and nonbinary people and its impacts on health and well-being.”

The federal agency also awarded a grant to the University of California San Diego, in the amount of $250,000 to study “Systems Improvement for Psychosocial Safety in Transgender Care.”

Additionally, the NIH funded similar studies at the University of Colorado, Boston College, Northwestern University, Princeton University, and Medical College of Wisconsin.

A policy analyst at a conservative think tank told The College Fix via email the Trump administration should issue further clarification regarding “what does and does not constitute ‘promoting gender ideology.’”

Although a recent executive order from President Trump “bans federal funding for promoting ‘gender ideology,’ it does not seem to clearly forbid using funds to research trans-identified and gender dysphoric groups more broadly,” Joseph Figliolia with the Manhattan Institute said.

However, Figliolia believes the decision to fund these projects was likely made before Trump took office and his issued his executive orders.

“I’ve seen stories in recent days about the NIH terminating very similar grants to the ones you outlined, which suggests to me that the decision was made in advance and everyone is still getting on the same page,” he said.

Turning to the specific grants, Figliolia said the UC study authors make problematic assumptions “about discrimination in healthcare and the causes of health disparities in trans-identified populations.”

“The authors seem to just assert that trans-identified people experience discrimination in healthcare settings. Similarly, they presuppose that health disparities are due to mistreatment and stigma,” he said.

Studying why some groups have worse health outcomes is important, but they can’t assume these health differences come from stigma and discrimination, as that’s still being researched, he said.

For instance, “trans-identified individuals with psychiatric comorbidities, and potentially high in ‘rejection sensitivity,’ may be more likely to have perceptual biases that cause them to self-report more experiences of stigma and discrimination in ambiguous situations.” This idea is supported by studies showing that many trans-identifying people already have high rates of mental health problems before they identify as trans or are diagnosed with gender dysphoria, he said.

Figliolia also took issue with the fact that the UC study endorses the World Professional Association for Transgender Health.

“Not only does another EO explicitly condemn WPATH, but more importantly, the UK’s Cass Review determined that WPATH’s guidelines were unreliable and not suited for implementation into clinical practice,” he said.

“Secondly, in The Economist, journalist Jesse Singal has reported on how WPATH commissioned Johns Hopkins to conduct evidence reviews into pediatric gender medicine, but when the findings did not support their desired conclusions, WPATH suppressed the reviews and prevented them from being published,” he said.

The College Fix reached out to the NIH news media team, UC San Diego, UW-Madison, and the project leads and program officials of the grants for comments on the studies and how they align with recent policy shifts via multiple emails in the last two weeks. Only a UW-Madison spokesperson responded, telling The Fix the school “does not have information to share.”

Like Figliolia, Do No Harm Senior Fellow Jared Ross told The Fix the funding of these research projects, which were submitted prior to President Trump taking office, “appears to be an issue of agency oversight.”

Still, the medical advocacy group is “disappointed” federal funds are promoting “divisive gender and DEI pseudoscience … instead of attempting to improve medical care.”

Ross also said:

While decreasing HIV, improving mental health, and promoting patient safety are all noble causes, this research should not be restricted to specific populations based on group membership. Not only do these studies promote gender confusion in vulnerable teenagers, but they also perpetuate harmful sex stereotypes under the guise of “gender diversity.”

President Trump made clear in his executive orders that federal dollars should not be used to fund child sex change procedures and gender ideology … We are confident that the courts will see a large body of international evidence and systematic reviews that show these interventions are harmful.

He said Do No Harm is prepared to take this issue to the Supreme Court and hopes “the NIH withdraws funding from these political activism projects thinly disguised as legitimate medical and scientific research.”

MORE: Sen. Cruz unveils full list of 3,400 DEI grants from NSF

IMAGE CAPTION AND CREDIT: A transgender flag next to a microscope, symbolizing gender research; Grok

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